The 1936 “Lovely Lane Cook Book” produced by the historic Lovely Lane Methodist Church contains a lot of “dainty” recipes. There’s Date and Nut Bread; cakes and cookies; ice box rolls; Frozen Banana Salad. There’s luncheon dishes and cheese fondue and “Fruit Punch to Serve Ten.”

Like many church cookbooks, “Lovely Lane Cook Book” was full of recipes worthy of an elegant ladies’ luncheon or a bridge game with tea.

And then there is Lulie Hooper’s recipe for “Harvey Salad Dressing.” Beef bouillon; chopped olives, blue cheese, garlic, catsup, capers, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce. Hooper’s recipe is an umami bomb packed with sodium, acidity, and pungency. Though it seems vaguely Caeser dressing-inspired, this recipe takes things to another level.

It is likely that the dressing name is somehow related to Fred Harvey, a pioneer in railroad cuisine and later purveyor of a chain of restaurants. However, I couldn’t find any other version of this recipe among the recipes associated with Harvey.

Miss Lulie Hooper was the granddaughter of Robert Poole, whose family had immigrated to Baltimore from Ireland when he was a child. Poole operated a foundry and machinery shop, which moved to Woodberry in 1853. With its location near the Northern Central Railway and the area’s many textile mills, Poole and his partner German Hunt did good business. The next year, the foundry would produce ironwork for the roof, dome and columns of the U.S. Capital building.

The expansion of the mills and the housing for their workers continued. By the Civil War, Woodberry was the largest industrial town in the state — outside of Baltimore.

In 1888, Baltimore City expanded northward from its North Avenue border to encompass Woodberry and its surroundings. The annexation increased the city’s size from ten to thirty square miles.

William E. Hooper had founded the similarly successful Hooper Mills not far from Poole’s mills.

In 1871, Hooper’s son James Edward Hooper married Robert Poole’s daughter Sarah. James Hooper would eventually become the president of the merged Mount Vernon Woodberry Cotton Duck Company. Lulie Poole Hooper was the fourth of their six children.

Born into this wealthy family, Lulie pursued the typical charitable activities of a woman of her class and joined the Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Church, which took her on trips to Asia and the Pacific. She was educated at Goucher College, founded in 1885 by the Methodist Church, and with ample funding from the Poole-Hooper family. Lulie graduated in 1896 and remained involved with the college for the rest of her life, eventually having Hooper Hall named in her honor.

Margie Luckett included Lulie Hooper in “Maryland Women,” a three-volume collection of biographies of contemporary and historical women of the state published in 1931. Although most of the women in the books come from obvious wealth, there is no particular political bent to the collection. The activities and causes of the women profiled range from gracious entertaining to women’s suffrage. In Lulie’s case, Luckett didn’t have much to say other than to mention the missionary work and the college.

It is census records and Lulie’s obituary that lend a little dimension to Lulie’s story. By 1950, Lulie was living with her partner Gertrude Nickerson in an apartment building at 100 West University Parkway. Gertrude was also a Goucher graduate, from the class of 1899. When Hooper died in 1955, she left $5000 (today’s equivalent of roughly 60,000) in a trust to Nickerson.

Society pages through the years mentioned Lulie, Gertrude, or both in snippets that suggest a life of traveling and socializing with intellectuals, many of them Goucher alumni. Although I found no indication of suffrage activism on either of their parts, they would have interacted with Baltimore suffragettes, philanthropists, and patrons of the arts.

When Gertrude died in 1964, she was not buried at Greenmount with her partner, but in Pennsylvania with her parents.

Outside of some items that Lulie Hooper donated to Goucher College’s art collection, her contribution to the artistic and intellectual life of Baltimore in the early 19th century is largely undocumented. Thanks to her three additions to the Lovely Lane Cookbook —for Mint Sauce, Imperial Cake, and this salad dressing— we at least get a glimpse into her culinary world.

Recipe:

• 1 pint olive oil

• 2 Sterno beef tablets

• 20 chopped olives

• 1/4 pound Roquefort cheese, chopped

• 2 buttons garlic, chopped

• 1 teaspoon paprika

• 1 tablespoon salt

• 1/2 pint apple vinegar

• 2 tablespoons sugar

• 2 tablespoons capers

• 1/2 pint tomato catsup

• 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

• cayenne pepper to taste

This will make a quart of dressing which will keep until used.

