William Earl Travers was just one on a list of names printed in the Evening Sun on June 20, 1945. Two killed; 18 wounded; 2 missing.
21-year-old Travers was one of the two missing. Just two years earlier, the Wilmington Delaware News-Journal had reported on his engagement to Naomi Louise Roe. “The couple will live in Denton,” read the announcement.
“I felt I was fortunate to lose only one” son, Nellie Travers told the Eastern Star-Democrat in 1995. The lifelong farmer had sent four sons to World War II. While she was glad to have three of them return, the loss of William stayed with her through the years. And so, fifty years later, at age 93, Nellie Travers told the Star-Democrat she still felt the pain of William’s death. She also felt pride that her sons had served.
Occasionally someone will ask about weird foods I’ve tried in the name of history. Beef stuffed with oysters or anchovy may seem weird to some people. Perhaps peanut-pickle sandwich filling is a curiosity from another time.
Honestly, I tend to believe that the food we have access to now is weirder than anything found in history. For centuries, we more or less had a finite number of ingredients to combine in different ways, and then, suddenly: the wonders of chemistry.
My aunt gave me a late 1970′s community cookbook from Calvert County. The book features a stock cover I’ve seen on other cookbooks, with a cutesey illustration of a child and the title “Butter ‘n Love Recipes.” The cover and name are a little odd to me so it’s all the more confusing that this was not just a one off but a popular offering by the publishing company.
The Calvert County Mental Health Association gave their version of this book the subtitle “Mind Over Batter.” The cookbook committee’s stated purpose was to raise money for improved treatment and prevention of mental illness, awareness about the social stigma, and the general promotion of mental health.
I was surprised to find a page dedicated to Southern Maryland Stuffed Ham in a 1970′s cookbook, much less one from Calvert County. Also included are some other heritage recipes like a Michigan pasty, and Finnish Pannukakku.
“In a very real sense, ‘Maryland’s Way’ is Alice Brown’s Way.” – Tom Coakley, The Capital, Annapolis, 1975
Last month, I finished reading Michael Twitty’s book “The Cooking Gene,” and I was planning to write a whole post about it. I found myself basically at a loss to convey any meaningful context other than simply recommending the book itself. I have been referring to it as ‘part history, part memoir, and part philosophy’ – with a good amount of expository information about the actual nature of DNA tests and genealogy.
You may be familiar with Twitty’s work as a historian if you are a regular reader. When I plumb the 18th and 19th – and even the 20th century recipes – that lay the foundation of Maryland food, I’m constantly faced with the gaping holes in our documented food experience – where enslaved cooks, poor cooks, immigrant and working-class cooks had shaped our collective food history or carved out their own spaces in Maryland food. Sometimes it’s lost completely. Sometimes we are able to unearth faint traces of the lives and work of these cooks on census records, property records, and surviving narratives. Occasionally, as in St. Mary’s County, we are lucky enough to have situations where citizens and historians acted to preserve these stories for the future.
Ultimately it is important to remember that a lot of the recipes I cook and write about were written by wealthy white women who were nostalgic for slavery. Whether there is still value to be found in them is up for debate. I suppose that I must think there is, because I keep cooking them.
When I found out about Michael Twitty’s work many years ago I couldn’t believe how fortunate we could be in Maryland to have a steward seeking out and compiling the evidence of the origins of our foodways. When his ‘Open Letter to Paula Deen’ went viral in 2013, Michael Twitty began to take on a role beyond historian, as an arbiter of that history and modern American food culture, with its many questions and contradictions.
Thanks to Twitty’s long-awaited book, we have a bit of a rough outline to start the process of acknowledging the many enslaved cooks whose hands and traditions shaped the American food that is inseparable from “our” traditions as a whole in multicultural Maryland.
Tulip Hill, Maryland Historical Trust
The other day, I cooked up this fried eggplant from “Maryland’s Way,” figuring that I would find something to write about Tulip Hill, a historic plantation home in Galesville, Maryland. The house was built around 1755 by Samuel Galloway, a Maryland slave trader who owned several plantations and enslaved at least 87 people on those properties in addition to the “Men, Women, Boys and Girls” whom he sold into slavery.
“…The roots of American soul food began… among the tidal creeks, coastal plain and rolling Piedmont hills in the colonial Chesapeake region between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries… About 20,000 [enslaved Africans] would be brought to the Catholic colony of Maryland, predominantly from Senegal, Gambia, Ghana and Kongo.” – Michael Twitty, The Cooking Gene
In 1948, Tulip Hill was purchased by Hope Andrews and her husband Lewis. In the 1960s, Mrs. Andrews worked closely with Mrs. Frances Kelly to compile “Maryland’s Way,” perhaps the most beloved of Maryland cookbooks. In 2015, I praised Maryland’s Way as a “gargantuan effort” and quoted an article about the five years that the ladies spent testing over 700 recipes for the cookbook.
The credit for the recipe for “Eggplant Fried in Batter”, and three others in “Maryland’s Way,” reads “Tulip Hill, West River, ‘Alice’s Way.’”
