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Sources: Mary Randolph

November 25, 2015January 17, 2021

Mary Randolph, Library of Virginia

Interest in culinary history tends to enjoy a boost around this time of year. Some excellent pieces have been written illuminating the historical foods consumed on Thanksgiving. As though our own traditions are not authentic or traditional enough, many of us feel compelled to dig into the origins of the very day that defines the word ‘tradition’ in the United States.

I admit to being less concerned with what the Pilgrims ate than I am with the foods found on Maryland tables for the holiday.

While there is some overlap, Marylanders and many Southerners especially may find that many of our Thanksgiving favorites made their way to the table through the same thorny and winding path as the other foods we know well.

One source that I cross-reference for this website is not a Maryland cookbook at all. Nonetheless, Mary Randolph’s 1824 book “The Virginia Housewife” is a crucial text whether you want to dissect the lineage of your “candied yams” or the so-called “Maryland Beaten Biscuits.”

Interpreter Pam Williams working from “The Virginia Housewife” at the Hays House, Bel Air

Mary Randolph was born in 1762, near Richmond, to a prominent Virginia family. In 1780 she married a cousin, David Meade Randolph. Mary Randolph was well-respected as the lady of their estate “Moldovia” and its slaves and servants.

It is claimed that Mary Randolph’s hostessing was so widely famous that Gabriel [no last name], an enslaved man who led an unsuccessful rebellion of slaves in the Richmond area, would spare her life to cook for him though he hoped to kill other slaveholders. This story is dubious as it is likely that a man fighting for the freedom of enslaved Virginians would be aware of who did the heavy lifting in the kitchen at Moldovia.

The Randolphs and their Federalist ties became their undoing when Thomas Jefferson removed his cousin David Meade Randolph from the position of Federal Marshal in 1802. Evidently the extravagant hospitality left little room for savings and the family’s finances soon went into decline. Mary’s enterprising solution was to open a boarding house in Richmond in 1808. For the next ten years, the venture expanded Mary Randolph’s fame as a hostess and cook.
The cookbook (containing many other household hints) came out in 1824, with a stated purpose that is fairly typical of old cookbooks: the altruistic intention of the book was to educate young housewives.

Advertisement in the Frederick Town Herald, 1832

New editions of the book continued to be printed for decades after. Mary Randolph died in 1828 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

It is said that the book’s significance lies in its snapshot of the birth of true American cooking. While Amelia Simmons’ 1796 book “American Cookery” is considered the first American cookbook, Randolph did more than just incorporate some American ingredients to British recipes. Randolph’s book does not simply “make do” with the ingredients available to cooks in the young country – it celebrates them. “The Virginia Housewife” can be surprising in its adventurism, from Gazpacho to the loads of garlic found in some recipes. That spirit lays at the foundation of Southern cuisine.

This is why I have no intention of recreating humble, modestly seasoned dishes for Thanksgiving. Making the most of what we have in this day and age is not a necessity as it was to Simmons, it is a joy, as it was to Randolph, and to Jane Gilmor Howard after her. It IS the tradition that we carry on during the holidays and beyond.

My favorite passage from “The Virginia Housewife” demonstrates the meticulousness Mary Randolph was known for

Southern Heritage Cookbook Library

Sources: “Maryland’s Way”

July 20, 2015January 17, 2021

Note: there is some further important background on this book found in this post.

A lot of my recent recipes have come from “Maryland’s Way”, the Hammond-Harwood House cookbook, and that is because I am having a bit of a rekindled romance with this book.

When I originally started an “Old Line Plate” blog in 2010 this was my main recipe source. In the years since I’ve come across so many great Maryland cookbooks such as “Eat, Drink & Be Merry in Maryland” and “Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen” as well as less sweeping books presented by everyone from small churches to local television chefs to the Baltimore Gas & Electric Company. I guess after spending some time with these other books I have come to have a greater understanding of what a treasure “Maryland’s Way” truly is.

Inside cover, “Maryland’s Way”

“Treasure” is the first word that comes to my own mind but an article written by the former director of the Hammond-Harwood House, Carter Lively* refers to it as a “masterpiece” which is every bit as fitting.

On first glance you might assume this cookbook is similar to a church fundraising cookbook with recipe contributions contributed by members. But then the attributions reveal something more: Baked Seafood in Shells.. Mrs. William W. Paca; Mrs. Virgil Maxcy’s Fried Chickens.. original receipt 1815; Chestnut Stuffing.. Mrs. Dorsey’s receipt 1855; Charles, Talbot, Annapolis, Chestertown, Wye River..

“Maryland’s Way” is no ordinary community cookbook. It is a collection of historical documents, compiled in a gargantuan effort and preserved for posterity.

“Mrs. Hope Andrews of Tulip Hill, who was serving as the President of the Hammond-Harwood House Association, and her close friend and fellow trustee Mrs. Frances Kelly decided they needed to raise funds for the Hammond-Harwood House museum by producing and selling a cookbook which would incorporate the culinary traditions of Maryland’s historic past.

