Definition of olio 2a: a miscellaneous mixture : HODGEPODGE — Merriam-Webster
It didn’t take too many years of research for me to come to the disappointing realization that a lot of the romantic notions I’d held about recipes were simply not true. “Recipes” are not exact formulas. They can never really live up to the promise of conjuring up an exact place or time. Authenticity is a nebulous and possibly meaningless concept. Few recipes are truly as regional as we’d like to believe. Even fewer recipes were “invented” by any one cook or chef in some inspired moment.
Take the iconic crab cake: the ultimate ‘Maryland’ food. When I search for crab cakes in pre-1900s newspapers I find menu listings and recipes from Pennsylvania, California, New York, Texas, Kentucky… and more.
Other favorite recipes originated as corporate promotions, taking on a life of their own in the hands of home cooks until their unexciting origins become obscured.
I’ve come to accept all of this and I’ve largely dispensed with hierarchies of recipe value and validity.
Having said all that, how do I feel when I find a unique recipe, so unmistakably Maryland, created by a cook and spread organically by word of mouth? Pretty intrigued.
“If the Tomato be as highly medicinal as it has been represented, it may be anticipated that this wine will find favor with the public.” – Milwaukee Sentinal, June 1840
Interspersed with the shrubs, the cherry bounce, eggnog and Fish House Punch in 19th-century Maryland cookbooks are some of the most intriguing and intimidating recipes: for wines and beers.
Brewing was a part of everyday household management, hardly considered any more frivolous than bread. (And the two processes were often intertwined.)
Beer appeared in the first American cookbook, “American Cookery”, by Amelia Simmons in 1796. Cider was fairly easy to make from fruits like apples and pears. Wine was a little more complicated.
European grapes didn’t always fare so well in America, and the native ones didn’t always make wine that was considered palatable. (Don’t worry – we’ll revisit that topic later this summer…)
In an 1790, the Maryland Gazette reported that a New Jersey man, Joseph Cooper, Esq., could make the elusive “excellent American wine” from honey and cider. Cooper believed that “by using the clean honey instead of the comb… such an improvement might be made as would enable the citizens of the United States to supply themselves with a truly federal and wholesome wine.”
It was the increased availability of sugar in the 1800′s that really fueled a century of creative wine brewing.
According to Waverley Root and Richard De Rochemont in “Eating in America,” “every housewife knew how to make ‘weed wines’ fermented from “any product of field or garden” – dandelion, elderflower, spinach, tomato, mint, “and of course berries.”
“Early American Beverages,” by John Hull Brown reprinted recipes for a staggering variety of wines that could be found in 19th-century America, including apricot, birch, egg, ginger, lemon, sage, turnip and walnut leaf.
Tomatoes were really taking off in popularity around this time. Whether or not colonists or Europeans had previously suspected tomatoes of being poisonous, in the early 1800′s, the opposite was true.
The idea of tomatoes being a panacea is attributed to a Dr. John Cook Bennett, who publicized tomatoes as a cure for dyspepsia, Cholera, and liver problems among other things. Bennett promoted recipes for tomato pickles, sauces, and ketchup. Manufacturers of cure-all pills and tonics capitalized on the craze by peddling tomato extract pills (which may or may not have contained any trace of tomatoes.)
Newspaper advertisements in the 1830s and 1840s offered a variety of brands of tomato pills guaranteed to cure “all diseases of the blood.”
Tomato wine experienced a surge in popularity in tandem with this. The recipe was popularized in the widely circulated “Dr. Chase’s Recipes” publication alongside fruit wines, remedies, animal husbandry and other information. Tomato wine appeared in regional newspapers as well – including the Baltimore Sun in 1856. Some recipes promised to “retain the well-known properties of the fruit.” Others claimed the resulting drink resembled Champagne or Madeira.
In 1865, “The American Agriculturalist” had had enough. In a scathing and humorous editorial, they praised the tomato as food while dismissing the medicinal claims:
“The following precious nonsense is going the rounds of the agricultural and other papers: ’ A good medical authority ascribes to the tomato… important medical qualifications… the tomato is one of the most powerful aperients of the liver and other organs… it is one of the most effective and the least harmful medical agents known… a chemical extract will be obtained from it that will supersede the use of calomel in the cure of diseases”…
This we regard as.. a libel upon our good friend the tomato. No ‘good medical authority’ ever wrote himself down such a stupid as to accuse the tomato-vine of being an apothecary’s shop… Just think of what a condition our livers must be in at the close of tomato season, after being so powerfully ‘aperiented’ to say nothing of the ‘other organs.’ The whole thing savors of the most arrogant quackery.
