The Baltimore Sun advertised in April of 1909 that they would be running two features in their Sunday editions, with soup recipes from M. Henri Casalegno, a former chef at the Maryland Club. That credential was apt to make Baltimore housewives pay attention. H.L. Mencken certainly knew that when he gave the chef the freelance writing assignments. Mencken later recalled that the Italian-born chef’s articles were “done in very fair English.”
Caselagno did not apparently hold the “housewife cook” in high regard. “The failures of the housewife cook are often due to her failure properly to season the food she cooks,” he wrote. To be fair to Casalegno, a preachy condescending tone was the norm for cookery advice of the day. Casalegno may simply have been embellishing his prowess by emulating others. It wouldn’t be the last time he did so.
Caselagno had been working as a chef in hotel kitchens since his arrival in the U.S. in 1904. In his first stateside position at the Hotel Renssalaer in Troy New York, he’d had a quarrel with another chef, Paul Lescaux. The altercation resulted in Lescaux’s death. According to Caselagno, Lescaux had lunged at him, landing with a knife in the heart. Caselagno served four years in prison for this “accident,” before finding his way into the Maryland Club and the Baltimore Sun columns.
What came after is somehow even more bizarre.
from the Baltimore Sun, 1909