Recipe from “Lovely Lane Cook Book,“ c. 1936, The Woman’s Guild First Methodist Episcopal Church

John Bouchat had been painting a third-story balcony of Baltimore’s legendary Barnum’s hotel in 1883 when he had a fatal fall. “In order to get at the front of the portico he took a ladder and stretched it in a diagonal position across the balcony of the second-story, with the base of the ladder resting against the wall of the building, and the other portion projecting over the railing,” according to the Baltimore Sun. The ladder slipped and tossed him into the air. Conscious on the ground “he asked in German several times for his wife, and she arrived shortly after the accident happened.” He died on the site, aged 60.

It was a time before OSHA, when diseases ran rampant, and lawlessness was a social norm. The pages of the Baltimore Sun were filled with violence and tragedy, and the Bouchat family saw their fair share.

A decade later, John’s son of the same name died the same way his father had, falling off a ladder while painting.

A daughter, Pauline, died in 1888 during an abortion procedure performed by a fraudulent doctor. The ensuing scandal ended with the doctor, imprisoned for second-degree murder, dying of consumption while in jail awaiting trial. The Baltimore Sun covered Pauline’s funeral in detail, listing every attendee by name and transcribing the part of the service that was in English, possibly for the benefit of the press: “… let bad people say what they will, our daughter had friends… and the sympathy of all good people.”

A few years earlier, in 1884, another Bouchat sibling named Frank got in a gunfight with the father of his love interest and was shot in the arm. The incident was reprinted in newspapers all over the country, which reported that Frank “carried off his prize,” but he appears to have never married.

Yet another of John Bouchat Sr.’s sons, August, was hit by a train in 1912. August Bouchat, born in 1862, left seven children, including a girl named Rose, born in 1891. Rose married Charles Bennett Snapp, Jr., who also had German ancestry.

It’s hard to research a Baltimore-area resident born around the turn of the 20th century without finding German heritage, but I was particularly expecting it in the case of Rose Snapp. In 2021, a reader shared a recipe via the form on my website for Mrs. Snapp’s Peach Cake. “My parents lived on Heatherwood Road in Arbutus for a few years in the late 1950’s,” they wrote. “Their next-door neighbors were an older couple, Mr. and Mrs. Snapp. Mrs. Snapp shared her recipe for the most delicious peach cake ever. Every summer my mom would make this peach cake and share it with family. It is delicious and the best that I have ever tasted!”

With Baltimore Peach Cake’s German origin, I figured I would find that lineage in Mrs. Snapp’s family tree.

It took me several years to attempt this recipe, but the results were indeed excellent. Mrs. Snapp’s recipe makes a fairly wet dough, and includes shortening instead of butter for a slightly softer final product. The recipe also yields twice as much dough as most peach cake recipes. It can be halved, using one egg plus one yolk, with good results. But another good approach is just to freeze half the dough. When you want another peach cake just give it a good thaw and roll it out and you’re ready to go!

Charles Snapp, Jr. was a Post Office clerk. No available censuses show Rose working outside the home but the Snapps has two sons, Charles B. III, born in 1916, and Stewart, born in 1918. The elder son followed his namesake’s career path, also working at Baltimore’s downtown post office.

According to her obituary, Rose volunteered for the Red Cross and Salvation Army during World War II, and was a member of the “Sunshine Club.”

I don’t have any other clues about Mrs. Snapp’s personality, but her husband seems to have had a sarcastic streak. In 1912, he wrote to the Sun, mocking Baltimore’s drinking water. “That flavor of ancient vegetables and stale water is delicious,” he wrote, “and should be called ‘the nectar of the gods.’” Charles advocated for a water filtration system like they had in Washington D.C. “There is a plant at Lake Roland in which chloride of lime is placed in the water to kill the ‘bugs.’ With good filtration, there would be no aforesaid ‘bugs.’”

Charles died in 1965 and Rose in 1970. They left five grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. Nothing about their low-profile life of government work, social clubs, and public service reflects the rough-and-tumble lives of their immigrant ancestors. I suppose many of us could say the same.