This mononymous accreditation is common in historic recipes that have been appropriated from servants and slaves (when a credit is given at all). You wouldn’t know it from reading my blog, but I always make an attempt to tease out these ghosts from census records and any other source I can find. I usually come up empty-handed. This particular recipe, having been contributed by Mrs. Andrews herself, proved to be an exception.
According to an account of “Maryland’s Way” in “Outlook By the Bay”, Mrs. Kelly and Mrs. Andrews had assistance when they tested the many recipes included in the book:
“They compiled the recipes, but then needed to ensure that they were suitable for modern kitchens. Alice Brown, the cook at Tulip Hill, was tasked with testing them, and they found a willing taste-tester in Mrs. Andrews’ teenage nephew Harry Cannon. He vividly remembers Alice preparing all of the recipes as he eagerly watched, waiting to sample the results of her culinary endeavors. He still holds her partially responsible for his lifelong love of cooking and cookbook collecting.”
If this article is to be believed, Alice Brown tested and adjusted nearly all of the recipes in “Maryland’s Way.” These are Maryland recipes that have been duplicated in other books such as the Southern Heritage Cookbooks, reprinted in newspapers, and shared on the internet.
In 1975, the Capital in Annapolis ran a profile of Alice Brown. “We had to cut it all down to teaspoons and tablespoons from pounds,” Brown had said of the experience of interpreting the historic recipes. According to the Capital, Brown was the daughter of a tenant farmer from Lothian, Maryland. Although her mother hadn’t cooked for a living, she had “loved to prepare fine tasting dishes, and handed down that love to Alice,” who inherited her mother’s techniques and “a love of fresh farm foods.”
A photo accompanying the article shows a copy of the 19th century “Frugal Housekeeper’s Kitchen Companion”; a French cookbook; and a copy of “Aunt Priscilla in the Kitchen,” a compilation of the racist Baltimore Sun recipe columns of the same name.
Alice Brown in the Evening Capital, 1975. Hope Andrews bottom center.
The Capital mentions Alice’s husband’s name as Thomas and that they lived on Mill Swamp Road. Anything further is speculation on my part. An Alice Brown appears in the 1940 census in Anne Arundel county, where she is listed as a Black woman who was a servant for a “private family.” I found a 1940 military draft document for a Thomas Brown on Mill Swamp Road, whose wife is listed as Alice Rebecca Brown. Thomas Brown’s employment was with the Woodfield Fish & Oyster Company. There was an Alice Randall born in the early 1900’s in Lothian. That family did live on a farm but the patriarch was a blacksmith.
Andrews may have been affecting a historic norm when she attributed the recipe to “Alice” in “Maryland’s Way”. In doing so, she unwittingly perpetuated the erasure of the contributions of African Americans and of the ‘servant class’ to Maryland cooking.
In The Cooking Gene, Twitty directed a message to African Americans in particular: “We are not living in the past or for the past. Recognition, credit, acknowledgement, and the learning and transmission of the old ways are all critical. However, we need the best of our food culture as African people in America to move forward to give us opportunity… everything must be put on the table; our food is not just for us, it is a way into an alternative history and a new vision of who we can become.”
I think that regardless of ethnicity and genetic origin, everyone has a part in this. In addition to recognizing the legacy of the past in the food we eat today, we can all try to be more aware the ways in which well-meaning people can overlook existing inequality. I like to believe that we can learn from history without glorifying it.
Recipe:
1 Cup milk
1 medium eggplant
garlic salt
1 egg
1 Cup flour
.5 Teaspoon salt
.125 Teaspoon black pepper
Slice eggplant thin lengthwise. Sprinkle lightly with garlic salt, stack under a weighted plate for ½ hour. Make a batter by beating the egg and stirring in the flour and remaining seasonings, alternating with the milk. Mix until smooth and bubbly. Drain eggplant and pat dry. Dip each slice in batter and fry until golden brown in hot oil.
Once again I turned to The Park School Cookbook for some low-stress dinner ideas. I’m getting a surprising amount of mileage out of this little book.
The recipe comes from Victoria Frank Albert, who was actually a grand-daughter of the school’s founder, Eli Frank, Sr.
In my decades of living in Baltimore, I’ve noticed the assortment of private schools that serve the city’s well-to-do, with The Park School vaguely distinguished as the “Animal Collective school.”
As it turns out, The Park School was actually founded in response to some controversial decisions from our old racist pal Mayor Preston in regards to the school board.
I actually have no way of judging the wisdom of Preston’s firing and replacement of school board officials including Eli Frank. It certainly caused a newspaper stir, and many people questioned whether Preston should be courting controversy so soon after his narrow victory. The actual policies and records of the school board officials are largely left out of the news stories.
“In March of 1912, Eli Frank Sr., a Commissioner who was fired by Preston; Goucher Professor Hans Froelicher Sr. and General Lawrason Riggs, who both resigned, and a group of 13 men, convened a meeting to discuss the founding of a new school. Knowing that many Jewish parents, seeking to enroll their children in private schools, faced quotas if not outright refusal, the founders created Park as the first non-sectarian independent school in Baltimore. The school embraced progressivism and became a national leader in the Progressive Education movement.”