They started testing recipes and reading old manuscripts in 1958 and after five years of hard work they produced a masterpiece of 372 pages filled with classic photographs by Aubrey Bodine and Marion Warren and over 700 traditional recipes springing from historic 18th and 19th-century Maryland cook’s notes, diaries, and recipe books.” – A Historic Cookbook, Carter Lively, 2013

For a mid-century cookbook, it’s quite ahead of its time. I have not really done any digging into the food histories in other states but one wonders if they should all be so lucky.

Just in case I haven’t done enough gushing over the book, another thing about it is striking to me. For a fund-raising cookbook from the 1960s, “Maryland’s Way” is beautifully designed. If it weren’t for the yellowed pages on my copy, it would be hard to estimate a publication date. For a benefit cookbook, the illustrations, photo usage and layout are strikingly cohesive and thoughtful.

“Maryland’s Way” was published to raise funds for the Hammond-Harwood House, but it actually made me aware of the house’s very existence. This 1774 architect’s delight is full of paintings by Charles Wilson Peale, host to a unique variety of interactive educational events, as well as the usual tours of the house itself. Since it is right downtown in Annapolis it makes for a nice day-trip, perhaps alongside a stop in the nearby Paca House, and if you’re like me… a look at the place where William Faris’ garden once stood.

Sadly I can’t make it to Annapolis more often. However, my copy of “Maryland’s Way” is never very far from my reach when I feel the urge to browse some more Maryland history.

*A big thanks to Rachel Lovett, Assistant Director & Curator at the
Hammond-Harwood house for furnishing me with this document

Sources: “Gardens and Gardening in the Chesapeake, 1700-1805″

May 15, 2015January 17, 2021

It’s the time of year for Maryland cooks and gardeners to feel excitement for all of the seasonal thrills to come.

The curtains part with asparagus and it all builds up to a kingly feast of tomatoes and more tomatoes and some watermelon and then it’s back to the sedate old winter crops and canned things.

I found the book “Gardens and Gardening in the Chesapeake” a few years back, while browsing the excellent collection of Marylandia offered by Johns Hopkins University Press. I knew it would be a good source of information for my food database, but it delighted me overall in general with information and background on pleasure gardens as well.

The book was my introduction to Annapolis Citizen William Faris who kept a diary of life and garden between 1792 and 1804.

Faris was an urban gardener who grew some of his food, cultivated flowers, “with thinning hair pulled back into a queue and covered with a familiar frayed hat, who gossiped too much and drank gin too freely.” Sounds alright, maybe.

Barbara Wells Sarudy paints a lovable picture of him and selects relatable garden observations from his life, as well as essential information to understand the food system of a man of his (middle) class in his time.

The garden illustrations from Warner & Hanna’s Plan of Baltimore from 1801 show a faint idea of what was growing underneath the places I frequent today.

Warner & Hanna’s Plan of the City and Environs of Baltimore

Most importantly to this blog I get a look at what was grown in Maryland during that time period, what was popular and beloved, and how our ways of growing and eating these things was viewed by visitors from Europe.

Carrot and Strawberry illustrations Bernard M’Mahon, The American Grdener’s Calendar 1806, from Gardens & Gardening in the Chesapeake

This book provided me with a few of my favorite anecdotes about food and gardening, such as the “passion for peas” that swept the French royal court.

“The subject of peas continues to absorb all others. The anxiety to eat them, the pleasures of having eaten them and the desire to eat them again are the three great matters which have been discussed b our princes for four days past. Some ladies even after having supped at the Royal table and well supped too returning to their homes at the risk of suffering from indigestion will again eat Peas before going to bed. It is both a fashion and a madness ” – Madame de Maintenon

There’s also the story of the cocky runaway convict gardener and his fraudulent treatise on pineapples… more on that when I cook something with pineapples in it.

Author Barbara Wells Sarudy now has a nice art history blog featuring frequent tie-ins to historic gardening.

William Faris’ complete diary is also available from Hopkins Press.

Sources: Community Cookbooks

April 9, 2015June 28, 2023

Community cookbooks are a mixed blessing for me.
On one hand they’re such a fantastic window into the kitchens of the more middle-class citizens as opposed to the fabulous lifestyles of “Eat, Drink & Be Merry in Maryland” or “Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen.”

Flipping through the pages you can see changing trends, adventurous cooking and old family recipes, and pride and love expressed in (mostly) housewives feeding their family and friends.

The Park School Cook Book (1964), Art Work Miss Grace Van Order

Loyola Recipes(1974), sketches by Eileen F. Bolgiano

On the other hand there are HUNDREDS and HUNDREDS of these books, churches and schools making slight updates, revising year after year and it’s a bit hard to keep up with or to fit into bookshelf and budget.

According to “Food & Wine”:

The first community cookbook was published during the Civil War. Yankee women determined to raise money for field hospitals organized themselves into what they called “Sanitation Commissions” and devised a way to make their domestic skills marketable: At a fair held in Philadelphia in 1864, they offered their own recipes under the title A Poetical Cook-Book…

After the war, women’s clubs organized cookbook projects to benefit widows, veterans and orphans. By 1915, as many as 6,000 community cookbooks had been published in the United States, and women were raising money to fund kindergartens and promote temperance and other political causes.