We can never know, but I love to think that Mrs. Snapp’s Peach Cake recipe traveled from Germany via Annie Elizabeth Bouchat (nee Erbe). When the traditional plums weren’t available, fresh Maryland peaches were an obvious substitute. And somewhere along the recipe’s journey to modern times, butter or lard was replaced with shortening. The recipe made its way through generations, and eventually, neighbors. I feel so lucky that it made it’s way to me.

Recipe:

• 2 envelopes yeast

• 1 Tablespoon sugar

• 1 Cup warm water

• 1 Cup milk

• 6 Tablespoons shortening

• .75 Cup sugar

• 1 Teaspoons salt

• 3 beaten eggs

• 7 Cups flour

“Lots of peaches, cut into slices, skin on or off, your choice (I take the time to remove the skin). Dissolve yeast and 1 T sugar in 1 C warm water. Scald milk, add shortening, sugar and salt. Let cool to lukewarm. Mix in 2 c flour. Add yeast mixture and eggs. Stir-stir-stir . Add remaining flour to make a soft dough. Knead until it comes together and isn’t sticky. Let rise until double. Punch down. Divide in half and place on 2 large cookie sheets. Spread out (this takes some work because the dough is very elastic.) Lightly butter and sugar the top of the dough. Line with peach slices. Sprinkle with sugar and nutmeg. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes. Sprinkle with 10x [confectioner’s] sugar. Enjoy!!! ”

Kara’s notes: The person who shared the recipe cuts peaches into slices. I prefer quarters – some people use halves. I added about 2tb of melted butter over the top. I had better results when I rolled the dough out with a rolling pin to keep it uniform, and then I let it rise a second time before I topped with peaches and baked.

I once referred to Virginia Roeder as “Baltimore’s own Martha Stewart.” The statement is a little out of character for me, but I wanted to convey my impression of Roeder’s business savvy, the way her “immaculate home” was described in the Sun, her reputation for culinary acumen, and the sense that Roeder was one of those people who seem to have access to extra hours in the day to do more while the rest of us are sleeping.

If I had known then that the Baltimore Sun would eventually quote me in Roeder’s obituary, I might have been more careful with my words.

At the time of her passing, she was Virginia Cobb. She also used the last name Wenger somewhere in between. She was preceded in death by her daughter Mimi Vaughan in 2024. Mimi was a local figure in her own right and a member of the Associated Black Charities board. Another daughter, Anne Roeder Kern of Oklahoma, survives Virginia, along with seven grand-children.

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Roeder was born Virginia Voigt in Oklahoma in 1927 and went into education, as her mother had done before her. Virginia came to Baltimore and earned a Masters’ and Doctoral degree from Johns Hopkins. She also earned credentials as a foremost expert in Maryland food.

From her annual exasperated columns in response to Peach Cake recipe requests, to her crab cake recipe that circulates to this day, Roeder left her mark on our regional cuisine during a time when "Maryland Cooking" was transitioning from a prestigious offering at restaurants and hotels, to the purview of the home kitchens that would keep tradition alive. In the hands of her capable home-economics background, many regional traditions were transcribed and standardized for posterity.

After retiring as Deputy Superintendent of Baltimore City Public Schools, she worked in banking, real-estate and travel agencies - and she maintained her image of a mid-century housewife, always bedecked in a string of pearls, ready to whip up a weeknight dinner or an impressive spread for company

.Roeders’ recipes live on in two booklets printed by the Evening Sun around 1960, “Fun with Food” and “Fun with Sea Food.” It wasn’t just about feeding the family and impressing guests - it should be fun.

I opted to try a “fun” recipe whose name reminded me of the lady herself. Entitled “Career Girl’s Delight,” the recipe is an odd sort of trifle made with fig newtons, bananas, pineapple, marshmallows and whipped cream.

I also made the legendary crab cake. My own copy of “Fun With Sea Food” has the word “excellent” written beside the simple recipe. I sometimes see it circulate online - even images of the cookbook page that aren’t stolen from my website (how refreshing!)

There’s not much to say about the crab cake recipe. It’s simple and perfect. Roeder knew how to do it. I actually planned to make mine with ‘special’ but received lump (at less than half the cost! score!) which made it harder to form cakes. The resulting photos aren’t much to look at but suffice it to say we had a rare treat for a weeknight dinner.

