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…
The 1958 “Historical Cookbook of the American Negro” proves that a cookbook can be an object of delight without being full of glossy photos of food. The recipes in the book, interspersed with history and reproduced ephemera, take on new significance, offered as tributes to historical figures or events. The cookbook’s editor, civil rights activist…
It’s pretty rare that I should have *too much information* about a person associated with a recipe. For years now I’ve sighed in frustration when all I can find on someone is a date of birth, a passing newspaper mention, a headstone. This week’s recipe comes from a woman who has been so scrutinized and…
Sometime in the early 1900s, Mabel Roberts took a vacation to the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. She returned with recipes from a memorable meal she had enjoyed: fried Sea Bass with Remoulade sauce. She jotted them down into her “Housekeeper’s Casket and Cook’s Delight,” a blank recipe notebook printed by the…
“Mr. W. B. Burke of this city has the reputation of preparing the very best spiced oysters which leave our market, and if all are like the can which he left with us on Tuesday, his reputation is well deserved. They are truly a delightful article… He will forward them according to order to any…