The school opened that September in its original location on Auchentoroly Terrace across from Druid Hill Park.
The curriculum took advantage of the location with outdoor instruction – in 1921 they even had a shoemaker design a shoe for active children in the local climate, the “Park School Shoe.”
In 1954, the year Victoria Frank graduated, the school began to accept African American pupils. (They were one of the first private schools in the region to do so, for whatever that is worth.) In the 1960s and 70s, they welcomed lecturers and performers who educated the student population on poverty and segregation as well as black theater and the arts.
I couldn’t find out as much about Mrs. Albert herself – I believe she may have moved to Connecticut, where her husband, Leonard Albert, is from.
I used fresh spinach for this recipe. I was surprised to find everything including the mushroom soup at the organic store where we refill our detergent, so this turned out to be a rather *upscale* version of this mid-century recipe. Spinach deluxe deluxe.
We’ll be revisiting the Park School Cookbook yet again soon with a recipe from another Jewish family who had a hand in the history of Baltimore.
.5 Lb medium noodles
2 lbs spinach, cooked and chopped
.75 Cup cream of mushroom soup
.25 Cup milk
black pepper
.5 Teaspoon paprika
.5 Lb coursely grated Swiss cheese
Cook spinach. Drain and chop. Cook noodles as directed on package. Rinse in cold water. Mix soup and milk over low heat. Stir in spinach. In a greased baking dish, arrange ½ of noodles, sprinkle with ½ of cheese & seasonings. Spoon over all of spinach mixture. Add remaining noodles, top with remaining cheese. Bake in 400° oven for 15 minutes or until cheese bubbles.
“Because fall and winter diets are often deficient in vitamins, A, B, and C, and important minerals, kale should be served at least two or three times a week.” – 8/7/1953 Hagerstown Morning Herald
I recently acquired this little community cookbook, “Kitchen Kapers,” put out by Bethel 31 of The International Order of Jobs Daughters in 1952. I had a hard time finding any history specific to this Masonic organization chapter, which is located in Westminster. The basic gist of their mission as stated on their website is that they teach “leadership, charity, and character building.”
The recipe’s contributor, Virgina Stoner, appears to have been about 31 when the book came out in 1952. Her family owned a Westminster home that had been surveyed by the Maryland Historical Trust for some unique architectural features. It was noted in their report that the home had been in the family since it was built in 1890.
There are a few things that I found interesting about this cookbook. The first is the 1950’s graphics which actually look so much like kitschy clip-art that I originally assumed the book was much newer. This style is so ubiquitous now that it is hard to imagine it in its contemporary context.
The same community cookbook – title, artwork and all – appears to have been used all over the country with recipes from different organizations. It has little corny comics throughout the book – an interesting inclusion for a book design that is basically a template.
As for the recipe itself, I find its open-endedness to be a little surprising. You can either use milk or just use the pot liquor to make the sauce for the kale. Those are two very different options. I suspect the latter option may be a holdover from WWII-era thriftiness.
Cumberland News, June 14th, 1943
I opted for the milk because, as a 1959 headline declared in the Salisbury Daily Press: “Kale Tastes Good in Cream Sauce.”
Creamed kale recipes appear to have been pretty popular during that decade, although recipes for a similar dish appeared in the 1930s under the moniker “panned kale [or spinach].” In the 19th century, it’s predecessor was known as “spinach a la creme.”
Despite its current undeserved punch-line status, kale has been in the U.S. since European colonization. The word probably comes from the same root as colewort, which is now basically known as collards.
In the 1890s, the Baltimore Sun occasionally reported on the thousands of barrels of kale that were shipped north from Norfolk. It was fairly popular in markets as well as gardens.
Hagerstown Morning Herald, June 26, 1950
It was in the 1930s that the health benefits of kale really started to get attention. The Afro-American published a recipe for panned kale in 1930 under the headline “Pure Food Builds Health.” Articles in women’s columns continually provided recipes and boasted of kale’s nutritional value thereafter.
I was surprised to learn that kale was even eaten raw in salads historically. I am partial to raw kale salads myself, but somehow I bought into the hype and just assumed that raw kale was some modern-health-food era reverse-innovation.
Never-mind the fact that many of the nutrients in kale may not even be bioavailable when kale is consumed raw. In fact, the vitamins are probably all in that pot liquor that I set aside to replace with milk. Ah, well.
Recipe:
1.5 Lb kale
water
salt
2 Lb onions
.25 Cup shortening
3 Tablespoon flour
1.5 Cup milk
salt
pepper, black
“Wash well 1 ½ lbs kale
Cook in boiling salted water – enough to come half-way up around kale – until tender, about 15 minutes.
Peel 2lbs (about 12) small white onions
Cook in boiling salted water until tender, about 15 minutes. Drain and save liquid from both cake and onions.
Combine vegetables.
Make a sauce of
¼ c. shortening
3 tbsp flour
1 ½ c. milk (or use vegetable liquid)
Salt and pepper
Pour over kale and onions.
Serves 6.”
Recipe from “Kitchen Kapers,” Bethel 31 Of The International Order Of Jobs Daughters” Westminster, MD
