SHARON’S GRANDMOTHER: ALICE MAUDE FISHLEIGH

Sandy’s cooknote: this is a story I have been planning to write ever since I made a trip to Niagara Falls, Ontario, in 2009. It was during that visit that my friend, Sharon Prue, gave me a handwritten cookbook that had belonged to her mother and grandmother.

I tried to talk her out of giving the worn little cookbook to me but she could not be dissuaded. “You really like something like this,” she said. “I don’t know of anyone who would appreciate it as much as you.”

“I’ll treasure it,” I promised, and I took a photograph of Sharon reading her family cookbook. Now, several events conspired against me since acquiring the cookbook in August of 2009. One, I kept misplacing the photograph. When I found the photograph, I would have misplaced the cookbook.

I can imagine you are wondering how anyone could repeatedly misplace either a photograph or a cookbook – my only defense is this: I have over 10,000 cookbooks and that doesn’t take into consideration thousands of other books Bob & I acquired over the years—biographies, autobiographies, history, fiction, travel – and my photo collection is mostly contained in over 50 photo albums with hundreds of loose photographs stored in boxes and tins.

Then, in 2010, Sharon wrote a short story about her grandmother, Alice Maude Fishleigh, and sent it to me and our mutual friend, Doreen – and I knew that Sharon’s story belonged with the photograph and the cookbook. THEN I misplaced my printed copy about Sharon’s grandmother. I thought I would never find the missing story. (My only defense regarding losing the story is that I have reams of articles and stories and other printed material that I have accumulated over the years—and in 2008, we moved; lock, stock and barrel with over 600 boxes of books and other household belongings. It took over a year to get everything unpacked.)

Recently, I began going carefully through a big box of my writing files trying to decide what to keep, what to throw away. Wait! That’s part of the problem – I never throw anything away. And sure enough, I found the missing pages, clearly titled in my own handwriting, “Sharon’s Grandmother”.

And so now, for the first time, I have all the components of a very good story—and a photograph to go with it. I think I should start with Sharon’s essay, which she titled “PEOPLE COME AND GO” – written by Sharon Prue:

Sharon wrote “There’s an email out there that I keep receiving from time to time. I can’t remember all the words in it but it talks about the people who come into and out of our lives. Some of these people remain in our lives throughout the years while others are there for just a short time.

I believe they come into our lives for a reason and only stay because we need them as much as they need us. Those others who have left may touch our lives in a very small way but that contact experience provides us with useful information which we will use at some point on our journey through life.

I am going o start to think about all those people who have meant so much to me over the years, those ones that have been long gone. My grandmother, my parents, my dog Boo-Boo and possibly my brother Bob were the most important things in my life as a child.

I grew up in a household where my grandmother lived with us, my dad worked long hours in the warmer months because he worked at a canning factory and my mother was back teaching full time after both Bob and I were in school. We always had a housekeeper in those days who cooked lunch for Dad, Grandma and the children and she even started dinner sometimes. Teresa cleaned the house and did laundry and made the beds every Monday through Friday. I was supposed to make my bed and clean my room but most of the time. I didn’t.

Grandma would help mom get dinner on the table and sometimes dad would make it home for a quick supper before heading back to the plant or sometimes, in the summertime, if he had some free time, he would head to Niagara-On-The-Lake for an evening sail. Mom was off teaching in the summer but she didn’t like to sail. Bob and I were supposed to help with the dishes but because we fought like crazy, I had to do [the dishes] one day and he had to do them the next. I can remember my grandmother ironing in the laundry room and using that mangle* to press the bed sheets. [*a mangle was a large machine that pressed fabric, such as sheets, by passing them through (heated) rollers. My own mother had one that took up a lot of space in the kitchen. I think my mother used it a few times and then it became a catch-all for odds and ends in the kitchen—sls]

Grandma would be downstairs early in the winter and get the hot porridge ready in the double boiler. One day a week she made Red River cereal because Bob liked it, but the other days we had oatmeal or cream of wheat.

Both my parents were very strict with us kids and the belt ruled when we were bad, something I never used with my son. Dad had a terrible temper and poor Bob got it worse than I did so sometimes he ran away. Once he ran away and I heard mom and dad crying and the police were called. Bob was found out behind out back fence later in the night. I never ran away but sure felt like it at times. Mom would sometimes fight with Dad over Bob and how Dad handled him, and I remember her once leaving the dining room table in tears. Grandma never interfered and never said a word when this was going on.

Grandma was very loving and caring with those years she lived with us…she darned socks, she knitted and quilted and did needlepoint. She sewed and sewed and mended, and she made the best graham muffins! I don’t ever remember her reading books but her bible was always beside her. I don’t remember her going to church She was always supportive of mom, and Bob and I, but when I look back, I don’t remember any relationship that she had with Dad, but she must have, living in the same house. Grandma comforted us when we were not well (I remember the mustard plasters) and she comforted us when we were upset about things. She was definitely a hands-on grandma who would hold us on her lap and hug us.

I don’t think Grandma ever had a job before she came to live with mom and dad. I know because of health reasons she moved from her home in Oshawa down here to Niagara to live after mom and dad adopted Bob. Mom and Dad had a built-in babysitter, but rather than use grandma for that, they usually hired a babysitter to watch us when they went out for an evening. I know she liked to listen to her radio to the various talk shows that were on and she rarely watched TV. Radio was big back in the early 50s.

I never saw grandma in a pair of slacks or shorts. She always wore a dress; she had day dresses, afternoon dresses and evening special wear dresses, and she wore stockings and a girdle. And those heavy black laced shoes.

My story continues with a few finishing touches on Grandma, Alice Maude Fishleigh (nee Hamley). I do know she married at the age of 18 which she said was too young. She always told me that I should do everything I wanted to do while I was young, before I got married and started a family. I followed her advice. I know she was happily married to my grandpa who I never met because mom always told me that she never heard them argue or fight about anything. Grandma came from a big family and if I remember correctly, she and Grandpa Theodore (Ted) raised her younger sister—I can’t remember her name—when her parents died. Mom used to say she idolized that aunt like a grown-up sister. The aunt died when she was in her 20s, just after she got married. Grandma had my mom late in life; she was a surprise baby. My grandparents had lost a son when he was a child (long before mom came along) and I think it was from scarlet fever or something like that.

Mom grew up almost like an only child, doted on by two older parents who offered her every opportunity they could afford. My grandpa worked for a famous piano company in Oshawa, but in his spare time he was very active on the local sports scene. He took his daughter, my mother, everywhere and involved her in sports, hence why mom was tennis champion of Ontario when she was in her teens. Grandma never worked outside the home or got involved in sports.

When Grandpa died suddenly of a massive heart attack at the age of 58, mom was in her first year at Queen’s University in Kingston (she was only 16 years old!) Mom thought she would have to quit school and go to work but one of Grandma’s brothers (I never knew him either) owned a bookstore and was financially secure so he sent my mother through her years of university.

As I have mentioned before, Grandma as never the disciplinarian but I do remember this one incident when she was watching my brother and I, and Bob did a big no-no. I can’t remember what it was but I believe he said a swear word. She pulled him by the ears over to the kitchen sink where she proceeded to wash his mouth out with soap.

Grandma was a tall, big-boned woman but not overweight. I remember she had thinning gay hair which she pulled back into a bun at the back with bobby pins. I never saw her with her hair down and she always wore glasses. She wore clip earrings which she would let me try on sometimes. I don’t remember her wearing anything else except maybe a brooch when she when out, and she always wore a wrist watch.

Grandma lived with us until I was about thirteen, when she fell in her bedroom and broke her hip, from which she never recovered enough to walk again. We tried to look after her at home but it was too difficult and she went into a nursing home a couple of doors away. I popped in to see her often before she passed away from a stroke when I was 15. She was 84 years old. My last memory of her was that of her lying in bed, frantic that I get away from there before the other woman in the room came in and hurt me. I came home crying and upset and my mom told me that Grandma was having many little mini-strokes which caused her to behave that way. That same week, we received a call in the night that she had passed away.

Grandma had two sisters who I did meet and knew a little about through letters over the years. They came for a few visits from out west in Red Deer Alberta every so often. Aunt Lottie and Aunt Edna remained single all of their lives and died at 98 and 103 in a nursing home out west. Mom had gone out to visit them on the one aunt’s 100th birthday. What’s interesting about them is that the two sisters headed out west to Hollywood when they were young and both got jobs in the movie industry. I believe they worked in the clerical end of things but not sure where or what and sure wish I knew that today.

I think I have written everything that I can remember about my precious grandmother. She embodied all those qualities of what I think a grandma should be; I can only hope that I carry on some of those today, thanks to her.” – Sharon Prue

“The Cookbook” Sharon entrusted to me is an old lined notebook with a black cover that is mostly worn away. On the inside cover is written, in blue ink, Theo’s Ration Card No PH 180198. Followed by the following recipe for constipation:

½ lb dates
½ lb figs
2 oz senna leaves
Put through meat grinder 3 or 4 times, then roll in small balls. Eat 2 at night.

Beneath that are two names and addresses, one that of a Mrs Dibb who lived in Bogota NJ, USA and the other for a Mr. J.R. Dick of Pomona California. Next are some loose pieces of paper; one offers a recipe for Grape-nuts pie and Scones. Next is a neatly folded sheet of paper from the Oshawa Tennis Club, dated September 13, 1945, inviting Dear Sir or Madam to attend a meeting. There is also a lovely handwritten recipe for chocolate cake that appears to be lengthy and perhaps a little complicated by today’s standards.

The book has lined pages and starts with cake recipes – New Chocolate Cake, Coronation Cake, Eagle cake, Chocolate Cake with Marshallow (sic) icing, Crumb Cake and King Tut Cake. The paper at the bottom of the pages is mostly worn away for Eagle Cake and King Tut Cake. There are recipes for Black George Cake, Peel Cake (made with ¾ lb of mixed candied fruit) as well as oat cakes, scones, date bars, sponge loaf cake, King Edward Cake, Sponge cake with the notation 1st prize at Oshawa Fair, Johnny Cake (which I think is a corruption of Journey Cake, a cornmeal cake that dates back to early pioneer times), Gold Cake and Mrs. Begin’s Fudge Cake—written in a different handwriting. Pasted inside the following page are two newspaper clippings for “Christmas Cake No. 2” and “A Cake of Unusual Flavor. Loose on this page is a full page recipe for Christmas Gift Cakes provided by a Mrs. Florence Stallwood who has won prizes at the Canadian National Exhibition and, when she lived at Jarvis Ontario, her cooking won prizes at the fall fair. At the bottom of the page is printed “Weekend Picture Magazine, Vol 3, No 47 – 195- (presumably from the 1950s—the last number in the date is missing) Mrs. Stallwood’s cake calls for sherry or brandy but she said that grape juice will do just as well. Also kept loose on this page were recipes for orange pudding, butterscotch squares and Chinese Chews. The recipe for Butterscotch Squares is written in a very fine handwriting and signed “Ethel Lysett”.

On the following page, under a recipe for boiling icing, is a recipe for what appears to be a cookie, called Trilbies. Never having heard of Trilbies, I Googled it only to learn that a Trilby was a kind of hat or fedora popular in men’s fashions in the 1930s! THIS particular Trilby appears to be a cookie with a date filling.

Next are some recipes for seven minute frostings, and recipes for date loaf and date cakes- and the page after that is a large newspaper clipping featuring (much to my delight) a lot of sauce recipes. After some dessert recipes for ice box pudding and apple snow, Apple fritters and carrot pudding, I found a variety of clippings from newspapers and pasted onto the pages. One page is filled with chicken recipes—chicken patties and chicken salad as well as a Jellied Chicken Salad. The following page continues with summer salads and some omelet recipes.

After this – there are many empty pages in Grandma’s cookbook. Then, closer to the end of the book, I found a recipe for Ginger Beer, more loose clippings, a few more cookie recipes – Fruit Jumbles, Shortbread, and Cocoanut Macaroons – then, to my surprise, a collection of canning recipes – cranberry jelly, Tomato butter, spiced beets, uncooked tomato sauce, chopped mustard pickle, something called Indian Sauce, crabapple catsup, tomato fruit relish, Mrs Henry’s Gooseberries. Nine Day Sweet Pickle—and then another surprise, some homemade candy recipes also clipped from a newspaper, some handwritten candy recipes – and final surprise, a recipe for making Witch hazel.

Almost in shreds is this recipe for fruit and nut filling. This could be used in any recipe that calls for a fruit and/or nut filling or you could use it as a spread between layers of cake, as a change from frosting:
Empty the contents of a smallest size tin of evaporated milk* into the top of a double boiler. Add 1 TBSP boiling water, 2 TBSP sugar, 1 TBSP yellow portion or orange rind (finely grated) and 1 cup chopped dates. Stir until the sugar is dissolved then cook over hot water until the mixture thickens. Remove from the fire and add 1 tsp lemon juice and 1/3 cup finely chopped walnut meats. Cool thoroughly before spreading.

*sandy’s cooknote: I have to guess what the size of “the smallest tin of evaporated milk” may have been over 50 years ago. I turned to Google and the general consensus at most sites was 5 ounces. I would have guessed about 4 ounces or half a cup but given the other ingredients, 5 ounces sounds good to me.

Grandma’s handwritten cookbook contains a lot of recipes using dates. Here is a recipe for Fruit Jumbles:

1½ cups white sugar
½ cup butter
3 eggs
1 lb dates
¼ lb walnuts, chopped
3 cups flour
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking soda dissolved in 1 TBSP warm water
Beat butter and sugar together; add beaten eggs, then flour, fruit, vanilla and last the baking soda. Drop teaspoonfuls onto buttered or parchment-lined baking sheets and bake in moderate (350 degrees) oven.
Sandy’s cooknote: Grandma doesn’t tell us what temperature to bake the jumbles at; try baking for 10 minutes and adjust baking time as needed.

THOSE FABULOUS FIFTIES

THOSE FABULOUS FIFTIES

Some time ago, one of my Sandychatter subscribers suggested I provide some of the favorite fifties recipes. I said I would, but other matters took up most of my time the second half of 2011.

Recently, I was moving some cookbooks around (finding shelf space for all of them is a constant problem) and I came across some of my “fifties” cookbooks. I am also including in this category some cookbooks dedicated to “lost” or “forgotten” favorites.

If you lived through the 1950s, you may wonder what the fuss is all about – we didn’t think the foods we were eating at the time were anything special. Many households, like my mother’s, had certain dishes for certain days of the week. For instance, we almost always had salmon patties on Fridays, with either macaroni and cheese or macaroni and tomatoes, cottage cheese and some spinach—canned spinach, at that, with a little hardboiled egg on top. I am quite sure I never tasted fresh spinach until I was an adult and living in California. Occasionally, fish sticks substituted for the salmon patties (that some people refer to as salmon cakes) – now, salmon patties are still a favorite of mine but it boggles my mind that my mother fed 7 people with one can of salmon. I used one can of salmon to feed just Bob & myself for years. It was one of his favorite comfort foods. Mine too.

Perhaps once a week we would have beef stew – or it may have alternated with kidney stew that was served with noodles. If we had pork chops, there was sure to be a jar of homemade apple sauce to go with it. During World War II the Schmidt family—with my Grandma Schmidt leading the way—would make a vat full of apple sauce that was canned without sugar, which—you may or may not remember—was rationed during the war. For years after the war, we were allowed to sprinkle a little sugar on our very tart applesauce, made from sour cooking apples.

On Sundays we usually had a stewed chicken dinner with my mother’s library paste rice. My brother Bill insists to this day that he LIKED mom’s library past rice. No, it didn’t really contain library paste. It just tasted like it. I was an adult living in California before I was introduced to Rice Pilaf, wild rice, even Rice-A-Roni (the San Francisco treat) – and concluded that I didn’t hate rice. What I hated the way my mother cooked it.

The chicken—a stewing hen that was cheaper than a fryer—was cooked with onion, carrots and celery until the meat fell off the bones. Then we ate it with library paste rice and homemade bread.

Occasionally, my mother cooked something like brains which, I think, I was the only one in the family who balked at eating. Or, my father would go hunting once a year and bring home wild rabbits he had shot and killed. He would clean the rabbit at the kitchen sink—it made a deep impression on my mind. Then my mother soaked the rabbit in a sweet and sour marinade for three days before it was cooked. When it was cooking, the smell of sweet-sour marinade filled the house. I gagged at the prospect of eating that rabbit. Years passed before I could reconcile myself to the thought that it wasn’t the rabbit I loathed so much; it was the way my mother cooked it. (I still don’t eat rabbit).

Sometimes we had chili – cooked Cincinnati style and served on a bed of cooked spaghetti and topped off with oyster crackers, chopped onion and grated cheese. That was a family favorite then and it is now.

Another meal I loved was green (string) beans cooked with a cut of ham called cottage ham (that you can still find in Cincinnati) and red potatoes and carrots. I think we all loved this one pot meal and I think I improved on it by making it with fresh green beans – my mother’s were always canned. Alongside of it would be a helping of cottage cheese. Actually, I don’t think we had a lot of salads, growing up. Occasionally, mom would make a small green salad with a vinaigrette dressing. Or we might have some Cole slaw.