The tomato extract dodge was tried years ago, and we had “Tomato pills, will cure all ills,” as the quack epidemic for its day. Let no lover of the delicious tomato be deterred from enjoying it for fear of taking anything bearing the slightest resemblance to calomel or any other medicine, but eat as many as he likes without thinking of his liver or the doctor.“ – The American Agriculturist, Volume 24, 1865
In the chapter of “Southern Provisions” about sugar, David Shields discussed the historic variety of American wines. “Since the 1930′s, the superiority of wine made from Vitis Vinifera grapes has been maintained so insistently in culinary circles that the splendors of tomato wine, rhubarb wine, and strawberry wine have been discounted.”
It is true that when word got out about my tomato winemaking venture to friends-of-friends in Napa, eyebrows were raised. I think it’s a little unfair to hold this endeavor as a litmus test to whether tomato wine is worthy of revival. My brewing experience before this was limited to ginger ale, after all.
Furthermore, I’m not the biggest fan of white wine – which is tomato wine’s closest comparison point. I drank a glass and enjoyed it as much as any other white wine. Then I promptly introduced the vinegar mother.
In addition to the lost wines, Shields lamented “we have lost not only the beverages, but a world of early pickles that employed vinegar made from fruit and berry wines.” So it’s not all a lost cause.
There is some tomato wine available on the market today. For that matter, there are tomato pills available on the market today. If you have cholera or liver problems, you should probably just stick to water.
This is another entry laden with tedious detective work, my unrestrained fanaticism ruining any possibility of ever attracting repeat readers.
I’ll try to keep it brief.
According to “The American Magazine and Historical Chronicle“, 1987, “famed Baltimore hostess, Mrs. B.C. Howard, compiled the earliest charity cookbook published in Maryland, Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen’(Baltimore, 1873).” Certainly, “50 years” is one of the more famous and important of Maryland cookbooks.
A few months ago, in my quest to print-on-demand every Maryland cookbook in the public domain, I found a lesser-known Maryland cookbook entitled “Queen of the Kitchen,” written by a mysterious “Miss Tyson” or “M. L. Tyson” in 1870. The name of course resonated but Tyson is no Paca, Howard or even Pratt – not as unquestionably Maryland upper-crust.
“Queen of the Kitchen” certainly disseminated around Maryland. Some of the recipes in “Maryland’s Way” came from different Marylanders’ personal copies of the book.
When I began to enter the recipes into my database I noticed something – many of the recipes were strikingly similar to recipes in “Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen.” Copying recipes into new cookbooks hardly qualified as plagiarism at the time. It was rampant. Still, it is pretty interesting to see the source of so many recipes from Mrs. B.C. Howard’s book!
Howard may have owned a copy of the book, or she may have known Tyson and they both sourced the recipes from common friends or from each-other.
So… who was M. L. Tyson?
Apparently “Queen of the Kitchen” was a cookbook by a Baltimore woman, published to raise money to build an Episcopal church in Oakland Maryland. Kind of random but… ok.
By researching the church I was able to determine that M.L. Tyson was Mary Lloyd Tyson, born in 1843. And she was indeed Maryland upper-crust. Mary Tyson’s mother was none other than Rebecca Ann Key, cousin of Francis Scott Key. Her father, physician and planner Alexander H. Tyson was Rebecca’s second husband. According to accounts, Rebecca Ann Key was a stunning woman.
“What was she, you will ask—she was no Queen or Goddess—she represented
no character in Shakespeare—neither was she attired in any costume as a
princess—she was herself only and as herself dressed in some white
material familiar to you ladies, but unknown to me. She paraded through
those rooms—crowded with all the beauty of this city of beauties—the
acknowledged Queen of the Night—not that she received more attention,
but she elicited the most admiration.” – “Some Account of Mr. and Mrs. Cohen’s Fancy Ball,” MDHS Underbelly blog
It’s agonized me that I could not find her portrait.
Dr. William Howard’s home, Charles and Franklin Street, (loc.gov)
So anyway, Rebecca’s FIRST husband was William Howard. William was Benjamin Howard’s brother. Basically, Mrs. B.C. Howard and M.L. Tyson were related, and certainly knew one-another.
