preserves Archives - Page 2 of 3

Beet Relish, Miss Helen Palen

August 3, 2017November 28, 2023

I thought we’d take things back into the 20th century this week.

Among the “treasures” acquired in 1960 by the Maryland Department of the Enoch Pratt Free Library (”Maryland Room Acquires ‘Treasures’”, Baltimore Sun, November 1960) is a copy of a cookbook put out in 1948 by the Maryland Home Economics Association. Much like the “Secrets of Southern Maryland Cooking” book, it is written in many different hands with varying degrees of legibility.

Entitled “Maryland Cooking,” the book manages to pack 310 recipes. Three are for beaten biscuits, one is for crab cakes. “Stuffed Country Ham” is there too. The book is also notable in that it draws from regions of Maryland where less community or historic cookbooks had been produced. One recipe for “Cornish Saffron Bread,” is prefaced with the description that it was introduced to Frostburg by settlers from Cornwall in the mid 19th century. Ethel Grove from Washington County appropriately contributed a recipe for “Maple Bavarian Cream.” Each of Maryland’s counties had a committee gathering recipes for the book.

The cover illustration was done by Richard Q. Yardley, an editorial illustrator for the Sun, whose illustrations also adorn the Sun’s “Fun with Food” and “Fun with Sea Food” books from the 1960s.

The purpose of “Maryland Cooking” was to gain funds towards a Washington, DC Headquarters for the American Home Economics Association, and hopefully to provide scholarships to help “finance the education of girls who want to become home economists.”

After cooking schools had codified the domestic arts into a sort of ‘science for women,’ this type of education became offered to a younger audience through private schools or as part of public high school education. Newspaper articles marveled, sometimes condescendingly, at this new branch of education. In May 1913, a Sun reporter visited the cooking classes, which were taught at Western High School in Baltimore, and observed 120 pupils, “Baltimore’s fairest,” studying “ways to capture the heart of the male of the species.” The reporter declared that even a “hardened misogynist” would be charmed by the epicurean meals prepared by the students.

A follow up story in June remarked on the “awful fuss they make over a panful of pie.”

Home Economics at Iowa State College, 1942, Jack Delano, loc.gov

The housekeeping department, the June article continued, was conducted by Miss Helen Palen(1883-????), the “presiding genius” of a “dainty little flat” used to teach cleaning methods and laundry, although Palen noted that she did not expect the girls to have to do their own laundry.

Palen was still teaching housekeeping at the school in 1919, when the Sun reported on how the school was training girls “for future usefulness.”

Palen’s commitment to home economics education ran deep, and she appears in Johns Hopkins circulars as attending courses for teachers throughout the late 1910s. She served as the president of the Maryland Home Economics Association from 1918-1920.

That was nearly 30 years before the publication of “Maryland Cooking,” but it is her recipe for Beet Relish that I turned to to preserve my spring beets and cabbage.

Similar recipes appear in newspapers at the turn of the 20th century, but the European origins couldn’t be much more obvious. The beets (and in this case, a healthy amount of sugar…) sweeten up the horseradish and the cabbage mellows the whole thing out. The most similar condiment I could find online is called “tsvikly” in the Ukraine.

I naively thought that my backyard horseradish would be sufficient at first. When I dug it up and found it puny and pitiful, I had to go to a few stores to find horseradish that was unadulterated with oils or other additives. I ultimately found it in the seafood section.

I had forgotten the joy of a nice oniony roast beef sandwich with horseradish and greens. The relish also made a nice cheddar grilled cheese.

I’ll be making more out of “Maryland Cooking.” The American Home Economics Association has since become the American Association of Family & Consumer Sciences. The archives of the now-defunct Maryland division is now housed at the University of Maryland Hornbake Library, where several copies of the book can also be found.

Lucky for me and this blog, it’s become pretty socially acceptable to make an “awful fuss over a panful of pie.”

2 Cups cabbage
2 Cups (cooked and chopped) red beets
1 Cup horseradish
1 Lb sugar
1 Teaspoon salt
1 Teaspoon mustard powder
1 Cup vinegar

Pack in jars without cooking.