And I think all of us, loved sauerkraut dinners. It might be cooked with some pork or sausages and it was a must on New Year’s Eve, to eat at midnight in the hopes of bringing good luck. We’d have it with mashed potatoes and creamed peas. (I cringe to think of eating anything that heavy at midnight anymore!)

My brother Bill reminded me of mom’s hamburgers – a pound of ground beef mixed with a loaf of bread—which were pretty tasteless but she did mix them with a brown gravy after the hamburgers had been cooked, and that could be served over noodles. He thought her meatloaf was pretty good – I think it might have been the recipe on the box of Quaker Oats. He also reminded me of mom’s liver and onions, which we all liked, and her sour cottage cheese. It almost always tasted bad and I was an adult before I discovered I like cottage cheese.

Occasionally, my mother would make a pot of soup with marrow bones. The broth would contain some carrots and potatoes and perhaps a small piece of meat. We would eat the broth first, with some noodles, and then have the carrots and potatoes on our plate. My father and brothers would eat the marrow on crackers. Many years later, I discovered this method of making soup and serving it was well known many years ago. I imagine my mother learned this method of making soup from her mother. I think I came across this method of making soup in a presidential cookbook. Recently, a cousin gave me our maternal grandmother’s cookbook as a birthday present; I’ll have to check it for familiar sounding recipes.

We had a lot of one-pot meals growing up. Who could have imagined that years later this type of meal would be touted as healthier? I don’t think my mother ever stopped to consider what was healthier to feed five children. I think she was mostly concerned with getting the most for her money and keeping us filled up. She made two large loaves of bread twice a week – bread baked in a big roasting pan—and we always had bread on the table.

My older sister and brother were born before WW2 – my sister in 1936 and my brother in 1937. I was born in 1940, and two more brothers were born in 1943 and 1946—so we did indeed “grow up” in the 1950s. There was one cookbook in my mother’s kitchen, kept in a drawer. It was Ida Bailey Allen’s Service cookbook and that was also the cookbook I learned to cook from. I don’t remember my mother having a recipe box when I was a child, but she did acquire one years later that I now have.

So, that is my background for the 1950s. I would have turned ten years old late in 1950 and was beginning to be interested in cooking – mainly cookies and muffins. The first meal I ever cooked was the salmon patties, with macaroni and cheese, and some creamed peas. My parents were going out to a dinner and I made the meal for my then-three brothers. I think I was twelve. I didn’t have any cookbooks per se, but I had begun to send away for many free manufacturers pamphlets and booklets that I sent away for with penny postcards. By the time I married in 1958, I had a big box of these booklets. The Betty Crocker Picture cookbook was a wedding present.

Join me, won’t you, down memory lane? I will share with you some of my 50s cookbooks and perhaps dig into my bookshelves for cookbooks actually published in the 1950s as well.

What made me think along these lines was the acquisition of a Favorite Brand Name cookbook titled “FABULOUS ‘50s RECIPE COLLECTION” published in 2004. This cookbook reflects and provides recipes for many different 50s dishes starting with the most famous of all 1950s recipes, the Lipton California Dip recipe that changed cocktail parties forever after—and what could be simpler? A container of sour cream and a packet of Lipton Onion Soup Mix! To tell the truth, I don’t remember when I, personally, began mixing together sour cream and onion soup mix. Fabulous ‘50s provides as well recipes for spinach dip, California seafood dip, bacon dip and blue cheese dip, all starting out with sour cream and a packet of onion soup mix (and to tell the truth, you will generally find about half a dozen boxes of onion soup mix in my pantry shelves. I’m ready for anything!

Another onion soup mix recipe was Mini Cocktail Meatballs that began showing up at cocktail parties or as hors d’ oeuvres at dinner parties. Also making an appearance at those cocktail parties was Party Mix, made with various mixtures of cereal, pretzel sticks and Worcestershire sauce. I was never a big fan of this party mix but I know people who absolutely swear by it. Elsewhere I found a recipe for Holiday Shrimp Dip that is made with unflavored gelatin and canned condensed tomato soup—oddly enough, I didn’t “discover” this recipe until the 1970s when I met my friend Mary Jaynne and she shared her recipe with me. Another favorite that caught my eye was Original Ranch Snack Mix that is made with a combination of Crispix cereal, pretzels, cheddar cheese crackers and Hidden Valley Ranch dressing mix. I have been making a variation of this original 50s recipe for the past year – but it’s just small twist pretzels, peanut oil, Hidden Valley Ranch original dressing mix and a bit of cayenne pepper for a little kick. A girlfriend brought it to a party about two years ago and we have been making batch after batch ever since. For sure, everything old is new again!

Also in FABULOUS 50s is a recipe (much to my surprise) for Swanson Rosemary Chicken & Vegetables—I have been making something similar but perhaps with fewer ingredients—for about 5 or 6 years. It’s JUST a whole chicken, rosemary, lemon slices and lemon pepper—and sometimes I toss in some carrots and onions. The real success to this recipe is having fresh rosemary sprigs to stuff into the cavity, along with some lemons slices. I am fortunate to have a girlfriend who keeps me supplied regularly with lots of Rosemary. Aha, elsewhere in the cookbook I found a recipe for lemon rosemary roast chicken—the only difference between theirs and mine is fresh rosemary versus dried. (I’m sure you all know that almost all herbs are available in your supermarket nowadays, if you don’t have a girlfriend with a Rosemary bush). Also in the cookbook are recipes for such favorites as Steaks with Mushroom Onion Sauce, Pepper Steak, and Campbell’s Autumn Pork Chops made with cream of celery soup. Who hasn’t raised a family on pork chops with mushroom soup gravy? Other recipes include Rosemary Garlic Rub that you can make up when you have some free time and have it ready when you are ready to cook a steak or two. However, that being said, I have to concede that there is very little similarity between Fabulous 50s Recipe Collection and my mother’s cooking.

Let’s turn to a couple of Jane and Michael Stern’s cookbooks. “AMERICAN GOURMET/Classic Recipes, Deluxe Delights, Flamboyant Favorites, and Swank ‘Company’ Food from the ‘50s and ‘60s” was published in 1991 and “SQUARE MEALS/America’s Favorite Comfort Food Cookbook” was published in 2001. There are numerous cookbooks with “comfort” in the title; for me and many of my generation, “comfort” foods translate to many dishes of the 1950s.

From the introduction to AMERICAN GOURMET, we learn “In addition to a witty and astute look at the social history of the ’50s and ‘60s, American Gourmet presents 100 of the most memorable recipes of the time. Baked Alaska, Beef Wellington, Duck a l’Orange, Venerable Sukiyaki, Madison Avenue Chocolate Fondue, Aphrodisiacal Artichokes are not merely period pieces, and they are delicious, workable recipes and remain tasty causes for celebration…” (Sorry to say, none of those recipes were in my mother’s cookery repertoire—not even close) – However, what I – and my siblings and cousins WERE exposed to was a variety of German and Hungarian cuisine, thanks to our paternal grandmother who was German and married a Hungarian. We took for granted lovely paper thin pancakes we simply called “German” pancakes but were actually Hungarian Palacsinta that we spread with jam and rolled up to eat. (Palacsintas are similar to the French crepes). We had many kinds of fruit and cheese strudels and Dobos Torte and Hungarian Goulash. It was hardly the fare of most 1950s cooks but we simply took it for granted. Meanwhile, at home, “fruit” was usually a can of fruit cocktail or—we did have applesauce. This was because grandma had some sour apple trees and got all the women of the family involved in a yearly applesauce making binge. During WW2, when sugar was rationed, grandma canned the applesauce without sugar; for years afterwards, whenever we ate some applesauce, we’d sprinkle on a bit of sugar.

Occasionally, my mother would make oatmeal-raisin cookies and I thought I remembered them being made with bacon grease. I thought this highly unlikely until my Oklahoma penpal found a recipe for oatmeal-raisin cookies made with bacon grease. (I tried making them once with bacon grease – ew, ew. You cannot go home).

By the time I was ten years old, I was making cookies and muffins using my mother’s IDA BAILEY ALLEN Service Cookbook. I didn’t make any using bacon grease.

Jane and Michael Stern’s cookbook “SQUARE MEALS/AMERICA’S FAVORITE COMFORT FOOD COOKBOOK” has the distinction of a Foreword by M.F.K. Fisher in which she writes, “Almost any American of more than a few months citizenship knows what a square meal is, whether he teaches computer programming or picks crops. A few days ago a man said to me ‘All I really need right now is somewhere to sleep and three squares a day.’ And I knew what he meant: warmth and then food, decent food, something to stick to his ribs and keep him upright and strong…he meant a SQUARE MEAL which perforce meals tools and a place to use them, a knife and a spoon and perhaps even a plate, and a protected place of the enjoyment of all or almost all he could eat…

The Sterns are right; they have written with love and respect about the square meals of our country, the kind our grandmothers and the ladies of the Church Society and the cookies out in the cattle country have always managed to serve now and then, to keep us reassured as well as on our feet…”

Much is being discussed, in books and magazines as well as on TV about people not cooking SQUARE MEALS anymore, that we are eating all fast food on the run–Frozen things you stick in the microwave for a few minutes and even wrap in a paper napkin to eat on the way to work or where ever else you need to be. I have to disagree although I don’t have any statistics to back up what I say – I cooked dinner almost every night for the past fifty years – twenty five of those years when I was married and raising my family, another twenty five when I was sharing my life with my partner, Bob. I raised sons who expect some kind of square meal on the table when they get home from work (even when their wives are also employed) and I don’t think we were an isolated statistic. I know too many people who enjoy cooking and look forward to experimenting with new recipes. Throughout the 40s and the 50s, into the 60s and the 70s, my mother cooked dinner regularly. We children who grew up n the 40s and 50s learned to prepare dinner for our spouses and children—are we the last of the Mohicans? I hope not.

You will love Jane & Michael Stern’s SQUARE MEALS whether you cook meals regularly or not. They offer Dinner Classics such as Cream of tomato Soup and Diner Meatloaf (which I will have to try), Mashed Potatoes with Crater Gravy, choices of Sunday dinners which include roast pork with sinner stuffing, Mom’s Best Pot Roast and Roast Chicken with Peacemaker Herb, old 50s favorite desserts such as butterscotch pie and Boston Cream Pie which isn’t actually a pie, and oh, dozens of other favorites – many gone but not forgotten.

One of my favorite cookbooks for years has been Mimi Sheraton’s “FROM MY MOTHER’S KITCHEN/RECIPES & REMINISCENCES” which was published in 1979 so it’s safe to assume that many of her mother’s recipes were being cooked in the 1950s. The author says that, although this is not a kosher cookbook, many of the recipes are traditional Jewish dishes, others are entirely American.

Another more recently published cookbook (2003) that follows the theme of recipes too good to be forgotten is Lari Robling’s “ENDANGERED RECIPES”. Along with wonderful fifty-ish illustrations there are recipes for Parker House Rolls, Gingersnap Crumb Crust and Cream Pumpkin Pie, Smothered Pork Chops and Crockpot Apple Butter (which I have made several times), Boston Brown Bread (that my friend Mary’s mother used to make and would bake it in empty soup cans), Stuffed Peppers and Oven-fried Chicken and Genuine Boston Baked Beans.

I am also partial to Marion Cunningham’s “LOST RECIPES” in which she does not restrict herself to 50s recipes but to all of those treasured recipes she feels we are in danger of losing. In the Introduction Ms. Cunningham writes, “recently, I read the results of two different surveys on home cooking—one reporting that about 40 percent of the population cooks at home, the other that 30 percent does. She says no matt what the exact percentage is, one thing we know for sure is that fewer and fewer people are cooking, either because they don’t know how or because they just don’t want to bother. She goes on to say this is a greater loss than we realize because, among various reasons, home cooking is a catalyst that brings people together. “We are losing,” she writes, “the daily ritual of sitting down around the table (without the intrusion of television) of having the opportunity to interact, to share our experiences and concerns, to listen to others…”

I take exception to this remark—I suppose it puts me and my family in the remaining 60 or 70 percent, depending on which statistic you choose to believe, because I have cooked dinner virtually every day for more than fifty years—first 25 years with a husband and four growing sons, and another 26 years with a life partner who became “grandpa” to my grandchildren. I have at least one daughter in law who cooks virtually every night and another daughter in law who shares cooking dinner with her husband, the son who enjoys cooking and has become very adept at it. I believe my sons expect a daily dinner because that’s what they grew up with; I cooked a daily dinner because it’s what I grew up with. And I suspect that my grandchildren will become the same way.

“Lost Recipes” is packed with recipes in danger of being forgotten, such treasures as Truman’s Ozark Pudding and Blue Ribbon Gingerbread. There is a recipe for Beet Marmalade and Red Pepper Jelly but what I love most about this particular cookbook is the design and illustrations, a step out of the past that makes for interesting reading for those who read cookbooks like novels—you know who you are. “Lost Recipes” was published in 2006 by Alfred A. Knopf. If the name Marion Cunningham sounds familiar, it should. She wrote the latest Fannie Farmer Cookbook.

There is a cookbook titled SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER PRUDENCE PENNY COOKBOOK, edited and revised by Ruth Berotzheimer who was at that time director of the Culinary Arts Institute. This cookbook was published in 1955—it’s a thick well indexed and enormously detailed cookbook and – since it was published smack in the middle of the 1950s – I feel it only fair to mention some of the recipes. This cookbook has literally hundreds of recipes so I will have to be a little selective—there are poultry recipes for Roast Chicken, Maryland Style, as well as recipes for fried, smothered, simmered, steamed and pressed chicken. You can choose from recipes for making chicken and dumplings. Fricassee of Chicken, Chicken Pie, Curry of Chicken, Savory chicken, scalloped or creamed chicken. If turkey was on your menu, there are directions for roasting braising, broiling or even French frying the bird. There are also recipes for preparing goose, duck, as well as pheasant, partridge, quail and grouse..not to mention recipes for squab, pigeon, roast leg of venison and roast hare or rabbit. (which we never had. My mother ONLY made Hasenpfeffer with the rabbit my father brought home from his hunting trip.

I like the chapter dedicated to sauces –Béchamel, Poulette, drawn butter sauce, caper sauce (which I happen to like) as well as Hollandaise, Béarnaise and imitation caper sauce (ew, ew, it’s made with chopped pickles). Actually, I probably shouldn’t mention this, but Prudent Penny’s cookbook reminds me somewhat of Maida Given’s cookbook. They’re the kind of cookbooks every home should have had (but my parents’ home didn’t). The only cookbooks I became familiar with, in the 1950s, were the recipe booklets advertised on the back of items such as baking powder or Hershey’s cocoa – you could send for them with a penny postcard and I acquired a collection of those).

Prudence Penny offered a wealth of recipes for cakes, cookies, frostings, cake fillings, all sorts of puddings, ice creams and sauces for desserts. Even today, novice cooks would find this cookbook worthy of attention.

Hopefully, if you haven’t done much cooking for a while, this may inspire you. And if you are like me and already doing a fair amount of cooking, here are some cookbook titles to think about. I’ll try to provide you with some fifties recipes in my next post—but feel free to write if there is a favorite dish in particular that you would like to see in print.

–HAPPY COOKING AND HAPPY COOKBOOK COLLECTING!

Sandra Lee Smith

THAT’S WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THE SOUTH – PART THREE

There is a marvelous cookbook titled TWO HUNDRED YEARS OF CHARLESTON COOKING, which was published in 1976 by the University of South Carolina Press. Let me share a secret with you—some of the finest regional books you will ever find about any state are often published by their respective university presses. Many university presses will send you a catalog of their publications, either free or for a small fee of a few dollars. ***

TWO HUNDRED YEARS OF CHARLESTON COOKING was first published in 1930, then reprinted in 1931 and again in 1934. Some of the original recipes are in the 1976 softcover edition. The ladies who collected the recipes and wrote the introduction explain how many of “…the receipts came from old unpublished or out of print collections saved in plantation kitchen from time out of mind. One of these collections was owned by the family of Bossis Plantation, passed down from mother to daughter…two hundred years leans heavily on this collection, which has never been published…”

Other Carolina cookbooks to look for might include CAROLINA CUISINE ENCORE published in 1981 by the Junior Assembly of Anderson, South Carolina, or THE CAROLINA COLLECTION by the Junior League of Fayetteville, 1978, or PALMETTO PANTRY by the Heathwood Hall Episcopal School of Columbia, South Carolina, published in 1983. There is another wonderful book titled MCCLELLANVILLE COAST COOKBOOK by the McClellanville Arts Council of McClellanville, South Carolina, which, incidentally, won the Tabasco Community Cookbook award in 1993). This cookbook provides its readers with an in-depth look at the importance of rice and seafood to the townspeople. Louisiana and South Carolina are both famous for their rice crops.