Magician in the Kitchen(1980), Federated Garden Clubs of Maryland. drawing: Mrs. David MacTaggart, Jr., Gibson Island

One of the oldest Maryland community cookbooks available on Google Books is “Tested Maryland Recipes,” compiled and published by the Ladies of the Presbyterian Church, Chesapeake City Maryland, that book contains assorted classics of Maryland cooking such as white potato pie as well as household advice such as tips “to keep ice.”

Tested Maryland Recipes

Queen Anne Goes to the Kitchen is perhaps one of the more famous of Maryland Community Cookbooks. It was first published in 1962 by The Episcopal Church Women of St. Paul’s Parish in Queen Anne’s County. That book bears many Maryland ancestral names and an assortment of contemporary and family recipes as well as some nice illustrations.

Queen Anne Goes to the Kitchen, Artwork: Stephanie Thompson, Sally Clark, Hallie Rugg

However, it takes an assortment of these types of cookbooks to compile a reasonable cross-section of Maryland food. In some school cookbooks we might find a more diverse array of names suggesting the ongoing immigrant contribution to Maryland menus.

Magician in the Kitchen(1980), Federated Garden Clubs of Maryland, Recipe Sketch Mrs. William G. Hill, Jr., Garden Club of Frederick

For the time being, I try to draw the line at buying books published after 1990. It’s a pretty arbitrary rule although it is likely that the proliferation of food blogs, cooking websites, and the internet recipe commentariat have chipped away at the vitality of a community cookbook in a typical household in that span of time. Meanwhile, thousands of community cookbooks continue to float around indefinitely, finding their way into the hands of historians and fanatics.

Black-Eyed Susan Country(1987), Published by the Saint Agnes Hospital Auxiliary, art James E. Toher, M.D.

Mrs. Jas S Hopper (Ella Griffith), editor of “Tested Maryland Recipes, Bethel Cemetry, Chesapeake City (findagrave.com)

Fricassee of Rabbit, Mrs. B.C. Howard

April 6, 2015January 13, 2019

“Fricassee or fricassée /ˈ f r ɪ k ə s iː /^[1] is a method of cooking meat in which it is cut up, sautéed and braised, and served with its sauce, traditionally a white sauce.” (Wikipedia)

In the recipe for Pizza Chicken I introduced burgersub’s chicken allergy. This allergy also includes turkey and other fowl. As a result of it, rabbit has become the other white meat of our household.

If, like us, you insist upon eating meat, rabbit is a somewhat more sustainable option than the alternatives. And if, unlike us, you care about fats or health or whatever, rabbit is so low in fat that one could die from eating it.
I wouldn’t say I’m an expert exactly. Lexington Market has several stands that sell rabbit but they all peddle the same frozen rabbits, probably from the same source, all at the same cost.

They get the job done.

By far, my preferred treatment of rabbit is to put it in the slow-cooker, whole, with some oil, seasonings and liquid and let it go for several hours.
The result is that the meat comes right off the bone. When dealing with rabbit, this advantage can not be overstated.

In fact, if I were to make this fricassee again, I would probably complete the whole first step in the slow cooker. Perhaps use stock instead of dealing with the onion and parsley. Also I would not cut the bacon into tiny bits that are impossible to deal with.

This fricassee recipe came from “Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen” by Mrs. Benjamin Chew Howard, aka Jane Gilmor.

Here in Baltimore, the name speaks for itself.

Jane Grant Gilmor Howard by Thomas Sully

This popular classic Maryland cookbook was printed and reprinted over the years, with a revised “for modern times” edition coming out some time in the 1940s. THAT version was reprinted by Dover in the 1980s. However, I hardly need editor Florence Brobeck telling ME to cut back on butter. Plus that edition leaves out crucial recipes such as instructions to heal a “drooping canary” and “how to clean polished Mahogany”. Mrs. Howard was a regular Heloise.

1913 Edition of Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen

Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen is sure to make regular appearances on this website. Call me up if you need help with a drooping canary.

Recipe:

1 young rabbit
1 onion cut in two slices
2 cloves
a little mace
parsley
.25 Lb streaked bacon, cut into dice
water
20 button onions
2 oz butter
1 Tablespoon flour

Cut a young rabbit into neat joints and lay it in lukewarm water to draw put the blood then drain it and put it into a stew pan with a large onion cut into slices two cloves a little mace parsley and a quarter of a pound of streaked bacon cut into dice. Cover all with water and let it simmer twenty minutes keeping it well skimmed. Then pass the stock through a sieve into a dish and take out the pieces of rabbit and bacon. In another stew pan have ready two ounces of butter mixed with a good table spoonful of flour moisten with the stock and stir over the fire until boiling. Then trim the rabbit nicely and put it with the bacon and twenty button onions into the sauce and let it simmer until the onions are tender. Skim off all the fat. Then pour in a gill of cream into which the yolks of two eggs have been mixed. Leave it on the fire until it thickens but do not let it boil Take out the rabbit arrange it nicely on a dish pour the sauce over it and serve