From “Maryland Cooking,” 1948, Maryland Home Economics Association

(sad trombone)

Apple Butter

October 18, 2016January 13, 2019

“Being at the house of a good old German friend in Pennsylvania, in September last, we noticed upon the table what was called apple butter; and finding it an agreeable article, we inquired into the modus operandi in making it, which we give for the gratification of such in New England as may wish to enjoy the luxury of Pennsylvania apple butter.” – Poughkeepsie Journal, NY 1838

Again, we turn to Elizabeth Ellicott Lea for guidance on preserving the harvest. Apple butter, Wikipedia will tell you, originated in Germany and the Netherlands, and has been a popular way to preserve the apple harvest in the U.S. since Colonial times. The spread is considered a Pennsylvania Dutch specialty. Lea’s cooking has a lot of overlap with the Pennsylvania Dutch, so unsurprisingly she has two recipes -or “ways”- in “Domestic Cookery.”

One of her recipes, “[Apple Butter] Another Way” prescribes the use of a huge kettle, where cider is reduced and apples are boiled in it for hours, while constantly stirred with “a stick made of hickory wood, somewhat like a common hoe, with holes in it.”

Jackson’s Orchard, flickr

This considerable undertaking became a family or even a neighborhood communal effort. The scene at the modern-day Berkeley Springs Apple Butter Festival in WV is not all that different. Every year, people gather in the town square and labor over the hot cauldrons as the smell wafts around the bustling town.

Apple butter seems particularly primed to evoke feelings pure and nostalgic for people in this region.

Advertisement, 1923

This is, of course, the part where I mention that it hasn’t always been that great. I found at least two instances where a young child died from falling into the boiling vat.

Additionally, many who ate apple butter were killed as a result of primitive canning technology.

Before the widespread use of glass jars for canning, it was common to “put up” various preserves in earthen vessels. These vessels often contained a poisonous glaze that was corroded by acidic foods like apple butter, with deadly results. Elizabeth Lea cautions about this in her other apple butter recipe, entitled “Apple Butter. With Remarks on the Use of Earthen Vessels.” This recipe is a little more user-friendly, with no need for a vat or a hickory stick. She even mentions that if you cannot finish the apple butter in a day, you can put it in a tub to continue the next day. I opted to put mine in the slow cooker when I needed to step away.

The farmers market is awash with apples right now. It’s overwhelming. I was going to ask one of the friendly vendors for advice on a good apple-butter apple but I saw that Lewis Orchards was selling a mixed crate of ugly apples (and the odd pear) and figured that was the way to go. Not all apples broke down at the same rate but I eventually got them all into submission.

Some recipes use cider. Others, like the recipe in “300 Years of Black Cooking in St. Mary’s County,” use vinegar. I opted to use a blend of hard and fresh cider.

The lovely aroma did indeed fill me with nostalgia for Berkeley Springs, campfires, and ‘jacket weather.’ It also filled me with anticipation for grilled cheese, barbecue sauce, and scrapple sandwiches.

Recipe:

“Have your kettle well cleaned, and fill it early in the morning with cider made of sound apples, and just from the press; let it boil half away, which may be done by three o’clock in the afternoon; have pared and cut enough good apples to fill the kettle; put them in a clean tub, and pour the boiling cider over; then scour the kettle and put in the apples and cider, let them boil briskly till the apples sink to the bottom; slacken the fire and let them stew, like preserves, till ten o’clock at night. Some dried quinces stewed in cider and put in are an improvement. Season with orange peel, cinnamon or cloves, just before it is done; if you like it sweeter, you can put in some sugar an hour before it is done. If any thing occur that you cannot finish it in a day, pour it in a tub, and finish it the next day; when it is done put it in stone jars. Any thing acid should not be put in earthen vessels, as the glazing is poisonous. This way of making apple butter requires but little stirring; you must keep a constant watch that it does not burn.

Pears and peaches may be done in the same way, and if they are sweet,
will not require sugar.”

Recipe from “Domestic cookery, useful receipts, and hints to young housekeepers” by Elizabeth Ellicott Lea

Chilli Sauce

September 29, 2016January 13, 2019

There’s a lot of tempting 19th century options for tomato preservation. In addition to catsup, tomatoes were preserved spiced, in piccalilli, chow-chow, or stewed and strained into “soyer.” Tomatoes have one of the highest concentrations of naturally-occurring MSG, and these sauces and pickles all provided ways to add some umami to meals throughout the winter.

I settled on “Chili Sauce” or “Chilli Sauce” which, despite its name, is not really a hot-sauce fore-bearer. Bell peppers generally comprised the “peppers” component. Even swapping them out for jalapenos, the end result doesn’t carry much heat.