The Junior League of Greenville, South Carolina, compiled UPTOWN DOWN SOUTH, first published in 1986, and of course, there is the ever-popular previously mentioned CHARLESTON RECEIPTS, first published in 1950. According to CHARLESTON RECEIPTS, their fine city was the birthplace of rice in America; the first seed was brought to the province of Carolina about 1685.

In 1993, the Junior League of Charleston published PARTY RECEIPTS, with emphasis on hors d’oeuvres, savories and sweets—along with many great recipes. There is also a lot of fascinating information for us food faddies.

From NORTH Carolina, I have MOUNTAIN ELEGANCE by the Junior League of Asheville, published in 1982, and another favorite, OUT OF OUR LEAGUE was published by the Junior League of Greensboro in 1978. Later, in 1978, the Greensboro Junior League published a small, thin cookbook titled OUT OF OUR LEAGUE TOO, which is entirely devoted to one of my favorite food topics—appetizers! (After decades of throwing elaborate parties with tons of food, I discovered I could “do” parties entirely with appetizers).

Betty Fussell, in her book I HEAR AMERICA COOKING writes this about the Carolinas: “If you ask about southern cooking, a Southern will ask ‘Which South?’ There’s a white south and black south, rich south and poor south and coast south and the south that moved north when slaves were freed. To draw the line somewhere, I picked the two Carolinas, North and South, in that large quilt called ‘Dixie’ where folks number the accents not just region by region or state by state, but town by town. Three cities—Charleston, Columbia and Greensboro—had to stand for three major ecologies: the lowlands and tidewaters of the coastal plains that stretch from Florida to Chesapeake Bay, the central plain of the Piedmont: the long chain of the Appalachian Mountains, from Georgia to Maryland. In the South where you come from means not just what family but what land and no where are the products of the table more rooted in the land.

Southern cooking was,” she writes, earth cooking was the way the Southwest was sun cooking and Louisiana was swamp cooking.” She continues in her chapter on the south, “The plantation ideal was founded on the fertility of southern land in weather softer and warmer than the hard North. Land produced the cash crops of indigo, tobacco, cotton and rice, but it also produced the food for each self-supporting fiefdom (plantation)…the fabled hospitality of the southern plantation was rooted in farms and gardens so civilized they put the North to shame.”

Later in the chapter, Fussell notes, “When a Southerner leaves the South, he loses neither his accent nor his sense of place, because he takes his cooking with him. Whether it’s earth foods, like grits or greens, rice and gravy, or country foods like ham biscuits and crackling breads, or fancy foods like syllabubs and brandied peaches, hospitality betrays his origins. For an eighteenth century traveler from France, hospitality distinguished North from South. In the North, inns were frequent but the people inhospitable, he complained, whereas in the South, inns were few but the hospitality of the people abundant and generous.”

There is also a thick, comprehensive book titled NORTH CAROLINA & OLD SALEM COOKERY by Beth Tartan, published by the University of North Carolina Press. It was originally published in 1955 and reprinted in 1992.

In this book, you will find explanations of old-time customs and ways of the old South, many of which I have never seen in print elsewhere, or heard of before. Read here about fly bushes and bottle trees! No, not a tree that grew bottles, but rather, trees with branches made into spikes on which ladies would stick their bottles and jars to dry in the sun. There are stories about the old south kitchen and the utensils used in it, and – oh, yes, recipes—hundreds of recipes indigenous to North Carolina. **

One of my favorite community cookbooks is titled SMOKY MOUNTAIN MAGIC, compiled by the Junior Service League of Johnson City, Tennessee. It was first published in 1960 and is, I believe, still in print. I did a quick check on Google and Amazon.com has copies – not cheap; new ones start at $85 but you can get a copy for under $20. In its preface the cookbook compilers write, “In the hills of Tennessee, there is a tradition that lives on; true native sons appreciate and value good friends and good food. Without the one, life is empty, without the other, one is empty.”

And then there’s Tennessee; my sister, Barbara, moved to the Nashville area some years ago and we both began searching earnestly for Tennessee community cookbooks. I made a number of trips to Nashville when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and became quite familiar with the Nashville Airport and the I-40 freeway from the airport to Lebanon, which was a few miles from her home.

You may want to look for THE MEMPHIS COOKBOOK by the Junior League of Memphis by the Junior League of Memphis, which was first published in 1952 and has since gone through numerous reprints. SOUTHERN SECRETS by the Episcopal Day School Mother’s Club of Jackson, Tennessee (1979) is a good find, as well as DIXIE DELIGHTS, published by the St. Francis Hospital Auxiliary of Memphis, Tennessee, in 1983. The Memphis Junior League published an interesting cookbook in 1970 titled PARTY POTPOURRI which is devoted entirely to party planning and accompanying recipes—and then another favorite of mine (because I collect books about American presidents and first ladies—and collecting cookbooks with a presidential theme was a natural addition) is THE JAMES K. POLK COOKBOOK which was published in 1978 by the James K Polk Memorial Auxiliary of Columbia, Tennessee, and is full of information about the country’s 11th president—not to mention a lot of good recipes. (Another American President, Andrew Jackson, called The Hermitage, near Nashville, home and if you happen to be in the neighborhood, visiting and touring the Hermitage is a rewarding experience.) **

There is also a slim spiral bound book titled THE PEAR TREE, by the Junior League of Knoxville. It was originally published in 1977 but has been reprinted many times since. It may be out of print now and more difficult to find—I was only able to find listings on EBAY while doing a search on Google. THE PEAR TREE focuses on holiday entertaining and is handy to browse through hen you are trying to decide on Christmas and New Year’s menus. (I also collect Christmas cookbooks so this was a twofer—a community cookbook that is also a Christmas cookbook).

I don’t have many cookbooks from the State of Mississippi but I do have a few treasures. One of my favorites is SOUTHERN SIDEBOARDS by the Junior League of Jackson, Mississippi, published in 1978. (You CAN find copies of this one. I saw listings on Google for as little as $1.00). In its introduction Wyatt Cooper writes, “Speak to me of food and what springs readily to my mind is not so much a recall of particular dishes I’ve relished, but a succession of images, sad and funny, sweet and tender, of people and places and happy occasions from the recent or long-ago past, a procession of dear, lost familiar faces and voices, with the echo of laughter from other years. One remembers all those tables, some humble and bearing simple fare, over which have flowed the talk, the tales, the exchanges that have made up the histories of our lives….” This, too, is southern cooking.

Another fine offering from Mississippi is VINTAGE VICKSBURG by the Junior Auxiliary of Vicksburg, first published in 1985 and containing over NINE HUNDRED RECIPES. It also contains historical color photographs, cooking for children, menus, garnishes, and cooking tips. VINTAGE VICKSBURG is also available; you can order a brand new copy from Amazon.com for about $20.00 but they have pre-owned copies available starting at $1.47. (I have bought quite a lot of pre-owned cookbooks from places like Amazon.com, Alibris, and the Barnes & Noble website—without any regrets). If you only had enough room for one Mississippi cookbook, VINTAGE VICKSBURG might be a good choice—although I admit to being very partial to SOUTHERN SIDEBOARDS.

I also have nearly all of the BEST OF THE BEST cookbook series published by Quail Ridge Press (which is located in Brandon, Mississippi), including BEST OF THE BEST OF MISSISSIPPI. If you aren’t sure which cookbooks from the south would interest you the most, you might want to invest in some of the Best of the Best cookbooks—for one thing, the editors provide a listing at the back of each book, of all the community cookbooks featured in that particular cookbook, and ordering information. Most of the featured cookbooks are reasonably priced; a girlfriend and I went on a rampage for a few years, buying many of the different cookbooks featured in the Best of the Best series.

(Incidentally, some years before the Best of the Best came along, cookbook author Anne Serrane edited a series of cookbooks which often turn up in used book stores; the format is similar to the Best of the Best series. Look for THE SOUTHERN JUNIOR LEAGUE COOKBOOK (1977), THE MIDWESTERN JUNIOR LEAGUE COOKBOOK (1976), THE EASTERN JUNIOR LEAGUE COOKBOOK (1980) and THE WESTERN JUNIOR LEAGUE COOKBOOK (1979). What is particularly useful about these four books is that each contains a full list of the participating Junior League cookbooks whose recipes appear in the books. (I found my set, with dust jackets and in pristine condition except for some yellowing of the pages, in a thrift shop in Burbank.) **

From Alabama I have RECIPE JUBILEE published in 1964 by the Junior League of Mobile, WINNING SEASONS by the Junior League of Tuscaloosa, published in 1979, MAGIC by the Junior League of Birmingham, first published in 1982, and HUNTSVILLE HERITAGE COOKBOOK by the Junior League of Huntsville, first published in 1967. There is also a nice cookbook titled COOKS AND COMPANY by the Muscle Shoals District Service League of Sheffield, Alabama, published in 1988. I was bemused to discover, while re-reading COOKS AND COMPANY that I bought my copy at Disneyland one year.

Many years ago, when I first started collecting cookbooks, I purchased a slim book titled FASCINATING FOOD FROM THE DEEP SOUTH by Alline P. Van Duzor, from the University Club of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. But possibly my favorite Alabama cookbook and the most interesting is a book titled SOOK’S COOKBOOK by Marie Rudisill. This is about the Faulk family of Monroeville, Alabama, in particular Sook Fauk who was the great-aunt of Truman Capote and the aunt of author, Marie Rudisell. This book contains almost two hundred “receipts” from Sook’s collection but more importantly, the stories and illustrations bring to life another time and another place. The publishers say that reading this cookbook is like going to your grandmother’s house for Sunday dinner. I couldn’t put it any better.

You’ll read about Aunt Pallie and the wit and wisdom of Mammies, about Little Bit and Jenny and Bud, and, of course, about Sook, who was, Ms. Rudisell recalls, “a frail little woman with skin drawn taut across her cheekbones, almost translucent, like a fragile teacup held up to the light”.

Sook was born in 1871, six years after the Civil War ended, and like so many other women of her time, she learned the value of creating something from nothing The “receipts” (recipes) were compiled from entries in plantation record books dating back as far as 1836. Knowledge about herbs and spices gleaned from the Creek Indians living on the banks of the Alabama Rice was a mainstay of Sook’s experience and always reflected in her cooking. This particular cookbook, published by the Longstreet Press of Alabama in 1989, is still available (Amazon.com has a hardcopy edition for less than a dollar) and is a worthwhile addition to a cookbook collector’s collection. Marie Rudisill also wrote Fruitcake: Memories of Truman Capote and Sook and I think I fell in love with Sook and fruitcake when I read this story. It’s a small cherished book and one year I bought a dozen or so copies to give as gifts.

END OF PART THREE – TO BE CONTINUED

THAT’S WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THE SOUTH – PART TWO

Hundreds of community church-and-club cookbooks were published by southern ladies in the late 1800s and early 1900s but in the 1950s, the ladies of the Junior Leagues began to really REALIZE the potential of fundraising cookbooks when CHARLESTON RECEIPTS and RIVER ROAD RECIPES were published. Perhaps southern ladies discovered that keeping family ‘receipts’ secret wasn’t necessarily sacrosanct, especially when a good cause was at stake. The past six decades have witnessed a deluge of community cookbooks. I began dividing mine up by States—from Georgia here are some of my favorites:

GEORGIA ON MY MENU by the Junior League of Cobb-Marietta, first published in 1988;
LASTING IMPRESSIONS, by St Joseph’s Hospital of Atlanta Auxiliary, 1988;
A SOUTHERN COLLECTION by the Junior League of Columbus, Georgia, 1979;
PEACHTREE BOUQUET, by the Junior League of Dekalb County, Ga. 1987;
Another by the same Junior League, is PUTTING ON THE PEACH TREE first published in 1979, with a 6th edition published in 1991;

Two of my favorites are COOK AND LOVE IT (1976) and COOK AND LOVE IT MORE (1989) were compiled and published by the Lovett Parent Association in Atlanta.

Also in my collection is A TOUCH OF ATLANTA published by the Marist Parents Club (1990), UNBEARABLY GOOD by the Junior League of Americus, GA (1987), and ATLANTA COOKS FOR COMPANY by the Junior Associates of the Atlanta Music Club. ATLANTA COOKNOTES, another favorite that I purchased at my niece Leslie’s wedding at Stone Mountain in 1989, and PERENNIALS by the Junior Service League of Gainesville, Georgia, published in 1984. The latter has especially lovely illustrations created by Owen Newman, a native of Atlanta, Georgia. There are some utterly decadent Vidalia onion recipes in this book! (If you aren’t familiar with Vidalia onions, which enjoy a limited season and come from Georgia, you are really missing something special. Vidalia onions are almost as sweet as apples and incredibly good—I buy as many as I can afford when they are available, then dice and freeze them to have on hand when they are no longer available in the supermarket).

Not long ago, I found several Savannah cookbooks, including the previously mentioned SAVANNAH SAMPLER COOKBOK. There is also SAVANNAH STYLE by the Savannah Junior League, originally published in 1980, but reprinted many times. It also holds the distinction of being awarded Southern Living’s Hall of Fame Award.

What makes a cookbook like SAVANNAH STYLE so special? Well, for openers—as noted in the introduction—the Junior League required that the recipes be uncomplicated, with fresh ingredients, avoiding recipes that generally call for a can of this or a box of that. They sifted through old family favorites and came up with over a thousand recipes. These were tested three times until finally a book of 435 recipes was published.

One final word about Georgia—if you ever happen to come across any books by Georgia-author Celestine Sibley—take my word for it; you’ll love them. Ms. Sibley was, for many years, a journalist and columnist for the Atlanta Constitution. Her book A PLACE CALLED SWEET APPLE is a combination story of country living and southern recipes. It is mainly the true story of Ms. Sibley’s love affair restoring a 140 year old abandoned log house. ****

When I say “Louisiana” what do you think of? New Orleans? Jambalaya and Crawfish pie? Mardi Gras? Jazz? All of the above?

Gwen Bristow, one of my favorite fiction writers, author of many southern and historical type novels, such as THE HANDSOME ROAD, and THIS SIDE OF GLORY, in an introduction to a cookbook written by Lena Richard (NEW ORLEANS COOK BOOK published in 1939) wrote “New Orleans has three seasons, summer, fog, and February. Not that we mind. For our thick blue summers and our thick silver winters produce the materials from which many generations have wrought our great achievement, the indoor art of good dining” Ms. Richard was famous, in the 30s and 40s, as a cateress in the City of New Orleans, whose specialty was Creole cooking.

Long before Lena Richard, the Times-Picayune Publishing Company (first in 1901) published THE ORIGINAL PICAYUNE CREOLE COOK BOOK. Its authors tell us, “…it was such cookery as this that won the hearts of beruffled gentlemen and crinolined ladies of the early nineteenth century and made them declare that never were there such cooks as in New Orleans”…and, “All through these pages one will catch glimpses of long-ago festivals and the graces and courtesies that made them charming, of the wit and the wisdom that flash back and forth across the mahogany of the bright eyes, now asleep for this many a year, of the gallant hearts that have long ceased to beat.”

Does the book live up to its introduction? Indeed, it does! Whether it’s a recipe for blackberry cordial or Pain Perdu (Lost Bread or Egg Toast—a kind of forerunner of our French Toast) – green tomato pickles or pecan pralines, watermelon rind preserves or a Gateau aux Figues (Fig layer cake), just about everything reminiscent o Old New Orleans can be found in this cookbook.

If, however, you are unable to locate a copy of the Original Picayune Creole Cookbook, here are a few of the current (or almost current) Louisiana titles to look for—LOUISIANA LEGACY, (1982) by the Thiodaux Service League. THE COTTON COUNTR7 COLLECTION by the Junior League of Monroe, Louisiana (first published in 1972 – it was in its 12 printing in 1984 and may have been reprinted since then- LOUISIANA SAMPLER “2” by the American Cancer society of New Orleans. DOWN THE BAYOU by the Bayou Civic Club of Larose, Louisiana, (1984)—or, how about JAMBALAYA by the Junior League of New Orleans (1981).