What’s more, Mary Tyson’s half brother, William Key Howard, married a woman named Clara Haxall Randolph in 1860. Clara was Mary Randolph’s niece. How about that!
There’s a few other asides. Pretty much all of the people involved were Confederate sympathizers – William Key served in the war. Here is his picture:
Mary’s younger sister Nannie married an actor named Robert Lee Keeling. He was twenty years younger than her. Future mayor James H. Preston (I made his corn pone) was an usher at their wedding. The marriage quickly soured. Robert Lee Keeling went on to become a celebrated painter of miniature portraits.
When “Queen of the Kitchen” was published, Mary Lloyd Tyson was a single woman of 27. She was likely not the female head of her household as her mother was still alive. (As opposed to Mrs. B.C. Howard who was 72 when her book was published.)
I think the Tyson’s lived here, on the 500 block of Park Avenue (loc.gov)
Mary Tyson became Mrs. George Tucker in 1875. The Tuckers resided in Virginia. Both Rebecca Ann Key and Mary’s sister Nannie spent their final days there, and Mary herself passed away in 1908.
I made Tyson’s macaroons – what would today be called ‘macarons’. This is not one of the recipes that Howard reprinted, although she did use a second macaroon recipe, with slight adjustments. The Tysons lived in Baltimore city, not far from Belvidere at all. Especially considering that M.L. Tyson was not the head of her household at the time of the books publication, the families might have shared receipts.
I don’t have a good way to finish this post but if you’ve made it this far, what does it matter? These cookies were delicious for the record.
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.
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.
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
Nearly all of my old Maryland cook-books contain a few pages of ice cream recipes. It was an integral ‘domestic receipt’ by the time Elizabeth Ellicott Lea published the first Maryland cookbook in 1845. Her book contains a characteristically austere four recipes- less than half as many as later authors M.L. Tyson of “Queen of the Kitchen” and Mrs. B. C. Howard in “Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen.”
Although it’s been around since colonial times, ice cream experienced a surge in popularity in the 1800′s with the advent of ice-houses and the increased transport of ice.
This popularity continued to grow despite the rather disturbing frequency with which people died from eating it.
Newspapers regularly reported incidents of people – even large groups of people – getting sick or dying from ice cream tainted with “Ptomaines” – essentially a catch-all theory behind food poisoning.
“The average man wants to know whether his food has these things in it, and what antidote he can take if he finds himself poisoned. On these subjects science has little to say. It is established that the poisonous portion of any particular sample of food cannot be distinguished either chemically or microscopically.” – Baltimore Sun, “IN AWE OF PTOMAINES: Scientists Baffled By The Insidious Poison Which Killed Anton Seidl And Others” 1898
The frequency of food poisoning may explain why there were various crackpot beliefs about foods that should not be consumed with ice cream. Later press releases would occasionally assure readers that, as it turns out, it actually was safe to eat ice cream after eating things such as lobster and oysters.
1934
110 years before this exciting news, Mary Randolph had included, amongst her dozen-plus ice-cream recipes in “The Virginia Housewife,” a most revolting-sounding oyster flavor. (I suppose I should mention, if you’ve come across the misinformation that Randolph’s relative Thomas Jefferson introduced ice cream to America, that is incorrect. Read about it here.)
I’ve made custard-based ice creams so many times (my go-to is Ina Garten’s Creme Anglaise) that I kind of forgot there was an alternative. Imagine my surprise when this recipe, taken from the 1874 book “The Queen of the Kitchen: A Collection of ‘old Maryland’ Family Receipts,” was just a matter of combining four ingredients and freezing. Laziest OLP post ever.
1899, Baltimore Sun
One might be inclined to hand-wring over the raw egg-whites. They could maybe be left out. I took my chances, especially since I had some farmers-market eggs.
When we feel compelled to romanticize the past, it is worth remembering that the degree of food safety we now enjoy could not always be taken for granted. We also have the luxury of knowing that it is safe to eat oysters and ice cream together, and the wisdom not to.
Recipe:
2 quarts of rich cream, 1 pound of white sugar, whites of 4 eggs well beaten, and added. Flavor to taste, and freeze. If preferred, leave out the eggs.
Recipe from “The Queen of the Kitchen: A Collection of “old Maryland” Family Receipts for Cooking : Containing 1007 Practical and Useful Receipts, All of which Have Been Tried and Approved, and Been in Use for Many Years”