According to a 1994 article in the Hartford Courant (CT), “chili sauce seems to have surfaced in New England in the last half of the 19th century… How it got the name remains a mystery… especially because the original product had no chili peppers in it.” Writer Bill Daley wrote that the sauce was would have featured into the diet of seafarers during long voyages, and was used by generations of “Yankee cooks” to “jazz up winter menus,” finding its way into and onto “roast beef, lamb chops, cod cakes, baked beans, eggs – nearly everything – with this blend of tomatoes, peppers, onions, vinegar and spices.”

An 1880 Minnesota cookbook “Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping” lists Chili Sauce among the many sauces worthy of a Christmas dinner:

“Christmas Dinners. Clam soup; baked fish, Hollandaise sauce; roast turkey with oyster dressing and celery or oyster sauce, roast duck with onion sauce, broiled quail, chicken pie; plum and crab-apple jelly; baked potatoes in jackets, sweet potatoes, baked squash, turnips, southern cabbage, stewed carrots, canned corn, canned pease, tomatoes; Graham bread, rolls; salmon salad or herring salad, Chili sauce, gooseberry catsup, mangoes, pickled cabbage; bottled, French or Spanish pickles; spiced nutmeg-melon and sweet- pickled grapes, and beets; Christmas plum-pudding with sauce, charlotte-russe; cocoa-nut, mince, and peach pies; citron, pound, French loaf, white Mountain and Neapolitan cakes; lady’s fingers, peppernuts; centennial drops, almond or hickory-nut macaroons; cocoa-nut caramels, chocolate drops; orange or pine apple ice cream; coffee, tea, and Vienna chocolate.” —Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping [Buckeye Publishing Company:Minneapolis MN] 1880 via foodtimeline.org

Apparently it was a heyday for sauces, “Commercial relishes and condiments were introduced around this time, and the public developed quite a taste for them. By the 1880s, [James] Farrell said, there was a proliferation of chopping gadgets on the market for do-it-yourselfers,” wrote Bill Daley.

A biography of H.J. Heinz describes Heinz’ systematic “studying” of sauces at the 1876 Philadelphia Exposition. He encountered Tabasco but sensed that the market wasn’t ready for it.

“At the same time, Eugene Durkee or New York and William Railton or Chicago introduced pepper sauces known as ‘Chilli’ sauce. These very mild and thick sauces in hexagonally shaped bottles and cathedral square shaped bottles fascinated Heinz. The thicker, mild, ketchup-like product found a larger market in the north. Heinz introduced his as ‘Chili’ and found a large market that remains to this day.”- H.J.Heinz, A Biography, Quentin R. Skrabec, Jr. 2009

My mom uses Heinz’ Chili sauce to make cocktail sauce. Beyond that, I don’t know many uses for it. I was a little stumped at what to use my own Chilli Sauce for, with its 19th century cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and allspice. So far, some has made its way into some barbecue sauce. I guess I have all winter long to see what else I can “jazz up” with it.

Recipe:

“Twenty-four ripe tomatoes, eight onions, six peppers, eight coffee cups of vinegar, eight tablespoons of sugar, the same of salt, one tablespoonful of cinnamon, one of allspice, one of nutmeg, and one of cloves. Boil all well together and seal while hot. This is superior to tomato catsup.”

Source: Mrs. Charles H. Gibson’s Maryland And Virginia Cookbook

Brandied Peaches

September 14, 2016January 13, 2019

“Now is the dyspeptic’s time to live well. If a great sufferer let him eat only fruit for breakfast, and peaches with their jackets on. The peach-skin has some quality that is highly useful, in acrid dyspepsia especially… We underrate the nutriment conveyed in fruit… This country is the Paradise for all such sufferers. Nothing strikes a returning traveler from Europe more forcibly than the bounty of our September tables; the affluence of vegetables, the heaped variety of our fruits, the cheapness of both.” – Baltimore Sun, 1883

At the risk of this blog being a little peach-centric (with more to come!), I picked up a big basket of peaches at the Waverly farmer’s market last weekend.

Even with many of us sighing gratefully as the summer heat wanes, it’s hard to resist the temptation to bottle up some souvenirs. Peaches have been a cherished summer fruit since the earliest days of European settlement on North America. Although the fruit originally hails from Asia, peaches had been introduced to the continent by the Spanish and took to the wild so well that later Europeans assumed they were native.