One of my favorite Louisiana cookbooks is A COOK’S TOUR OF SHREVEPORT, by the Junior League of Shreveport, published in 1964. Another nice cookbook is RECIPES AND REMINISCENCES, published by the Ursuline Academy Cooperative Club, in 1971. From RECIPES AND REMINISCES, “Sister Marie Madelein Hachard de St. Stanislaus of the New Orleans Community of Ursulines, wrote a number of letters to her father in Rouen, France, giving him what was to be a prophetic insight into the heart and personality of the City of New Orleans. She saw then, almost 250 years ago, what any visitor to the City will tell you today—that it is a charming city, gay and pleasure loving, owing a lot of its joie de vivre to its French background”

From RECIPES AND REMINISES, then, come recipes for Chicken Jambalaya and Creole Chicken, Boiled Catfish and Shrimp Orleans, authentic gumbos, pralines and desserts and hot breads, along with a wealth of history of New Orleans.
Yet another Louisiana cookbook that provides a wealth of information about its cuisine is PIRATS PANTRY, published by the Junior League of Lake Charles, originally published in 1976. The editors tell us “Southwest Louisiana is an area naturally conductive to tales of mystery and romance. A maze of moss-shadowed bayous, lush with vegetation, vines and the ghostline knees of bald cypress roots; of sinuous rivers and windswept marshes, it exudes mystery and the promise of hidden riches…Perhaps it was the ‘natural’ riches, coupled with super Creole cooking skills, which brought Lafitte back to the area time and again to savor the plump oysters, the rich shrimp creoles and the crab gumbos seasoned with spices and hot with pepper, and to relish the aroma of wild duck roasting over the coals…”

Not to be overlooked, Louisiana is also famous for TABASCO sauce! I like the Tabasco sauce story; it seems that John Marsh Avery discovered, on Avery Island in 1862, that beneath the brine springs that supplied the Confederate Army with salt, was a deposit of solid rock salt, about the size of Mount Everest! After the Civil war, when a man named Mcilhenny married Mary Eliza Avery, he combined a handful of hot peppers (first brought to the United States by veterans of the Mexican-American War of 1846-48) with the salt and first produced, in 1868, a sauce which he put up in used cologne bottles and sealed with green wax (the reason why, today, there is a little green band of paper around a bottle of Tabasco sauce). The name “Tabasco” was am Indian word meaning “damp earth”; it was the name of a river near Vera Cruz that Edmund McIlhenny, a New Orleans banker, liked when he was looking for something to call his hot pepper sauce. The reason Tabasco sauce is so distinctive is that red capsicum pods are ground with salt on Avery Island – and then placed in white-oak barrels to ferment.

Through you may think I was bad-mouthing Florida earlier, I must admit, some of my favorite community cookbooks are from this state. Let’s begin, then, with my absolute favorite, CROSS CREEK COOKERY, by Marjorie Kinnean Rawlings, published in 1942. The cookbook is written in the same chatty way as CROSS CREEK. For instance, prefacing a recipe for Baked Peanut Ham with Sherry, you may read Marjorie’s words “Florida or Georgia peanut-fed ham has, to my notion, the finest flavor of any ham. I admire the well-aged Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia Country hams, but I am not an addict. This is purely a matter of personal taste. I happen to prefer a moist juicy ham, to a dry one…”

You may find it difficult to obtain even a used copy of CROSS CREEK COOKERY, as it seems to be one of those rare cookbooks eagerly sought after by cookbook collectors. In 1983, Sally Morrison wrote—and Kate Barnes illustrated-a book titled CROSS CREEK KITCHENS (Triad Publishing Company, Gainesville.) Ms. Morrison was a tour guide for the Florida Park Service and once lived in the Rawlings’ farmhouse. At the time this book was published, she cooked and gardened there to show visitors what rural Florida was like sixty-something years ago.

CROSS CREEK KITCHENS provides a wide range of truly Southern recipes, ranging from barbecued herb-smoked turkey to lemon okra, ‘sopping shrimp, gingerbread waffles and okra pickles. There are jelly and preserve recipes made from fruits indigenous to Florida—such as Roselle Jelly and Roselle Relish. Roselle is the Florida version of a cranberry, an “old-timey” domestic plant, the authors tell us, that is a member of the cotton and okra families. While you might not find roselle wit which to make jelly, there is also a recipe for “George’s backhand Chutney” that uses common ingredients found everywhere. Like its predecessor, CROSS CREEK KITCHENS is written in a folksy, informal style that makes for good reading.

(*Sandy’s cooknote—if I remember correctly, Marjorie, although a diverse writer, never set out to write a cookbook, but CROSS CREEK was enormously popular in the early 1940s and many servicemen read it and wrote to Marjorie, asking for the recipes to go with the food she wrote about in CROSS CREEK. She obligingly created CROSS CREEK COOKERY.)

In the three years that I lived in North Miami Beach, I often went in search of cookbooks. At the time, there weren’t very many bookstores in the area (and NO Internet! No Amazon! No Alibris!) However, on the west coast of the state, near my mother’s home in Largo, Florida, which is near Tampa, I found some decently stocked bookshelves and even a few good cookbooks. Some of cookbooks purchased during those years included SEASONS IN THE SUN by the Lowe Art Museum in Coral Gables (1976), Jane Nickerson’s FLORIDA COOKBOOK by the University of Florida Press in 1973. Ms. Nickerson was a food columnist for various Florida newspapers. In her introduction to FLORIDA COOKBOOK, Nickerson writes, “Culinary traditions thrive here, too. In the peninsula stretching some 800 miles from Key West to Pensacola, many styles of fare may be savored—Deep South, Cuban, Jewish, Greek. They reflect the backgrounds of our settlers, the people who have moved to Florida over the past century and a half and have shared their cookery.

Economically and culturally, the northern half of Florida belonged to the traditional antebellum south of cotton plantations and slavery. Descents of slaves developed a repertory now called ‘soul food’ – fried fish and fried chicken, barbecued pork, hoecakes and egg bread, greens with fatback and sweet potato pone..”

Yet another regional cookbook titled fLORIDA HERITAGE COOKBOOK by Marina Polvay and Marilyn Fellman, published I 1976, comments on the diversity of Florida cuisine. Note the authors “From the croWn to the Panhandle, from the Heartland to Tampa Bay and to Palm Beach and Key West, Florida gastronomy is as varied and exciting as the Peninsula itself…The regional cooking of Florida reflects the diverse peoples who settled this narrow strip of real estate. Spaniards, Conches from the Bahamas, French, Minorcans, Greeks, Jews, Russians…Confederate soldiers all have left their gastronomic mark…”

There is a beautiful hard-covered cookbook titled SOME LIKE IT SOUTH, compiled by the Junior League of Orlando-Winter Park, first published in 1982—with utterly enchanting alligator illustrations by artist Jeni Bussett. SUGAR BEACH by the Junior Service League of Fort Walton Beach, 1984. GULFSHORE DELIGHTS by the Junior League of Ft Myers, also published in 1984 (a good year for community cookbooks). Another interesting older Ft Myers cookbooks is titled FORT MYERS COOKBOOK, published by The Lee Memorial Hospital Auxiliary in 1951. The older cookbook is done in that hand-written style that appears to have been popular in the 1940s and 1950s—each recipe was handwritten by the contributor. There is also THE GASPARILLA COOKBOOK by the Junior League of Tampa, first published in 1961 and since reprinted many times.

Another fine cookbook is FOOD FAVORITES OF ST AUGUSTINE, copyrighted 1973 and filled with historical information about this oldest city in the United States. This also makes for interesting reading (and will make you want to visit St Augustine, if you haven’t already).

Quite possibly my second-favorite Florida cookbook is KEY WEST COOKBOOK by the members of the Key West Woman’s Club in 1949. It, too, has handwritten recipes and illustrations, including Bess Truman’s recipe for Ozark Pudding. The Trumans’ Summer White House was in Key West. My copy is very worn and part of the spiral binding is missing. What amuses me most is a worn, almost illegible price tag of “20 cents”. I think it was found at a yard sale. Sometimes you may find the many different handwritten recipes a little off-putting in these older cookbooks; may I suggest, when you find a recipe you want to try, to copy it in your own handwriting or make a typed copy. It was in this particular cookbook that I found—and tried—a recipe for grouper with white wine, that became a family favorite. You never know when you will find a treasure, when you are reading old cookbooks!

Another acquisition from my Florida years is a book titled SUNNY SIDE UP by the Junior League of Ft Lauderdale, published in 1980, and GATOR COUNTRY COOKS by the Junior League of Gainesville. The latter was originally published in 1975. I bought my copy Easter weekend of 1980, while visiting my parents. (The reason I can tell you this is not because I have a fabulous memory, but rather, that I generally scribble on the first page of a cookbook when and where I bought it).

Another Florida cookbook is MIAMI SPICE by Steven Raichlen, published in 1993 by workman Publishing Company. This book focuses on the “new Florida cuisine.” It may be “new” Florida cuisine but I noticed that the author (who is a cooking teacher, food writer, syndicated columnist and lecturer) devoted several pages to Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and included Idella’s recipe for biscuits (Idella Parker was Ms. Rawlings long-time maid). MIAMI SPICE is one of the finest books about Florida cuisine that I have come across and I do recommend it.

END OF PART TWO

THAT’S WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THE SOUTH – PART ONE

Note: the following article was published in the Cookbook Collectors Exchange in the Jan/Feb, 1995 issue – I am reprinting it for the benefit of my faithful blog followers, but will attempt also to bring us up to date, from 1995 to 2010! – Sandy

When the idea first came to me, that I’d like to share with you some thoughts about my favorite southern cookbooks, I had misgivings. What on earth could I write about, I wondered, that hasn’t already been written—by famous southern writers with far better credentials than mine? And, indeed, what claim did I have to southern cooking, aside from having spent three years living in Florida, where I DID master the art of making crispy-crunchy perfect hush puppies to go with my husband’s equally perfectly-fried catfish? (We often had Friday night catfish with fries and hushpuppies). Besides, Florida hardly seems “southern” to me, despite its geographic locale, despite Marjorie Kinnan Rawling’s famous “Cross Creek Cookery.” (Please refer to my articles, posted on 5/19/11 “Cross Creek Cookery” and “Cross Creek Revisited”)

Florida today seems to be a mixed bag of culinary influences, sparked, no doubt, by the millions of Midwesterners who have retired to Florida—or the snowbirds; retirees who spend part of the year—the winter months—in Florida and the rest of the year in their primary residences, wherever they may be. My own parents were amongst the snowbirds for a few years, before finally selling their home in Ohio and retiring in Largo, Florida, near Tampa. Their neighbors came from a number of different states, including New York and from as far north as Canada. I do confess, I yearn for the Florida of years ago, the Florida that Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, one of my favorite authors, wrote about in “Cross Creek” and “Cross Creek Cookery”, of swamps and the Everglades, alligators and Key Lime Pie.’

However, what I CAN do, perhaps, is share with you some of the thoughts of those southern cookbook authors and tell you a bit about my own favorite southern cookbooks.

WHAT is southern cooking?

Bill Neal, in his wonderful book “BISCUITS, SPOONBREAD AND SWEET POTATO PIE” (Knopf Publishers, 1990) writes “…when outsiders ask ‘What is Southern cooking?’ I think they don’t look far south enough for answers. Our style is more similar to Mexican than to European cooking. I can’t imagine a southern kitchen without cornmeal and our breads begin with it.

Many of our dishes are European,” he continues. “Some passed directly into the tradition with little or no changes. Wine jellies, trifles, and fruitcakes are scarcely distinguishable from their eighteenth century British ancestors. Other European techniques are adapted to native ingredients: French tortes made with native pecans, crumpets made with grits, custard pies thickened with cornmeal. This hybrid cooking is the most intriguing to me; it reveals the ingenuity and creativity of the Southern cook combining Old World practices and New World foods…”
Neal continues, “The third major and most exotic influence is African. Our sweet potato biscuits, for example, are in the African tradition of using starchy tubers rather than milled cereal grains to make bread…they brought from their homelands techniques for working with sugar in a hot, humid climate which influenced the way we make candies and confections…”

What IS Southern cooking?

In a small booklet published by Culinary Arts Institute, “The Southern Cook Book of Fine Old Recipes”, the authors write “People think of the Southland as the place where the sun shines brighter, the breezes are gentler, the birds sing sweeter and the flowers are fairer…the natural geographic and climatic advantages of the different sections of the sunny south have played an important part in Dixie cookery. The fertile fields, plentiful fruit trees and waterways have each contributed bountifully. Every part of the Southland is individual and distinctive in its cookery. The “Creole Dish” of New Orleans has nothing to do with racial origin but rather indicates the use of red and green peppers, onions and garlic Oranges, grapefruit and avocados play an important part in Florida cookery. Maryland is famous for its fried chicken and its delicious sea food recipes. One thinks of Virginia, its hot breads and its sugar cured hams. Kentucky is known for its corn ‘likker’ and its flannel cakes. Only one thing is universally true: Every corner of the south is famous for its fine cookery.”

What is SOUTHERN cooking?

The introduction to yet another fine book Sarah Belk’s AROUND THE SOURHERN TABLE (Simon & Schuster publishers, 1991) rhapsodizes with “It’s no secret that the ingredients are the heart and soul of all great Southern cooking. After all, the South is home to juicy peaches and corn, gulf shrimp, black-eyed peas, the softest flour on earth, and crunchy pecans. Imagine (if you can) life without plump sweet potatoes, hominy grits, smoked country ham, oysters, green tomatoes, bourbon and the underestimated catfish”.

Sarah Belk writes, Mention the term “Southern cooking” to a non-Southerner and he or she will most likely think ‘Ah, yes, pecan pie, mint juleps, ham biscuits and those awful grits.’ And then there are those who think Southern food is only Cajun and Creole and to them, ‘Southern food’ means jambalaya, gumbo, crawfish etouffee and blackened redfish.”

She continues, “Southern cooking is also the result of geography. This diverse region includes three major mountain ranges, over 3,000 miles of coastline, one of the most important rivers in the country and the largest estuary in the world. Overall, the south has a temperate climate and therefore a long growing season, making it one of the most prolific food-producing regions in the country. But Southern agriculture is more than just pork, peaches, and pecans; farmers are branching out into new areas and cultivating jalapeno peppers and kiwi fruit, raising quail, ‘farming crawfish, catfish and shrimp, making goat cheese and nursing vinifera*grapes not just for juice but for dry, European style wines –through humid summers and cold winters”.

(*Sandy’s cooknote – Vinifera refers to hybrid grapes)

Belk adds, “The South is a place where good manners, going to church and family life are still important. Chiggers, coon dogs and chewin’ tobacco are alive and well, but so are fancy debutante balls, full-dress fox hunts and white-columned homes with formal gardens.”

In a beautiful book titled SOUTHERN MEMORIES, by Natalie Dupree, the author writes “To many Americans, all of the area south of the Mason-Dixon lime and east of Texas makes up a vast slightly mysterious, vaguely rural, and steadfastly folksy place called “The South”. In fact, the South is larger than Europe and as diverse, a loose conglomeration of distinctly differing regions. My south is not the Gulf south, although it is a south too, or all of the counties of Florida, Texas, and Louisiana, where Southerners also live and breathe in batches, as they do in Illinois and Indiana. My South ranges from the Eastern Shore of Maryland through the District of Columbia and Virginia, taking in the Carolinas, weaving its way around West Virginia, embracing Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama and Mississippi…” She continues, “My South encompasses the rice fields I helped seed from a small plane, the grits I saw ground from dried corn in a small mill next to a powerful stream, the small towns and cities of Covington and Social Circle, Georgia, where I made my home and started my first restaurant…”

And what is Southern COOKING?

Join me, won’t you, while we make that discovery?

One of the earliest Southern Community cookbooks is the best selling RIVER ROAD RECIPES, first published in 1959 by the Junior League of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. RIVER ROAD RECIPES holds the distinction of being the “best-selling” community cookbook of all time! New York Times food editor Bryan Miller wrote “If there were Community cookbook Academy Awards, the Oscar for best performance would go hands down to RIVER ROAD RECIPES. RIVER ROAD RECIPES: A SECOND HELPING was published in 1976 and has provided the Baton Rouge community projects with over two million dollars in profits.

In second place is the ever-popular CHARLESTON RECEIPTS which, when originally published in 1950, sold for $2.50 and has since gone through at least fifteen printings*. A new copy, today, costs about $19.00 (You can often find a copy for a great deal less. Amazon has the cookbook for sale, new, for $13.57 and pre-owned copies starting at $6.21). I am leafing through CHARLESTON RECEIPTS as I write this, trying to decipher what it IS about the book that makes it so special. Is it the poems or the drawings or the recipes…ah, yes, the recipes….for here you will find cheese straws and cheese wafers, a simple but tasty mock pate de foie gras canapé, soups, gumbos, chowders, cocktail sauces, fried tomatoes, hot breads. The muffins and rolls melt in your mouth, the waffles and biscuits hit the spot. Oh, hear the table-call of the South, “Take two! And butter them while they’re hot!”

When I think of CHARLESTON RECEIPTS, I am reminded of my friend Adrianne’s copy, which is battered and stained and USED. A good cookbook should, after all, be used.

(*Sandy’s cooknote: CHARLESTON RECEIPTS is now up to twenty-three printings.)

Yet again we come back to the original question—just what IS Southern Cooking? Why is Southern cooking so distinctive from, for example, Midwestern cuisine or that of the Southwest? Why does Southern cooking outshine every other geographic area of the United States?

Perhaps the answer lies in the past, in hundreds of years of southern hostesses, proud of their reputations for hospitality, cherishing and passing from mother-to-daughter the family’s treasured recipes.

In SAVANNAH SAMPLER COOKBOOK, (1978), written by Margaret Wayt DeBolt, the author writes, “The receipts of the plantation period, the gumbos and beaten biscuits, barbecues and pecan pies, have been passed among the generations as carefully as the family silver and china once hidden from the soldiers who marched through Savannah with General William Tecumseh Sherman. They have been rediscovered with delight by tourists and those who have c hosen to make the New South their home.”