By the 1700’s, most large homes had peach and apple orchards. Farm hogs often grazed the orchards, consuming excess fruit and insects. The wood provided useful fuel.

According to “Gardens and Gardening in the Chesapeake“ by Barbara Wells Sarudy: “Colonial secretary William Eddis, writing home to England on September 7, 1772, related that throughout the whole province of Maryland fruit was not only bountiful but excellent in taste… Eddis reported that Maryland peach trees produced fruit of an exquisite flavor.”

The Cultivation of the Peach and the Pear, on the Delaware and Chesapeake Peninsula

Every one of my old Maryland cookbooks contains at least one formula for brandying peaches; most 19th century sources have two. There is not much variation in the recipes. Many require the use of lye to peel the peaches. I opted for the old-fashioned (new-fangled?) blanching method. Typically, no spices are added, with the exception of Elizabeth Bond of Charles County who throws in “a few cloves, mace and allspice”.

An 1886 book on peach and pear cultivation named 52 varieties suited to the Delmarva peninsula. “Queen of the Kitchen” Miss M.L. Tyson and Mrs. B.C. Howard both strongly recommend Heath peaches.

In 1872, J.W. Fitz described Heath peaches in “The Southern Apple and Peach Culturist” as “the most superb and delicious of all late Cling-stones… produced in Maryland from a stone brought by Mr. Daniel Heath from the Mediterranean.“

I do not know what kind of peaches I got at the market. They are obviously not Heath as they are free-stone. A 1961 survey by the Maryland State Board of Agriculture gives a view into the type of peaches we are likely to see on the market today, ‘Elberta’ by far the most popular in all regions of the state, with ‘Sunhigh’ tailing behind. Our famous Heath peaches are nowhere to be found on the list.

Brandied Peaches for sale in an early 1900′s newspaper ad

I chose trusty old Calvados (apple brandy) for my peaches. Brandy that was itself made from peaches had been very popular in colonial times, but regional production of peach brandy was on the decline by the late 19th century, when most of my recipes are from.

Peach brandy does figure into some old eggnog and toddy recipes found in “Forgotten Maryland Cocktails.” The liquid from these canned peaches might make a good substitute in some drinks – omitting some of the sugar that would otherwise be added. But beware, and proceed with caution:

”A good article of brandy which has its own peculiar properties is made from the peach. Now while any brandy in large quantities is bad for a person peach brandy is said on account of the prussic acid it contains to be a very dangerous tipple if indulged in freely. Formerly a considerable quantity was manufactured on the [Delmarva] peninsula but the stringent excise laws of recent years have caused most persons to abandon its manufacture… I advise mortal man to be chary of this beverage. One indulgence is said to make one feel good. The second makes one feel better and the third makes him feel as though he owned the whole Delaware and Chesapeake Peninsula. But the next day -the awaking- ah, the awaking, surely instead of owning the whole Delaware and Chesapeake Peninsula he finds his possessions… (except his head) shrunken to a size Liliput might spurn.” The Cultivation of the Peach and the Pear, on the Delaware and Chesapeake Peninsula, John J. Black 1886

(Strawberry) Extract for Ice Cream

July 8, 2016May 31, 2019

While vacationing in 2015, on a day drive down the Delmarva peninsula, we found ourselves in the relatively sparse landscape of Bloxom, VA. We spotted a striped truck off of Route 13 with stenciled letters announcing “Mi Pequeña Taqueria” and pulled over into the scorching parking lot where this taco truck stood. We enjoyed classic tacos filled with meltingly tender tongue or smoky pork prepared ‘al pastor’, and topped with a modest sprinkling of diced tomato and onions. Optional hot sauce waited at the picnic table. This taco truck and the syndicated Spanish-language radio station we listened to were the only indications of another side of the Eastern Shore.

Every summer, droves of people pass to and from the beaches and beach towns, crowding into the narrow slices of paradise in an attempt to squeeze the most joy out of summer vacation days. Off of the back roads is a hidden workforce for whom summer means the opposite of vacation. Summer means crops to be harvested, one after another: strawberries, beans, tomatoes, fruit – first down South and then further North as the climate ripens crop after crop.

Aubrey Bodine, “Strawberry Picking” Marion Station 1953 (preservationmaryland.org)

As I did research on Strawberries for this post and the previous strawberry post, I was struck by the transience, the true impermanence of this workforce. Whereas immigrant groups have been known to come for the labor, weaving new traditions into local culture, and some people settling down to become a permanent part of it, farm labor is so seasonal and isolated that some of us may hardly know that thousands of people are living nearby.

In our region, it seems pretty glaring that the economic predecessor to this work force was slavery.

After emancipation, the system of labor migration fell into place. In some instances, employers were even caught re-enslaving their “employees.” Involuntary servitude cases occur to this day.

An 1891 Baltimore Sun article described the life of strawberry pickers living in the “farm barracks”:

“About ten thousand men, women and children, armed with cooking utensils and bed clothing, have just invaded Anne Arundel county. Here they will remain until the last vestige of the season’s crop of berries, peas and beans have disappeared… The strawberry pickers are recruited from the neighborhoods about the packing-houses in Baltimore, and they are of almost every nationality. Bohemians, Poles and Germans predominate, with a fair sprinkling of Americans, Italians and colored people.

The barracks where the pickers live while on the farms vary according to the means of the farmer and the size of the patch… often they are simply old tenant houses… The life is as near gypsy-like as anything can be. The first thing done is to build a fireplace of mud in the open air, which is used in common by all the pickers.” – Army of Harvesters, The Sun May 27, 1891

Despite describing the sparse sleeping quarters where workers “sleep close” sometimes even sleeping outside, plus the long hours, and the watchful eyes of the “row boss” ensuring they don’t “eat as many berries as they pick,” the article depicts the situation as a fun “summer vacation” for the workers.

In 1900 the Sun reported that hundreds of African-Americans from the Eastern shore flocked to the strawberry-picking jobs in Anne Arundel County and then in Delaware. This was the height of the strawberry boom and there were not enough laborers to go around.

The labor shortage didn’t last long, however, and job competition may have fueled a spate of terrorism in 1937, as black laborers’ cabins in Somerset County were mysteriously burned to the ground. Several people were killed, and although a coroner’s jury ruled the fires an accident, the State’s Attorney was on record suspecting foul play. The Sun pointed out that even accidental fires should have merited scrutiny of the housing conditions.

Shortly after, an ample labor source came from WWII “prisoners of war.” A few of the camps were later used to house migrant workers.

The state created a commission to tackle the issues of housing and healthcare for the large force of migrant workers in Maryland. Their reports offer at least some insight into the demographics of workers and their lives in labor camps.

Abandoned Migrant Camp, Bishopville MD, Lee Cannon

The commission reported in 1983 that of the 57 licensed migrant camps in Maryland “more than a third experienced major deficiencies in meeting established health and safety standards.” Westover was a particularly infamous large camp in Somerset County:

“The Westover Camp, once a World War II holding pen for German prisoners, has acquired such notoriety that migrants from as far away as Texas refuse to stay there… Families live in single-room units without running water. Most units have refrigerators and small gas plates for cooking; sometimes doors, sometimes not. Latrines offer stools without stalls, gang showers with no privacy… ditches filled with stagnant water and.. gaping bins of garbage…” – Migrant Workers on Maryland’s Eastern Shore (1983)

In 2014, public health official Thurka Sangaramoorthy reported on her blog that she was “astonished” at the camp’s cleanliness and upkeep, considering its past reputation.

Sangaramoorthy’s website offers a more recent look into the humanitarian issues that still exist in some of Maryland’s labor camps.

While the workforce is now comprised largely of people of Mexican origin, there have been varying percentages of African-American, Haitian, Guatemalan, and Puerto Rican people making up significant numbers of workers over the years. Workers keep to each-other and their families, and travel too frequently to leave many obvious signs of influence on local culture. Aside from the occasional taco truck spotting, many Marylanders have no awareness about this aspect of our economy. And yet most of us partake in it- at the grocery store, the produce stand, and yes, when we eat those ‘fancy’ tacos on the way home from the beach.

Recipe:

1 Pint sharp vinegar
5 Quart strawberry
1 Lb brown sugar

“1 pint sharp vinegar poured on 1 quart of strawberries, to remain 24 hours. Then strain it on a second quart of fruit, and so on until you get the extract from 5 quarts of strawberries; add to it, 1 pound of brown sugar. Then boil and keep skimmed; then let it cool before bottling it. Cork it tightly and keep it in a cool place.Extract of raspberries may be made in the same way.”

Recipe from “The Queen of the Kitchen: a collection of “old Maryland” family receipts for cooking” by M. L Tyson