Incidentally SAVANNAH SAMPLER COOKBOOK contains quotations from an equally fascinating earlier volume dedicated to Savannah cooking, titled THE SAVANNAH COOK BOOK, by Harriet Ross Colquitt, originally published in 1933 and reprinted some years later by the Cookbook Collectors Library. The latter had the good fortune to have an introduction written by Ogden Nash, the poet. I, luckily, found a reprint copy while visiting a cookbook store in Portland, Oregon.
Cookbooks dedicated to Southern cuisine fall into one of two categories; there are regional cookbooks representing one state (or city) and there are cookbooks presenting an overall view of Southern cooking. A good example of the latter was a book titled, SOUTHERN COOKING, by Mrs. S.R. Dull. Mrs. Dull wrote a weekly page in the magazine section of the Atlanta Journal for twenty years, culminating in a cookbook of her own which was originally published in 1928. The author explains, “Southern Cooking is just what the title implies. It is a compilation of recipes and information gleaned from over forty years of experience in the practical study and application of cooking in the Southern way…”
In the introduction, written by her son, Mrs. Dull is described as a woman born shortly before the close of the War Between The States (the Civil War). “Like most women of the South at that time, she learned early that she would have to work hard for anything she got or wanted…”

It seems that Mrs. Dull’s own mother died when she was very young; when Mrs. Dull was still a young woman with six children, her husband’s health vegan to fail so she turned row ha she knew best—cooking—and began to furnish things to eat for the people of Atlanta. She took special orders for parties, dances, and receptions, and her reputation grew. Next, she began editing the food page of the Sunday Magazine of the Atlanta Journal. Interestingly, the reporter assigned to oversee the cooking section was Margaret Mitchell, author of GONE WITH THE WIND who worked with Mrs. Dull for several years. It was because of the many homemakers who saved the recipes—and repeatedly requested copies of lost recipes—that the idea for a cookbook was born. SOUTHERN COOKING, copyrighted in 1941 by Mrs. Dull, is a big, thick, cookbook, chock-full of recipes. It was reprinted in 1968 by Grosset & Dunlap and copies can still be found. (In a soft cover reprint by Grosset & Dunlap, in the Foreword, Mrs. Dull states that SOUTHERN COOKING was born in 1928. (I really thought I had an original copy of the cookbook but so far my searching has left me empty-handed. I have a hard cover copy of SOUTHERN COOKING published by Grosset & Dunlap, and a soft covered edition, also by Grosset & Dunlap, that was printed in 1977. Ever since we moved in 2008, I am often unable to find a particular cookbook).

Yet another cookbook whose author was a food editor for the very same Atlanta Journal is Grace Hartley, whose book GRACE HARTLEY’S SOUTHERN COOKBOOK was originally published in 1976 and reprinted in 1991. This, too, makes interesting reading. Both books are general, encompassing numerous categories.

Recently, I came across yet another cookbook written by a southern newspaper columnist, Mildred Evans Warren, whose column THE COOK’S NOOK appeared in the Houston Home Journal in Perry, Georgia. She tells us, in the forward, that “picking up one’s pen and writing a cookbook presents problems but we’ll solve them as we go along. There is always a ‘reason and rhyme’ for everything and as for mu cookbook, it’s like Topsy, ‘it just grew.’” You’ll find Mrs Warren’s book, THE ART OF SOUTHERN COOKING interesting reading also.

Two of my all time favorite Southern Cookbooks are CROSS CREEK COOKERY, by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, published in 1942, and another equally fine cookbook titled THE SOUTHERN COOKBOOK by Marion Brown, published in 1951 (no relation to the “other” Browns, Cora, Rose & Bob, as far as I know). Marion Brown was kind of a forerunner to the “BEST OF—“ books by Quail Ridge Press. Writes Ms. Brown, in the preface to her book, “When I first started the adventure of collecting, testing and selecting recipes for it, the first step was to review an extensive collection of North Carolina recipes and cookery memorabilia which had been enlarged after my preparation of SOUP TO NUTS for the woman’s Auxillary of the Episcopal Church in Burlington. Then I started to unearth local and regional cookbooks in all the Soutehrn States as a step towards making a truly “All Southern” selection of the best recipes of the South. She then explains how she enlisted the aid of the Chambers of Commerce in every Southern State and accumulated some two hundred cookbooks which were the nucleus of HER cookbook. She even received treasured old manuscript cookbooks, one of which went west in a covered wagon, but returned, generations later, on a train.

THE SOUTHERN COOKBOOK is an immensely interesting, readable cookbook—you know, the kind you like to curl up with in a comfy chair on a dismal rainy day?

Preceding CROSS CREEK COOKERY and Marion Brown’s THE SOUTHERN COOKBOOK by many generations were a number of nineteenth century cookbooks which, not accidentally, were written by Southern cooks. THE VIRGINIA HOUSEWIFE, THE KENTUCKY HOUSEWIFE and THE CAROLINA HOUSEWIFE were all authored by southern ladies.

Mary Randolph, author of THE VIRGINIA HOUSEWIFE, published in 1824, claimed to e related by marriage to Thomas Jefferson. Lettice Bryan’s cookbook THE KENTUCKY HOUSEWIFE was published in 1839. THE CAROLINA HOUSEWIFE was published in 1847 by southern hostess Sarah Rutledge. A few decades later, Mrs. Peter A. White published THE KENTUCKY COOKERY BOOK; A BOOK FOR HOUSEWIVES. And yet another book, HOUSEKEEPING IN OLD VIRFINIA, was edited b Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1879.

(*Sandy’s cooknote: the last time I offered dates and titles for early cookbooks, I was taken to task by a reader for having offered some misinformation. I have NO idea whose book was first, aside from Amelia Simmons and I don’t think she was a southern cook).

About a century later, Marion Flexner would author a book titled OUT OF KENTUCKY KITCHENS (1945) proving that the subject of southern cookery has, if nothing else, staying power.

END OF PART ONE

THE ORIGINS OF WEIRD RECIPES

You have to stop and wonder, sometimes, about the origins of some recipes. I can imagine how some of them might have come about—I can picture myself making a chocolate cake and suddenly realizing I don’t have enough eggs or oil. I might think hmmmm, mayonnaise is made up from oil and eggs—I wonder if I can just substitute half a cup of mayo for the missing oil and eggs—and voila! I’ve just created chocolate mayonnaise cake. This makes perfect sense to me. And in case you are wondering, the recipe is very good. Equally delicious are chocolate mayonnaise cookies—I took them to work a few times and was almost embarrassed to divulge the recipe. What could be easier? Chocolate cake mix, some mayonnaise and one or two other ingredients.

But sauerkraut cake? Somehow I just can’t picture the lady of the kitchen thinking, gee, I don’t have any coconut for my coconut cake—maybe I’ll just open up a can of sauerkraut and rinse it off and no one will ever know it isn’t coconut…I certainly wouldn’t risk ruining a recipe I had already started, with an ingredient that is so totally off the wall. And what about avocado cake or pinto bean cake? What were those culinary artists THINKING?

You have to wonder about tomato soup cake too (granted, it’s delicious) – but whose idea was it to throw in a can of tomato soup to make a spice cake? Was it someone experimenting in the Campbell Soup Kitchen, or a housewife with a little too much time on her hands? (No one seems to know the origin of tomato soup cake although it does appear in some of the older Campbell Soup cookbooks. Note: the oldest reference I have found for tomato soup cake is in a 1940 cookbook.

There are a lot of off the wall (i.e. weird) recipes. Enough that in 1977 a local (Southern California) radio show host, Geoff Edwards of KMPC in Los Angeles, put together a cookbook of wacky recipes and titled it “YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING COOKBOOK”. Listeners sent in the recipes. All of the above were included—although I have seen them all elsewhere—and then some. There is even an authentic recipe for stuffed Roast Camel. Geoff said it was served sometimes at Bedouin weddings. Ew, Ew. That ranks right up there with Spam mousse, as far as I am concerned. I’ll take your word for it that it’s delicious. (Per Google, Tang is a sweet and tangy, orange-flavored, non-carbonated soft drink can be found at Tops, Wegmans, Walgreens, CVS, Rite Aide, Walmart, and Target—so it’s STILL available.)

As for tomato soup cake AKA Mystery Cake this appears to have originated in the 1920s when cake was usually topped off with Philadelphia Cream Cheese frosting and we all have to admit, that’s pretty good frosting. I especially like the cream cheese frosting with carrot cake—and although most of us have become accustomed to carrot cake and zucchini bread—don’t you have to wonder whose idea it was to toss these things into cake batter in the first place? That was before we took up gardening and discovered how zucchini can take over a back yard garden patch and your life. You have to DO something with all those squashes—friends and neighbors will only take so many zucchinis even if you resort to leaving them wrapped in a baby blanket on their front porch. (I once delivered a large zucchini wrapped in a baby blanket to a co-worker). And whether you make zucchini bread or cake – either, I guarantee, is delicious. One of my favs is a chocolate zucchini cake and as a result of the zucchinis taking over our back yard, I began collecting zucchini recipes until I had filled a recipe box with them.

Do you suppose that the lady (or man) of the kitchen was thinking – well, carrot or zucchini worked pretty good in a cake – I wonder what will happen if I try adding red beets – and invented Harvard Beet Spice Cake? Or was it just some exhausted mother tired of trying to talk her kids into eating their veggies? I know how that can go. I raised four picky eaters. They got it from their father, King of the Picky Eaters. I often resorted to subterfuge. I dearly loved a fish almondine recipe that my penpal Betsy, in Michigan, once sent to me. The fish was topped off with slivered or shaved almonds. No one in my household would eat almonds in a “food dish” though. So I blended the almonds with bread crumbs and used it as a topping over the fish. They never knew.

So, do you suppose that the original creator of pink beet cake was some harried housewife, exhausted from trying to get her kids to eat their veggies, so she dumped a can of red beets into the cake batter and thought to herself hmmm, there’s more than one way to…. Et al.

And every time I think I have said all I need to say on a subject, I happen to come across something else. While sorting through an overflow of cookbooks (I am always sorting through an overflow of cookbooks), I found one that looked interesting and hadn’t read…a book titled CARAMEL KNOWLEDGE by Al Sicherman. CARAMEL KNOWLEDGE was published in 1988 by Harper & Row.

The author joined the Minneapolis Star & Tribune in 1968. A copy editor since 1981, Siherman has been writing articles for the food section of the Star & Tribune. Mr. Sicherman is a kindred spirit, the kind of person who ALSO wondered about pinto beans and avocadoes turning up in your cake batter. He wrote a piece called “Things that go bump in the Oven” and speculated how Catherine Hanley ever came up with the Tunnel of Fudge Cake recipe—he even called her up to ask—and he wonders about things like Impossible Pies (which we all know and love). Well, all of us who are well versed in, and collect the Pillsbury Bake-Off books, know the Tunnel of Fudge story and it appears that Impossible Pies were an accident, created by some unknown person.

(I thought the first Impossible Pie was an impossible coconut pie—the recipe appeared in a 1974 Cheviot (Ohio) PTA cookbook that my sister Becky was involved in creating. Here’s what I uncovered sleuthing on Google:

The origins of Impossible Pie (aka mystery pie, coconut amazing pie) are sketchy at best. A survey of newspaper/magazine articles suggests this recipe originated in the south (where coconut custard pies are popular). It was “discovered” by General Mills (Bisquick) and General Foods, who capitalized on the opportunity to promote their products. Corporate recipes surfaced in the mid-1970s. There are conflicting reports about the dates of introduction. The earliest recipe we have on file was published in 1968. None of the ingredients are name-brand.
This article sums up the situation best:

“Amazing. Mysterious. It could be none other than Impossible Pie, one of the most successful corporate recipe projects in the U.S. food-marketing history. Versions of Impossible Pie were also named Mystery Pie or Amazing Coconut Pie. By any name, though, Americans took to the easy recipe that is adaptable for making both sweet dessert pies and savory meat, vegetable and cheese pies. Back when quiche was trendy, the Impossible Pie formula called for ingredients similar to those for quiche yet eliminated the need to make a separate pastry crust…Not one but two huge food corporations benefited by popularizing the simple recipe formula for the Impossible Pie mixtures: the two big “Generals.” One was the Minneapolis-based General Mills, home of mythical Betty Crocker and maker of Bisquick all-purpose baking mix. The other was General Foods of White Plains, N.Y., marketer of Angel Flake processed coconut…The real mystery: Where did this recipe originate? We know the two “Generals” took a basic formula and then developed variations to showcase their respective products. Lisa Van Riper, spokeswoman for Kraft General Foods, said the company’s well-advertised recipe for Amazing Coconut Pie, “was developed as a result of a creative adaptation of the Bisquick Impossible Pies. We took a Bisquick Impossible Pie and did a creative twist by adding coconut, raisins and some other things. That was developed in June 1976 by our test-kitchen’s task force from a recipe submitted by various sources. Essentially that source was the Bisquick Impossible Pie. The Amazing Coconut Pie recipe also forms its own crust–with the baking mix sinking to the bottom of a custard mixture–and has been used ever since 1976, according to Van Riper. General Mills’ Marcia Copeland, director of Betty Crocker foods and publications, recalls that “we first saw the recipe for (crustless) coconut custard pies in Southern community cookbooks.” So it was a grass-roots recipe first, origin unknown. Some very old community cookbooks contain pie recipes that make their own crusts just from flour; others call for homemade biscuit mix. Copeland said that the Impossible Pie phenomenon lasted from the late 1970s through the 80s…

And now you know the rest of the story. But let me add that I have friends who are still making impossible pies. Last year, I copied a bunch of the recipes and sent them to a girlfriend.

Back to CARAMEL KNOWLEDGE: Sicherman asked “Did you ever wonder, when you were eating a piece of bread, how in the world anybody figured out what yeast would do what it does in there? Or have you ever wondered what caveman reasoned that smashing a chicken egg into some other stuff would be anything but peculiar? (or how many times he did it before it occurred to him to remove the shell?)…”

Now this opens an entirely new vista: I haven’t been worrying about eggs and yeast, having been focused on strange things in my cake batter, but you get the picture.

And then there are all sorts of other peculiar things like mock apple pie, being made from Ritz crackers –another topic for another day. (See my article title “Mock Apple Pie and other Foodie Wannabees” posted on 2/6/11)

If you want to try some of these recipes, here goes:

To make IMPOSSIBLE COCONUT PIE
2 CUPS milk
¼ cup butter or margarine
1½ tsp vanilla extract
4 eggs
1 cup flaked or shredded coconut
¾ cup sugar
½ cup Bisquick baking mix

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease pie plate, 9×1¼ x 1½ inches. Place all ingredients in blender container. Cover and blend on high 15 seconds. Pour into pie plate. Bake until knife inserted in center comes out clean, 50 to 55 minutes. Cool.

One of my favorite Impossible pies is the pumpkin one – and since it’s just a few weeks until Thanksgiving, let me share this one with you too:

TO MAKE IMPOSSIBLE PUMPKIN PIE

1 CAN (16 OZ) pumpkin
1 can (13 oz) evaporated milk
2 TSP butter or margarine, softened
2 eggs
¾ cup sugar
½ cup Bisquick Baking mix
2½ tsp pumpkin pie spice
2 tsp vanilla extract

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease pie plate, 9×1¼ x 1½ inches. Beat all ingredients 1 minute in blender on high, or 2 minutes with hand beater. Pour into plate. Bake until knife inserted in center comes out clean, 50-55 minutes.

Zucchini Chocolate Cake

2 cups flour
1 tsp EACH baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon,
1l2 tsp each nutmeg and salt
1/4 cup cocoa
3 eggs
1 tsp each vanilla extract and grated orange peel
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup canola oil
3/4 cup buttermilk
2 cups shredded unpeeled zucchini (3 or 4)
1 cup walnuts or pecans

Use shredded raw or pureed cooked zucchini (gives a finer texture) Preheat oven 350.
Stir together flour, baking powder, baking soda, spices and cocoa and set aside.
In large bowl beat eggs very light. Gradually add sugar and beat until fluffy and pale ivory in color. Slowly beat in oil.

Stir in flour mixture alternately with buttermilk and zucchini. Blend well. Add nuts (if using). Put into sheet cake pan or 2 9″ layer cake pans. Bake 350 40-45 minutes for layers, 1 hr for sheet. Layers: fill and frost with icing. Sheet cake: while warm drizzle with orange glaze.

GLAZE: Stir in bowl, 1 cup powdered sugar, 5 tsp orange juice, 1 tsp shredded orange peel and 1 TBSP hot melted butter.

AL SICHERMAN’S SAUERKRAUT FUDGE CAKE (requires 10” tube pan)

2/3 cup sauerkraut
2¼ cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2/3 cup butter or margarine
1½ cups granulated sugar
2 eggs
9 oz dairy sour cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup water
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

PENUCHE GLAZE:
¼ CUP BUTTER
½ CUP BROWN SUGAR
2 TBSP HOT MILK
¾ CUP SIFTED POWDERED SUGAR

Thoroughly grease a10” tube pan. Cut a ring of brown paper to fit the bottom of the pan and grease that, too. (*if you don’t have any brown paper, I think parchment paper will work just as well)

Drain and rinse the sauerkraut and snip it into very small pieces.

Sift together flour, baking powder and baking soda, salt and cocoa. Set aside.
Cream butter and sugar until fluffy and add eggs one at a time beating well after each addition. Beat in the sour cream and vanilla.

Alternately add dry ingredients and water to the butter mixture, stirring after each addition and beginning and ending with the dry ingredients Fold in sauerkraut and chocolate chips.

Turn into prepared pan and bake at 350 degrees 55 minutes to an hour, or until cake is springy. (Toothpick test won’t work). Remove from oven, cool 10 minutes; loosen cake from sides of pan with knife and invert on serving plate. Peel paper from the top.

Prepare glaze; melt butter and brown sugar together. Boil 1 minute or until slightly thickened. Cool 10 minutes, then beat in hot milk. Add sifted powdered (confectioners) sugar, stirring until glaze consistency. Drizzle over slightly warm cake.

QUICK CHOCOLATE COOKIES

1 PKG chocolate cake mix, 2 layer size
1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips
2 eggs
½ cup Miracle Whip dressing
½ cup chopped walnuts

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed until blended. Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto greased cookie sheets* Bake 10-23 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. Makes 4 dozen.

(*Sandy’s cooknote: I’ve said this many times. I don’t grease cookie sheets anymore. I use parchment paper, cut to fit the cookie sheets and you can use it REPEATEDLY. It works much better than greasing the cookie sheets).

PINTO BEAN CAKE

• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1 egg
• 2 cups cooked pinto beans, mashed
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup golden raisins
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans
• 2 cups diced apple without peel

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Grease one 9 or 10 inch tube pan.
2. Cream butter or margarine and sugar together. Add the beaten egg and mix well. Stir in the mashed cooked beans and the vanilla.
3. Sift the flour, baking soda, salt, ground cinnamon, ground cloves, and ground allspice together. Add the chopped pecans, golden raisins, and the diced apples to the flour mixture. Stir to coat. Pour flour mixture into the creamed mixture and stir until just combined. Pour batter into the prepared pan.
4. Bake at 375 degrees F (190 degrees C) for 45 minutes. Dribble with a simple confectioner’s sugar icing and garnish with candied cherries and pecan halves, if desired.

Chocolate Sauerkraut Cake

¾ cup sauerkraut drained and chopped
1 ½ cups sugar
½ cup butter
3 eggs
1 tsp. pure vanilla
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
1 cup water
½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

1. Sift all dry ingredients together. Cream sugar, butter and vanilla. Beat eggs in one at a time.
2. Add dry ingredients to creamed mixture alternately with water.
3. Add sauerkraut mix thoroughly.
4. Pour into greased pan or pans.
5. Bake 30 to 40 minutes until cake tests done.
6. Frost

CHOCOLATE MAYONNAISE CAKE

Ingredients:
• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup cocoa
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup mayonnaise
• 1 cup water
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Sift together the flour, cocoa, soda and salt. Cream together the sugar, mayonnaise, water and vanilla. Add dry ingredients to the creamed mixture; stir until well blended. Pour batter into greased and floured layer cake pans (or a 9- x 13-inch pan). Bake at 350°F. for about 25 minutes.

RED BEET CAKE
1 3/4 c. flour
1 c. oil
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 c. sugar
1 1/2 c. pureed cooked fresh beets (if using canned, drain and mash.)
6 tbsp. carob or chocolate
1 tsp. vanilla

Mix flour, soda, salt and set aside. Combine sugar, eggs, oil in mixing bowl. Beat in beets, chocolate and vanilla. Gradually add dry ingredients, beating well. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.
This is an excellent cake. Healthy too. Very moist.

Chocolate Avocado Cake

3 cups all-purpose flour
6 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 cups brown sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup soft avocado, well mashed, about 1 medium avocado
2 cups water
2 Tablespoons white vinegar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour two 8 or 9-inch tins. Set aside. Sift together all of the dry ingredients except the sugar. Set that aside too. Mix all the wet ingredients together in a bowl, including the super mashed avocado. Add sugar into the wet mix and stir. Mix the wet with the dry all at once, and beat with a whisk (by hand) until smooth.

Pour batter into greased cake tins. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Let cakes cool in pan for 15 minutes, then turn out onto cooling racks to cool completely before icing.
**
I read about a tomato soup cake “from Michigan” which made me wonder –DID tomato soup cake originate in Michigan? I turned to two of my favorite resources, AMERICA COOKS by the Browns, published in 1940 – attributes Tomato Soup Cake to Michigan, as do Larry Massie & Priscilla Massie in their fantastic cookbook “WALNUT PICKLES AND WATERMELON CAKE” which does indeed offer a recipe for tomato soup cake. Their recipe comes from a 1945 Kalamazoo community cookbook. Here is that recipe for tomato soup cake:

1 cup sugar
2 TSP shortening
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
1 can tomato soup
1 ½ cups flour
1 cup raisins
½ cup chopped nut meats

Cream shortening, add sugar, then tomato soup, then flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt and soda. Then add raisins and nuts and bake in a loaf pan for about 50 minutes at 350 degrees.

And here is the Tomato Soup cake recipe in the Browns cookbook, “AMERICA COOKS”:

½ cup shortening
1 cup sugar
1 cup tomato soup, undiluted
1 tsp baking powder
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp cloves
1 tsp nutmeg
1 cup raisins
1 cup chopped walnuts

Blend the shortening with sugar. Stir baking soda into tomato soup and add to shortening/sugar mixture. Sift dry ingredients and add the mixture. Stir in raisins and walnuts. Pour into greased and floured 13” by 9” cake pan and bake at 350 degrees for 50-60 minutes. Frost with a Cream Cheese Frosting.

To make the Browns’ Frosting for tomato soup cake:

1 pkg cream cheese
1 TBSP butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla extract
Powdered sugar to spreading consistency

The Browns note that the shortening they used was Crisco and one entire can of Campbell’s condensed and undiluted tomato soup equaled one cup. Now this may be a minor discrepancy in today’s can of Campbell’s tomato soup, inasmuch as all of the soups measure a net weight of 10 ¾ ounces…but when you pour the contents of a cream soup into a glass measuring cup—it’s just a shade over 8 ounces. What to do? Use a can of tomato soup and go ahead with the recipe. I don’t think it will make any difference. If you are a purist, scoop away anything over one cup.

Happy Cooking!

Sandy

“MOUNTAIN COUNTRY COOKING/A GATHERING OF THE BEST RECIPES FROM THE SMOKIES TO THE BLUE RIDGE”

“MOUNTAIN COUNTRY COOKING/A GATHERING OF THE BEST RECIPES FROM THE SMOKIES TO THE BLUE RIDGE” is my kind of cookbook—and I had the good fortune to review it for the Cookbook Collectors Exchange back in 1998. So why am I bringing it up now? Well, you may have discovered by now that I like to talk/write about favorite cookbooks in my collection, whether or not they are brand-new. I like to check the usual sources, such as Amazon.com or Alibris.com to see if the book is available, just in case you want to buy a copy for your own.

“Stack pies and stack cakes, shuck beans and soup beans, cushaw* pie and poke sallet: These are Appalachian foods” we read in the introduction to “MOUNTAIN COUNTRY COOKING”. “From Georgia to Maryland and including the Shenandoah, Blue Ridge, Great Smoky, Cumberland and Allegheny Mountains,” writes the author, “the Appalachian Mountain system is a chain with deep valleys, small farms, and rugged people…The food of Appalachia is based on staples—sorghum, dumplings, beans, pork, greens, corn and potatoes. With these staples we prepare specialties such as Corn Bread Salad, Buttermilk Biscuits and Sausage Gravy, Tomato Dumplings, Pinto Bean Pie, and Corn Relish…”

(*Sandy’s Cooknote – Cushaw is a kind of white squash; it is shaped like yellow crookneck summer squash, only larger. They ripen in the fall with pumpkins and can weigh from 10 to 25 lbs. I have never seen one but I sure would love to get my hands on one of these!)

(I’d like to interject that my mother in law came from Blue Ridge, West Virginia to join her husband in Cincinnati, and I, as a new bride in1958, learned how to make Buttermilk Biscuits and Sausage gravy, Corn Bread and Beans—my four sons grew up on these foods.)

Mr. Sohn says that some regional dishes of Appalachia are virtually unknown elsewhere in the United states (unless, perhaps, you had a mother in law like mine who grew up in West Virginia?)

Although I have been to the Great Smoky mountains only twice in my life, one of those a brief honeymoon, the region is one I have come to appreciate and love through the books of Janice Holt Giles (also a Kentuckian, like Mark,) whose books “The Enduring Hills”, “Tara’s Healing,” and “Miss Willie” touched my heart. The more contemporary Lee Smith, author of “Oral History”, “Fair and Tender Ladies” and “Black Mountain Breakdown” also brought this part of the country to life. Some, like Janice Holt Giles’ novels, were books I began reading and collecting when I was in my twenties. Later on, as I began collecting cookbooks (and specializing in anything I would consider Americana.) I found so much more depth to what we consider regional Americana in cookbooks, such as “Mountain Country Cooking”.
“The recipes and stories here,” writes Mr. Sohn, “are a synthesis of those living, creative and resourceful Appalachian cooks of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s who would not let you leave the kitchen until you had eaten…”

“Appalachia is enjoying a rebirth of its native food legacy,” says the author, “With “Mountain Country Cooking” you can be a part of a fast-moving renaissance of authentic food and honest home cooking…many Appalachian foods are strikingly different from foods of the South. Southern food includes Louisiana Bayou, Creole Plantation, Ozark, Florida-Spanish and low Charleston. Southern coastal regions are as diverse as the Maryland Shore and the Gulf coast. Southern Food also includes the foods of religious groups such as the Kentucky Shakers and North Carolina Moravians. (I wrote about southern cookbooks for the Cookbook Collectors Exchange, in 1995, and also about the foods of religious groups, such as the Shakers, for the Cookbook Collectors Exchange, in a series of articles titled “The Common Thread” in 1996-97.)
Of “Mountain Country Cooking,” famed cookbook writer John Egerton, author of “Southern Food: At Home, on the Road, In History” (who presents us with the Foreword to “Mountain Country Cooking”) points out that one of the great standard cookbooks of the South was “SOUTHERN COOKING” written in 1928 by Henrietta Stanley Dull, who for many years was a food editor for the Atlanta Journal. Mr. Egerton says that Mark Sohn’s “Mountain Country Cooking” reminds him strongly of Mr. Dull’s “Southern Cooking”. He explains that it’s more than a cookbook, it’s an encyclopedia, a wealth of information about food in the Appalachian mountain region. Egerton says it’s one thing to compile a book of recipes and something else to assemble and organize a comprehensive body of knowledge and put it together into a readable and usable form.
I think this is why cookbooks such as Mark Sohn’s “Mountain Country Cooking” are amongst my favorites—not only do you have a comprehensive collection of fine recipes, you also get some fascinating lessons in what makes American cuisine so diverse.

You will love the format of “Mountain Country Cooking” as well as Mr. Sohn’s relaxed style of writing; he introduces recipes in much the same way that I write down recipes for friends and penpals, informally, as you would for a friend of neighbor—but Mr. Sohn also provides healthy choice alternatives and even describes the degree of difficulty in preparing each dish. Ingredients are listed separately along the margin, a nice feature, I think, so you can see at a glance exactly what is needed to make the dish.

Who is Mark Sohn? He is a resident of Pikeville, Kentucky, who grew up in an Oregon family with four brothers, who all learned to cook. Unlike many 90s families, they not only sat down and ate together, but discussed food in detail at every meal. Some years ago, Mark’s family spent some time in France where an ad for a 5- week cooking class caught his eye. A psychology professor at Pikeville College, Sohn was actually looking for a way to serve others in some way, as his wife, son, and daughter acquainted themselves with French culture.

Later on, the editor of Pikeville’s Appalachian News Express asked him to write a food column. Initially, he wrote articles about his family’s German food heritage. His weekly column “Class Cooking” led to his first cookbook “Southern Cooking” and a TV show, “Classic Cooking”.

Mr. Sohn decided to write “Mountain Country Cooking” when he discovered there wasn’t anything else in print that combined recipes of the area with a travelogue of history and geography of the southern Appalachian region.
Perhaps some of the ground-breaking was done when he taught, in the mid 1970s, a Pikeville College course called Appalachian Education. Mr. Sohn says that in these classes, about 500 students joined him in the study of local education history and in the writing of an ethnographic research paper. This work culminated in a jointly written book “Education in Appalachia’s Central Highlands”. As part of the class, students and their families and friends celebrated Appalachian foods with a potluck heritage dinner. Mark Sohn says it was at these dinners that he learned to appreciate Soup Beans – which to Appalachians is pinto beans. While I grew up with German-Hungarian grandparents, thinking of “bean soup” as the one made with great northern white beans and a hambone, to the Smith family I married into, bean soup was pinto beans cooked all day with a hunk of salt pork and then served with cornbread and chopped raw onion. You can’t imagine how dumbfounded I was, the first time I watched my soon-to-become-husband crumble cornbread on a plate, then cover it with scoops of beans and stock—and THEN top it off with chopped onion!

As you can imagine from my frequent references to previous articles written for the Cookbook Collectors Exchange (no longer publishing), “Mountain Country Home” strikes close to home for this cookbook collector/writer. Within its pages are many of the recipe I dearly love, whether pan-fried chicken or cornbread, fried green tomatoes or—oh yes, boiled green beans! I suggest you try Pinto Bean cakes, which is sort of like a croquette, and utterly delectable, or barbequed baby back ribs, Appalachian style.

Another unique feature of “MOUNTAIN COUNTRY COOKING” is a glossary of food terms and expressions, followed by Mail Order sources and for readers who love a bibliography, there is a substantial listing of the books Mr. Sohn used for reference as he wrote Mountain Country Cooking.

“Mountain Country Cooking” was published in 1996 and can be found on Amazon.com (21 pre-owned copies at $10.95 & up, or a new copy is $39.49 and Amazon has four in stock. AbeBooks.com has one copy for $19.75 plus $3.99 shipping while Alibris.com has pre-owned copies starting at $10.95.

Mark F. Sohn, Ph.D., is a food historian, columnist, photographer, recipe developer, and Professor at Pikeville College. He also is the food editor for The Encyclopedia of Appalachia and has written 1,200 published recipes and produced and demonstrated cooking in more than 450 cable-access television shows. In addition to his personal life-long cooking experience, he studied culinary arts at L’École de Cuisine, a school in Paris, France, owned by Pierre Cardin and Maxim’s Restaurant.

Mark F. Sohn is also the author of:

SOUTHERN COUNTRY COOKING, 1992
APPALACHIAN HOME COOKING, HISTORY, CULTURE AND RECIPES published in 1995
HEARTY COUNTRY COOKING, 1998

Happy cooking & Happy cookbook collecting!

Sandy

CAN YOU MAKE A ROUX?

Some years ago – back in the 1990s I think – my friend Pat Stuart (who I met through Prodigy’s bulletin boards) told me about a cookbook title that sounded far-fetched – “Who’s Your Mama, Are you Catholic and can you make a Roux?” – and that may have been my first introduction to making a roux.

Well, now, lo these many years later – I have a copy of “Who’s Your Mama – et al” and I also have a booklet titled “First – You Make a Roux”. “Who’s Your Mama” was written by a Cajun Creole lady named Marcelle Bienvenu.

The second title, “First – You Make a Roux” was published by Lafayette Museum in Lafayette Louisiana. The latter title, you may be surprised to learn, was first published in 1954 and by 1960 had gone through five editions.

“Who’s Your Mama…” has an interesting explanation as to how the author came up with the title for her cookbook. Marcelle Bienvenu writes in the introduction “It’s important I the South for people to make a connection when being introduced to strangers or newcomers. It’s long been a tradition, especially in south Louisiana, to find out ‘Who are your people?’ This is not only to make conversation but also to find out about a new person’s background.
Through this line of questioning,” Marcelle continues, “one will often find long-lost cousins or some kind of family connection. It should also be noted that when the Acadians were deported from Nova Scotia in the 1750s, families were separated and many made their way to French-Catholic south Louisiana. They sought to find relatives (close or distant) in their new homeland…”

Marcelle explains that while it may seem rude to visitors and those unacquainted with the local customs, Acadians are innately curious. So, you may be asked about your mother’s maiden name, what schools you attended and what your father does for a living.

With all this in mind Marcelle says she was inspired by the dialogue in a play called “The Band Inside Your Head” produced by the Southwestern Louisiana’s Opera Theatre. The story in the play is that of a young Acadian fellow who left the area to find fame & fortune and returned with his bride-to-be. His family was anxious to know more about this young lady so there is a dialogue in the play where the young man ‘s family asks

Who’s Your mama?
Are you Catholic?
Can you make a roux?

Marcelle says these words kept going round and round in her head for days and she finally settled on them as the title for her book.

The first edition of “Who’s Your Mama..” was published in 1991 and was out of print for a number of years. It was finally reprinted in 2006 and my copy is one of these. This is an easy to read cookbook with a lot of family storytelling and photographs about Marcelle’s Cajun Creole family.
For those of us who collect cookbooks and “read them like novels” “Who’s Your Mama…” is a great addition to your collection. This will quickly become your “go-to” cookbook when you want to try your hand at Crawfish Jambalaya or a Crawfish Bisque, authentic fried catfish or crab and shrimp stew, chicken liver pate or Bouillabaisse. There are recipes for blackberry ice cream or blackberry cobbler, fig preserves (which I often made when we had 2 fig trees in Arleta), pound cake and crazy cake, fruitcake and gingerbread, pecan pie sweet potato pie, and one of my all time favorites, pecan pralines (my praline recipe came to me years ago from a penpal in Louisiana) – these and many others are in “Who’s Your Mama…” along with many stories related to the recipes.

Marcelle Bienvenu is the author of three books—“Who’s Your Mama…” and “Who’s Your Mama the sequel”, and “Cajun Cooking for Beginners”. She is the co author of several cookbooks with Chef Emeril Lagasse, including “Louisiana: Real & Rustic”, “Emeril’s Creole Christmas”, “Emeril’s TV Dinners” and “Every Day’s a Party”. Marcelle also co authored “Eula Mae’s Cajun Kitchen” with Eula Mae Dore, a longtime cook for the McIlhenny family on Avery Island, and “Stir the Pot, a History of Cajun Cusine” with Carl Braseaux and Ryan Breasseaux. Ms. Bienvenu edited the 1987 edition of the Times Picayune’s Creole Cookbook, originally published in 1901 and reissued to celebrate the newspaper’s 150 anniversary.

Since I am so partial to pralines, I will share one of Marcelle’s recipes for pecan pralines:

To make Pecan Pralines you will need

1 lb of light brown sugar (3 cups)
1/8 tsp salt
¾ cup evaporated milk
1 TBSP butter
2 cups pecan halves

Combine the sugar, salt, milk and butter in a heavy pot. Cook over low heat stirring constantly, until the sugar dissolves. Add the pecans and cook over medium heat to soft ball stage. Remove from the heat and cool for about 5 minutes. Stir rapidly until the mixture begins to thicken and evenly coats the pecans. Drop by the tablespoonful onto aluminum foil or onto a lightly buttered baking sheet. When the candy has cooled gently lift it from the surface and store in an airtight container. Note: if candy becomes too stiff, add a few drops of hot water to the mixture. ***

“FIRST – YOU MAKE A ROUX” was compiled by the Les Vingt Quatre Club and the first edition was published in July, 1954. There were at least five editions, as my copy was one of those, published in September 1960. “FIRST – YOU MAKE A ROUX” is what I would refer to as a recipe booklet, with soft covers and only 45 pages. The cookbook was a collection of recipes by members of Les Vingt Quatre Club and their friends as part of their contribution towards the upkeep of the Lafayette Museum.

In the “History” pages, part of an introduction to the recipe booklet, we learn that the museum building itself was originally located near Pinhook Bridge on Bayou Vermilion, where the community of Lafayette was known a petit Marchae.
The original Acadian home which is part of the museum buildings was built prior to January 27, 1836. We learn, “Its unique architecture emphasizes the rich tradition so inseparably connected with this structure…”

And from Google: “The Alexandre Mouton House is a lovely house museum located in the heart of downtown Lafayette. The original structure [was] built in early 1800s by the founder of Vermilionville, Jean Mouton. [It] Later became home to Louisiana’s 12th governor, Alexandre Mouton. It is now restored to its 1850s grandeur and serves as a repository of the history and culture of Acadiana.Available for private tours, meetings and small catered events. Beautiful grounds and gardens available for small events and photo shoots.”
There is SO much information about Lafayette Museum – I would love to go to Lafayette and see it all for myself. For now we’ll focus on the cookbook that some foresighted women were clever enough to compile.

Under “Soups & Gumbos” the authors state, “It seems that many Creole recipes being with the words “first—you make a roux” and explain that this is a foundation mixture of fat and flour which should be made in a heavy pot or skillet (*a cast iron Dutch oven is wonderful for creating a roux.) The two ingredients are cooked together over low heat while stirring constantly until the mixture is a dark brown color. Equal proportions of lard and flour is used…”

I began making white gravy to go with fried chicken when I was a new bride, learning from my mother in law. I had never even SEEN white (or milk) gravy until I saw my mother in law making it. Gradually as I learned gravy making, I developed a sense of what “first you make a roux” is all about. One of the tricks I learned was mixing flour and solid Crisco shortening together – as much flour as you can incorporate into the shortening – and then mixing Kitchen Bouquet liquid seasoning in with it. I keep a jar of this in the frig ready for making a dark brown gravy. On page 5 of “First – You Make a Roux” is this introduction to soups and gumbos: “It seems that many Creole recipes begin with the words ‘First—you make a Roux.’ This is a foundation mixture of fat and flour which should be made in a heavy iron pot or skillet. The two ingredients are cooked together over low heat, being stirred constantly until the mixture is a dark brown color. Equal proportions of lard and flour are used.”

So that, friends, is what a roux (pronounced rue) is. I have often heard girlfriends complain that they can’t make gravy (it’s often the one thing I am most often asked to bring to a dinner or a party). My greatest challenge a few years ago was making enough gravy for a Thanksgiving dinner for 60 people. Maybe this is a topic we can discuss in further detail in another post.

But getting back to “First—You make a Roux” – not surprisingly, this little booklet is still in great demand. It is filled with recipes for making CourtBoullion, Chicken and Okla Gumbo, Gumbo File (fee-lay), Crawfish Bordelaise, Stuffed crabs, deviled crab, Baked stuffed fish with stuffing an sauce, sauce for baked fish*, shrimp and eggplant jambalaya, Crayfish Bisque, Baked Fryers with Mushrooms—and many, many, more. If you can find a copy of “First—You Make a Roux” – be prepared to make it one of your favorite go-to cookbooklets. One of my favorite recipes is that for making a sauce for baked fish. To make this recipe you will need:

½ cup butter or margarine
2 egg yolks
¼ tsp salt
1 TBSP lemon juice or vinegar
A few grains of cayenne pepper
½ lb shrimp, (uncooked)

Peel shrimp, remove sand vein, wash thoroughly. Boil or cook as directed as directed for shrimp rice dressing (stuffing for fish)** Divide butter or margarine into 3 pieces. Put 1 piece in a heavy bowl with egg yolks and lemon juice. Cook over hot, but never boiling water, stirring constantly with a whisk or wooden spoon until the butter melts. Add second piece of butter and stir until thick, and as mixture thickens, add third piece. Take immediately from heat and beat with wooden spoon until glossy. Season If mixture separates because it was cooked too rapidly, stir in 2 TBSP heavy cream or boiling water drop by drop. Cut shrimp in 4 or 5 pieces or leave whole. Add the sauce and serve over baked fish.

**From stuffing for fish – peel shrimp, remove sand vein and wash thoroughly. Place shrimp in a pot, cover tightly. Cook for 20 or 30 minutes or until shrimp are cooked. Drain shrimp. (Sandy’s cooknote: I don’t think you ever need 20 or 30 minutes to cook shrimp – I would cook it for about 5 minutes or less so that it isn’t tough but have the water boiling before you add the shrimp.)
Sandy’s Cooknote: One of my great culinary discoveries was a caper sauce over white fish as it was served at the Smokehouse Restaurant in Toluca Lake. I have kept capers on hand ever since. When I am cooking a white fish, such as Tilapia, in lemon juice with lemon pepper, I love sprinkling capers over all of it. I think this sauce for baked fish would be greatly enhanced by some capers.
“FIRST—YOU MAKE A ROUX” from Lafayette Museum is out of print although I found numerous hits when I typed “First—you make a roux” into Google. But if you want the one from Lafayette Museum or the one published by Les Vingt Quatre Club, I found four copies available on Amazon.com starting at $5.90. Barnes & Noble has one copy @ $11.20 and Alibris.colm has two copies, starting at $6.50. Please do bear in mind that this is a softcover booklet with a pink and black cover (that looks red on my computer). And when you type in “First—You make a Roux” some other Louisiana cookbook titles pop up.

The Louisiana Classic cookbook “Who’s Your Mama Are you Catholic, and Can you Make a Roux”, by Marcelle Bienvenu is available on Amazon.com new or used, starting at $14.76 for a new copy or $13.95 for a pre owned one. Marcelle also has her own website with some of her cookbooks for sale. You can visit the website at www.marcellebienvenu.com.

I should add in closing, I have several bookshelves packed with Louisiana cookbooks, including the original Picayune Creole Cookbook (although mine is the 9th edition) and the following recipes for making either a brown roux or a white roux.

To make a BROWN roux you will need:

1 TBSP butter, 1 TBSP flour

In making the Roux, which is the foundation of a fancy sauce, melt the tablespoon of butter slowly and add gradually the flour, sprinkling it in and stirring constantly till every particle is a nice delicate brown. Never make it too brown because it must continue browning as the other ingredients are added in the order given in this book. It is a great mistake to pile all ingredients one after another, pell-mell, into a dish, in the course of preparation…In making a roux for cooking gravies or smothering meats the proportions are one of shortening, two of flour, butter always making a richer gravy than shortening, and sometimes being too rich for delicate stomachs. If there is the slightest indication of burnt odor or overbrowning, throw the roux away and wash the utensil before proceeding to make another. Remember that even a slightly burnt sauce will spoil the most savory dish.

To make a White Roux you will need 1 TBSP flour and 1 TBSP butter.

The White Roux is made exactly like the brown roux only that the butter and flour are put simultaneously into the saucepan and not allowed to brown. It is then moistened with a little broth or boiling water and allowed to boil for a few minutes to thicken. The White Roux is the foundation of all white sauces or those containing milk and cream. It is also used in nearly all purees…”
(*Sandy’s cooknote – the proportions of one tablespoon of flour and one tablespoon of butter should make one cup of Roux. If you want more than one cup of roux, increase the butter in the same proportion as the flour. When I am making a white sauce I usually melt about 3 tablespoons of butter and mix it with 3 tablespoons of flour—and the liquid, then, can be three cupfuls. I like making white sauce with evaporated milk –1½ cups of evaporated milk mixed with 1 ½ cups of water makes a nice rich sauce. Or, use 3 cups of milk.

If you would like additional information on sauces—please refer to my posts dated February 5, 2011, titled “Getting Sauce” – Parts one, two, and three.

Happy cooking – and Happy Cookbook Collecting!

Sandy

WHO WAS COOKBOOK AUTHOR/RECIPE COLUMNIST MARY MARTENSEN?

Sometimes it simply starts with an old recipe card or a clipping with a name on it and you aren’t always sure where on earth you found it, especially if the clipping is very old and yellowed. Well, I do collect old recipe boxes, preferably with old recipe collections intact and this is sometimes where interesting clippings, or clippings pasted onto 3×5” cards turn up. Such is the case with the first recipe I found of Mary Martensen’s. It was a clipping pasted on a 3×5” card with directions for making pea soup.

From the introduction in one of her cookbooks, we learn that Mrs. Martensen was a graduate in Home Economics and Dietetics, having studied at the Boston School of Domestic Science, Simmons College and the Teachers College of Columbia University. Her first experience was as Director of Home Economics for the schools of Concord, New Hampshire. While there she also conducted courses in dietetics at the Concord City Hospital each week, and in Home Economics at Mount St. Mary’s Academy at Hookset, New Hampshire.

Following this, Mrs. Martensen became dietitian at Lake Forest Academy in Lake Forest, Illinois, leaving this position for the Home Economics Department of “a great packing company” (presumably Armour founded in 1867 by the Armour brothers following the Civil War). Here, in four seasons Mrs. Martensen conducted newspaper cooking schools in thirty-five states, lectured to women’s clubs in Chicago and its suburbs, and contributed to the household page edited in her department. She also prepared many recipe booklets, among them “Sixty Ways to Serve Ham” which I believe was compiled for Armour around 1935. During the last 2 years of this period Mrs. Martensen was the directing head of the department. Then followed five years as head of a Home Economics Department which she established for one of the largest baking powder companies in America. (No indication is given for the name of the baking company. Royal, Clabber Girl, and Rumford were three popular baking powder companies getting a strong foothold in the food industry in the late 1800s, early 1900s, however.)

In January, 1927, Mrs. Martensen established a Home Economics Department for “a large western newspaper” where she remained until she was selected by the Chicago Evening American for the position she was holding at the time her first cookbook was published–not counting pamphlets or booklets she may have authored prior to this. [I’m thinking that Mrs. Mary Martensen would have given Ida Bailey Allen a run for her money, as a contemporary in the 1920s writing for food manufacturers, conducting radio recipe programs and then branching out to compile cookbooks.]

Within a few months, the auditorium originally fitted for the newspaper Home Ec department of the Chicago Evening American had to be enlarged to double its size and capacity. Three courses of lessons were given in the first year of the department’s operation, with a total attendance of 6,600.

Editorially, Mrs. Martensen conducted a daily column in the Chicago Evening American, which was amplified to four columns on Mondays and Fridays, and a full page every Saturday in the American Home Journal. Her material was illustrated on Mondays and Saturdays with photographs and sketches made in her department of special dishes and table settings created in the department (The recipe page that a Sandychatter subscriber sent to me was published on a Thursday in the Chicago Herald American and along with recipes for strawberry chiffon pie and pineapple cheese pie, featured lovely illustrations – even in black and white—of a coconut wreath circling the pineapple cheese pie and another illustration of an ice cream pie.) And, apparently, at some point in time, Mrs. Martensen’s recipe columns were picked up by King Syndicate for release to other newspapers throughout the USA.

In the department’s first year, over 21,000 letters were received from readers and over 4,200 telephone calls responded to. Twenty five lectures before women’s clubs, farmers’ institutes, parent-teacher associations and high school classes were conducted. In addition to all this, Mrs. Martensen conducted weekly radio talks.

Mary Martensen was writing a column for the Herald American newspaper in 1950. I believe she was writing newspaper columns in the 1930s and 1940s as well. She also wrote “Mrs. Mary Martensen’s Recipes Cookbook/Chicago American” which I would SWEAR that I have, but to date have been unable to find. This was a newspaper-sponsored cookbook for the Chicago American.

Prior to this, the author worked for the meatpacker Armour Company* where she authored the popular, “Sixty ways to Serve Ham”

*Sandy cooknote: The information I discovered online about the Armour Company and the many different products they manufactured nearly sent me into a tailspin, wanting to read and learn more about Armour—I had to force myself to stay on track with Mary Martensen.

In 1933, Mrs. Martensen wrote “Century of Progress Cookbook*” – so far I have not been able to lay my hands on any of Mary’s cookbooks. However, any number of her newspaper columns have survived over the decades. In fact, a Sandychatter subscriber bought some perfume bottles and found a 1950 sheet of newspaper with Mary Martensen’s Strawberry Chiffon Pie and Pineapple Cheese Pie featured on that date, June 22, 1950 – and sent a copy of it to me.

In addition to its widely syndicated Sunday magazine “The American Weekly”, the Journal-American had a Saturday supplement called Home Magazine, as well. Mary’s columns appeared in this newspaper supplement as well.

Zirta Green, who balanced a career with motherhood and home long before it became fashionable was a test kitchen chef for the Chicago Herald American and Chicago Tribune newspapers for their cooking and recipe columns from 1953-1966, and later for the Mary Martensen TV cooking show, broadcasted on WBKB Chicago, ABC-TV, around 1954. (*This short paragraph about Mrs. Green was the only indication I discovered about Mary Martensen having a TV cooking s how –back in the day, long before TV cooking shows were so popular!

An illustration/portrait of Mary Martensen was published in her first cookbook; it shows a very pretty blonde haired woman, nicely dressed, with a sweet smile.

Not much more is known about Mary Martensen – although if anyone reading this knows more, I would love to hear from you. However, some of her recipes crop up if you take the time to surf Google patiently. The first one I am offering is the recipe I originally found on a recipe card.

To make MARY’S SPLIT PEA SOUP you will need:

1 cup dried split peas
2 ½ quarts cold water
1 pint milk
½ onion
2” cube fat salt pork
3 TBSP butter or margarine
2 TBSP flour
1 ½ tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper

Pick over peas and soak several hours in cold water to cover. Drain, add cold water, pork and onion. Simmer 3 or 4 hours or until soft. Put through a sieve*. Add butter and flour and seasonings blended together. Dilute with the milk, adding more milk if necessary. Note the water in which a ham has been cooked may be used. Omit the salt.

Sandy’s cooknote: If you don’t have a sieve, you can blend the peas in your blender but I would suggest cooling it down somewhat, first, and only do half a blender-full at a time so it doesn’t splash. When I make pea soup I like to cook the peas and whatever other ingredients (carrots, onion) -except meat – and blend it in my blender to make it smooth. Then add some leftover ham if you want it in your soup. We like very thick soups, more like chowders. What I usually do is cook a hambone and then set it aside. Use the stock from the hambone then to cook the peas. (And if you take the time to chill the stock, you can easily remove the fat that rises to the top and solidifies). While the peas are cooking, cool the hambone and remove all the bits of meat to put back into the pot later. Ok, it’s a little more work this way–but you will have a fine pot of soup. (Some things do take longer – but I guarantee, if you cook a hambone and use those scraps of meat – you will have a delicious stock AND most flavorful meat. It will beat a package of pre-diced ham bits from the supermarket hands down!)

Here is Mary’s recipe for SUNSHINE CAKE, 1946

1 cup sifted cake flour
½ teaspoon salt
5 egg yolks, beaten
7 egg whites, beaten
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 ¼ cups sugar
1 teaspoon any desired flavoring (I recommend lemon extract)
Preparation Instructions

Sift the flour once, measure and resift twice with the salt. Beat the egg yolks until thick and lemon colored. Beat the egg whites until foamy, add the cream of tartar and beat until stiff, but not dry. Add the sugar gradually and beat until the mixture holds in soft peaks. Fold in the beaten egg yolks and flavoring. Fold in the flour gently but thoroughly to avoid breaking air cells in the egg mixture. Pour batter into an ungreased ten-inch tube pan and bake in a moderate oven, 350 degrees, for about 50 minutes, or until done. Remove from oven and invert for one hour, or until cool. When cool, frost with a thin coating of confectioners’ sugar, or sprinkle with sifted confectioners’ sugar.

MARY MARTENSEN’S POPCORN BALLS, 1946

1 cup molasses
1 tablespoon vinegar
3 tablespoons butter
1 cup dark corn syrup
3 quarts salted popped corn

Combine molasses, corn syrup and vinegar in a saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly until a small amount of syrup will form a hard ball when dropped into cold water. This is about 270 degrees if tested with a candy thermometer. Remove from the heat, add the butter and pour over the popped corn, stirring only enough to mix. Form into balls with the hands, using as little pressure as possible. Makes 16 to 18 balls.

(Sandy’s Cooknote *I can’t wait to make this. I buy a big bottle of molasses from a warehouse-type of supermarket in Palmdale, called Smart & Final because I love to make molasses cookies—and I like adding a small amount to the white Karo syrup when I am making caramel corn).

From a Sandychatter reader: “I have my grandmother’s collection of recipes and cookbook. In there I found 2 pages of dumpling recipes from the Chicago Herald American, Home Economics Department, Mary Martensen, Director. They are hand typed and the photo copied from some sort of note book then mailed to my grandmother. I was interested so I did a little research. The Newspaper was the Chicago Evening American from 1914-1939 then it became the Chicago Herald-American 1939-1953 then the Chicago American from 1953-1969.” Tina Aiello Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

(*Sandy’s Cooknote: Tina, if you happen to read this, would you share some of your grandmother’s recipes with me?. When Mary’s first cookbook was published some pages were deliberately left blank just so someone could add their own recipes or clippings.)

MARY MARTENSEN’S CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES

½ cup shortening
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 squares unsweetened chocolate
2 cups sifted flour
1 teaspoon soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk or soured milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
Preparation Instructions

Cream the shortening, add sugar and cream together until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the chocolate which has been melted and cooled, and blend well.

Sift the flour once, measure and resift twice with the soda and salt. Add to the batter alternately with the buttermilk, beating until smooth after each addition. Add vanilla. Fill twelve cupcake pans which have been greased, two thirds full with the batter. Bake in a 350 degree oven, for about 20 minutes or until done.

When cupcakes are cool, with a small sharp pointed knife cut a cone-shape from the top of each. Remove and fill hollowed out portion with slightly sweetened whipped cream. If desired, a larger hollow can be made in the cupcake. Also, ice cream can be used in place of whipped cream to fill the hollow centers. Place top (which was removed from cupcake) on top of whipped cream and pour chocolate sauce over the top.

To make the chocolate sauce: Combine in a saucepan, one square unsweetened chocolate, cut in pieces, one cup sugar, two tablespoons corn syrup, one tablespoon butter and one-third cup hot water. Blend well and cook over low heat, stirring constantly until mixture comes to boiling point, then cook for five minutes. Cool slightly and add a few grains of salt and one half teaspoon vanilla. Serve warm or cold. Contributed by MARY MARTENSEN, 1946

From another Sandychatter reader, Rebecca Christian “I was interested in the Mary Martensen recipe. I worked as a test kitchen home economist in the test kitchen of Chicago’s American newspaper from 1967-1970. Mary Martensen was the nom de plume of the food editor who at that time was Dorothy Thompson. We had about 35,000 recipes in our files and they are still some of my best ones. Wish I had those files now!

Rebecca also wrote “Chicago’s American was eliminated as the afternoon paper of the Chicago Tribune around 1970 or 71. Don’t know if the Tribune kept the recipes or not. There are Chicago Tribune cookbooks but I don’t think they had any American recipes. Each paper owned by the Tribune as well as the Chicago Daily News had test kitchens at the time. We tested every recipe that went in the American. Those days are long gone! Becky.

(*Sandy’s cooknote – Oh, Rebecca – what wouldn’t we all give to have Mary’s recipes today! I’m pea-green with envy that you had the opportunity to work in the test kitchen of Chicago’s American newspaper from 1967-1970—I was busy giving birth during most of those years. Lol).

*Sandy’s cooknote – there are a lot of gaps in my story about Mary Martensen. I don’t know where she grew up or where she spent most of her life. I don’t know how long she lived even though we DO know that Zirta Green was a test kitchen chef of Mrs. Martensen’s who lived to the age of 97! On previous occasions when I mentioned Mary Martensen, readers responded with comments I have included in this post.

The best I can hope to achieve is more details becoming available to us – I am reminded of writing about Myra Waldo, first years ago (around 1990) when I was unable to learn ANYthing about Myra’s later life – and then years later, when I was rewriting my manuscript about Myra, I found obituary details on Google, not previously available to me. I like the idea “if you build it, they will come”

Cookbooks by Mary Martensen:

Home Canning and Freezing Book- or The Canning, Freezing, Curing & Smoking of Meat fish game – date unknown, possibly 1935

CENTURY OF PROGRESS COOKBOOK 1932

Mrs. Mary Martensen’s Recipes Cookbook Chicago American”

SIXTY WAYS TO SERVE HAM, Armour Ham, 1935

RECIPES FOR WILD GAME 1935?

(Sandy’s final cooknote: If anyone knows more about Mary’s cookbooks, such as dates of publication, or any other food editors writing under Mary Martensen’s name—or her other book titles please write!)

Happy Cooking & Happy Cookbook collecting!
Sandy

THREE QUITE UNRELATED COOKBOOKS AND SEVENTY YEARS – PART THREE “FORGOTTEN SKILLS OF COOKING” BY DARINA ALLEN

My apologies for turning this into three posts instead of just one, but I suffer from a kind of verbal addiction—I can never tell a story in a thousand words or less. And the thing about writing something like a cookbook review is that you can continuously find more material to include in the article.

The third book in the three quite unrelated cookbooks published over a period of seventy years is one I heard or read about and went to Amazon.com to find a copy, which I did – at some ridiculously low price. Isn’t that the greatest aspect of cookbook searching online? Finding something fantastic for a few dollars and even with a $3.99 shipping charge, you end up paying far less than you would if you bought the book new.

“Forgotten Skills of Cooking”, subtitled “The Time-Honored Ways are the Best – over 700 recipes show you why” published in 2009, by Darina Allen was originally published at $40.00. And come to think of it, I think I saw something about the author on the Food Network.

Darina Allen runs a world-known cooking school at Ballymaloe in County Cork, Ireland which she founded with her husband in 1983. On the back cover of the book we read, “She [Darina Allen] runs the highly regard three-month diploma course as well as various short courses, including the Forgotten Skills series which is the inspiration for this book.

Darina is the award-winning author of “Irish Traditional Cooking”, “Ballymaloe Cookery Course”, “A Year at Ballymaloe”, “Healthy Gluten-free Eating” (with Rosemary Kearney) and “Easy Entertaining”. She is Ireland’s most famous TV cook having presented nine series of her cooking program, “Simply Delicious” on television around the world…”

Also on the book, which has a well designed washable cover, is the comment “…this book reveals the lost art of making creamy butter and yogurt, keeping a few hens in the backyard, home-curing and smoking bacon and even foraging for food in the wild…” as well as “…Rediscover the flavors of all time favorites such as traditional stuffed chicken, figgy toffy pudding and freshly baked scones and strawberry jam..”

As you may know, if you have been reading “Sandychatter” for any length of time, I am a great proponent of being able to make things “from scratch”, of being able to mix your own taco or chili spice mixes, and I make a lot of different jellies, jams, preserves, relishes, chutneys and have even made my own sauerkraut. (The latter only needs to be made every few years as making one big batch will fill a lot of quart jars and keep you in sauerkraut for months to come.)

Years ago, when my sons were growing up, we “kept” chickens for a few years – until they all got killed by dogs that managed to get into the yard during the night. I loved being able to go into the back yard and find freshly laid eggs waiting to be brought into the house and have often thought I’d like to keep some chickens again.

In the introduction to “Forgotten Skills of Cooking”, Darina Allen writes “During the 25 years I’ve been running the Ballymaloe Cookery School, I’ve noticed an alarming loss of skills in many students. The art of thrifty housekeeping has gradually petered out and became strangely unfashionable.
Our mothers and grandmothers knew how to eke out a small budget to feed a family, and how to make a delicious meal from meager leftovers. Given a chicken or fish, they would have simply rolled up their sleeves and got on with eviscerating or filleting. It mightn’t have been perfect but they just did it in their pragmatic way. The loss of these and other such skills over subsequent generations is partly a consequence of the availability of convenience foods. Every time we go to the supermarket, an increasing number of items are oven-ready or ready to eat: cheese is grated, mushrooms sliced, fruit segmented—I swear if they sold toast we’d buy it…”

Allen says that the actual incident that prompted her to start the Forgotten Skills courses happened in the cookery school some years prior when she came across a student who was about to dump her over-whipped cream into the hens’ bucket. She was totally unaware that she had inadvertently made butter. Allen rescued it just in time and in a matter of minutes made it into butter pats to the delight of the class, most of whom didn’t realize that butter is made from cream. She says it reinforced her belief that even made country dwellers have lost the connection with how their food is produced. I say amen to all of this.

My actual incident that prompted me to start searching for recipes and writing articles about making things such as spice mixes from scratch started with my sister calling one day to say she was making tacos and was out of taco seasoning mix. Could I tell her how to make it from scratch? I could and did and later she told me she never bought packaged taco seasoning mix anymore. When I find myself out of something such as taco seasoning mix, generally I look through my own recipes and if I don’t find what I am looking for there, I do a Google search which is the most fantastic research tool. I find a recipe, print it and then go about doubling or tripling the ingredients before getting out the various spices to mix up a batch.

Foraging isn’t something we can do here in the high desert although I have no doubt that some of the many wildflowers and weeds that grow in this region could be edible, but I do believe in eating food in season – and I am hoping that, with my son Kelly’s help, we will have a big vegetable garden next spring. I have planted five fruit trees since moving to the desert and Kelly transplanted a pomegranate tree for me yesterday, a gift from my manicurist. He bought 4 fruit trees that same year and between us, I hope to eventually harvest enough fruit to can most of it and get back to making my own applesauce. We had 26 fruit trees where I used to live but many of them were citrus, which doesn’t grow well in the high desert. For one thing, we usually have a freeze in the winter. I still have hopes of putting up a greenhouse, eventually.

Allen also writes about thrifty cooking—how people are lured into throwing out perfectly good food if they haven’t used it by the “best before” date (I’ve been trying to get this across to my grandchildren who live in a household where anything with an expired date is thrown out. Over the weekend I tried to impress upon my grandson that “expired” milk may not be BAD – if it seems to be slightly off, you can make a chocolate pudding or tapioca and have a perfectly good dessert). Sour milk, of course, can be used in any number of bread or cake recipes.

“Forgotten Skills of Cooking” is quite obviously a labor of love replete with tantalizing photographs to tempt any would-be cook.

The book begins with a chapter on “Foraging” which focuses on wild greens that grow in Ireland where, when the author was a child foraging was a way of life a part of every year (Although I have never been to Ireland and know nothing about foraging for fruit and greens, oddly enough I have written several poems on the subject in a series I wrote a couple of years ago about “An American Childhood” – I must have drawn on some universal consciousness to do that). The only green I know anything about foraging is dandelions. Comfrey is listed in Allen’s book—I always thought of it as an herb. When we first moved into the Arleta house in 1974 (when my sons were little boys) there was a comfrey patch in the front yard and my friend Connie identified it and said it was good for healing. Sure enough, Allen comments that comfrey was known was “knitbone” in the past as it draws out infections and multiplies healing cells when bones are broken. I think I would love to visit Ireland just to go foraging. Recipes for blackberries and crabapples make my mouth water- and I do remember collecting wild crabapples in the woods just a short distance from my parents’ home on Sutter Street. What did we do with them? I don’t remember. I would be a teenager before I began experimenting with making jellies or jams.
Allen provides a recipe for making pickling mushrooms*; her recipe is made with wild mushrooms but those of us on this side of the pond without access to wild mushrooms might want to try this recipe when the small button mushrooms are in the supermarket and fresh – you only need a little over 2 lbs of mushrooms and that’s quite a few mushrooms to a pound when they are small.
Allen’s book is huge – more like an encyclopedia of forgotten skills of cooking with chapters on chickens, turkey, duck, pigs, and photographs to whet your appetite. I am inspired by a chapter on sausages, something Bob & I always planned to do. My grandparents made sausages – when we were very young children, they killed a pig and participation of all the family – my father, uncle, aunt and their respective spouses, was a requirement if they all expected to get some of the sausages to eat after they had smoked in my grandfather’s garage/smokehouse. Allen’s paprika sausages make me think of Hungarian Kolbasz—and who doesn’t love Bratwurst?

I am also charmed by a chapter on Chutneys – I have been making chutneys and collecting chutney recipes for about 20 years. There I found a recipe for Green Tomato Chutney that I will have to share with a girlfriend with whom I share green tomato recipes. So, to finish this off, let me share Allen’s recipe for Ballymaloe Green Tomato Chutney. I will also provide you with the recipe for pickling mushrooms—which, you know, is one of those great things you can keep in the frig and have on hand when needed.

To make Ballymaloe Green Tomato Chutney you will need

2¼ lb cooking apples, peeled and diced (i.e., Granny Smith)
1 lb onions, chopped
2¼ lb green tomatoes, chopped (no need to peel)
1½ cups white sugar
1 ¾ cups turbinado* sugar (*Turbinado sugar is a natural brown sugar. Use any brown sugar if you can’t obtain Turbinado)
1 lb golden raisins
2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp allspice
2 tsp freshly cracked black pepper
2 garlic cloves, coarsely crushed
1 TBSP salt
3 cups white wine vinegar

Put the onions and apples into a wide stainless steel saucepan and add the remaining ingredients. Stir well, bring to a boil and simmer gently, for about 45 minutes or until reduced by more than half. Stir regularly, particularly towards the end of cooking. Pot into sterilized jars and cover immediately with non-reactive lids. Store in a dark airy place and leave to mellow for at least 2 weeks before using.

And here is Allen’s Pickled Mushroom recipe. To make pickled mushrooms you will need

2¼ lb wild mushrooms (or small fresh button mushrooms from the supermarket)
4 cups best white vinegar OR 2½ cups best white vinegar and 1 cup verjuice*
4 fresh bay leaves
4 garlic cloves, peeled
4 sprigs thyme
3 tsp salt
Extra virgin olive oil

Trim the mushrooms carefully and only if really necessary; rinse quickly under cold water. Dry on paper towels or a kitchen towel. Put the vinegar and verjuice, if using, into a stainless steel sauce pan with the bay leaves and garlic. Bring to a boil, add the mushrooms and continue to simmer for 4-5 minutes—lay a clean saucer or butter plate on top of the mushrooms to keep them immersed in the liquid. Drain the pickling liquid—this can be saved for another batch. Put a little olive oil into sterilized jars, divide the mushrooms, garlic, bay leaves, thyme and salt between them, press down well to remove air bubbles. Cover with extra virgin olive oil to a depth of 3/4 inch. Cover and seal; store in a cool dry place. (for me the only cool dry place is my second refrigerator. Serve as part of an antipasto or crostini.

*Verjuice is a very acidic grape juice. You may be able to substitute lemon juice. Personally, I would stick with all good white vinegar. And I have to admit, I hesitate to pack the mushrooms in olive oil. Personally – whenever I have made pickled mushrooms – I’ve left them in the brine with the herbs.

Happy Cooking and Happy cookbook collecting!

Sandy