When I found out about her having passed away on November 28th, I knew I had to scramble together a tribute. So here it is. May she rest in peace and be remembered. I have little doubt this will not be the last time I mention her and her recipes.

It’s a little sad to think that I will never meet Virginia Cobb, or better yet - thank her for all she has done for this website and for Maryland food.

Recipes:

Career Girl's Delight

“Make it the night before—it’s better if it stands.”

• 0.5 Cups heavy cream

• 1 banana, diced

• 1 Cup pineapple, drained, crushed

• 8 marshmallows, quartered

• 12 fig newtons

• walnuts, chopped

Dice fig newtons, add pineapple and marshmallows. Let stand overnight. A half hour before serving, whip cream and fold banana, which has been diced, into cream. Fold newton mixture into banana and cream. Spoon into dessert glasses, top with walnuts and chill again. 4 servings.

Recipe from Fun With Food by Mrs. Virginia Roeder (1960s)

Crab Cakes I

• 1 Teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

• 1 pound crab meat

• 1 egg, beaten

• 1 Tablespoon mayonnaise

• 1 Tablespoon parsley, snipped

• 2 slices bread

• 2 Teaspoons seafood seasoning

Pick over crab meat to remove shells. Remove crusts from bread, and break bread into small pieces. Mix bread with beaten egg. Add remaining ingredients. Form into cakes. Dip into cracker crumbs and saute quickly in a small amount of fat. 6 crab cakes.

Recipe from Fun With Sea Food by Mrs. Virginia Roeder (1960)

Lucretia Harris’s cooking career started dramatically: with Thanksgiving dinner.
Harris didn’t tell interviewer Kelly Feltault exactly how she ended up in a trial-by-fire Thanksgiving meal prep for her employer, Mrs. George Brown, only that she “got flying colors.” Harris killed a turkey according to customs she’d learned in her Princess Anne farming community, and she turned to a copy of Fanny Farmer’s Boston School Cook Book for the rest.

Harris was 93 when she gave the oral history, held in the collection of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, so she can be forgiven if some of the dishes she recalled cooking over 50 years before don’t actually appear in Farmer’s book. Aside from the turkey, she mentioned coleslaw, cranberry sauce, hot rolls, hominy, and Minnehaha Cake.

Whatever she cooked that Thanksgiving, a legend had begun.

When “Miss Brown” (Anna Ball Brown 1884-1959) was left widowed and no longer needed Lucretia’s services, Lucretia worked in the kitchen of the historic Washington Hotel in Princess Anne, followed by Salisbury restaurant Johnny’s and Sammy’s, which is still remembered by some residents today.

Lucretia Harris’ cooking may be part of why. An ad for Johnny’s and Sammy’s from 1947 mentioned “hot rolls,” one of Harris’ specialties.

ucretia Harris’s cooking career started dramatically: with Thanksgiving dinner.
Harris didn’t tell interviewer Kelly Feltault exactly how she ended up in a trial-by-fire Thanksgiving meal prep for her employer, Mrs. George Brown, only that she “got flying colors.” Harris killed a turkey according to customs she’d learned in her Princess Anne farming community, and she turned to a copy of Fanny Farmer’s Boston School Cook Book for the rest.

Harris was 93 when she gave the oral history, held in the collection of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, so she can be forgiven if some of the dishes she recalled cooking over 50 years before don’t actually appear in Farmer’s book. Aside from the turkey, she mentioned coleslaw, cranberry sauce, hot rolls, hominy, and Minnehaha Cake.

Whatever she cooked that Thanksgiving, a legend had begun.

When “Miss Brown” (Anna Ball Brown 1884-1959) was left widowed and no longer needed Lucretia’s services, Lucretia worked in the kitchen of the historic Washington Hotel in Princess Anne, followed by Salisbury restaurant Johnny’s and Sammy’s, which is still remembered by some residents today.

Lucretia Harris’ cooking may be part of why. An ad for Johnny’s and Sammy’s from 1947 mentioned “hot rolls,” one of Harris’ specialties.

She was born Lucretia Holbrook in 1908, one of thirteen siblings who grew up picking tomatoes, beans, and corn on the Howard Anderson Farm. In the 40s, she married William Harris. In her oral history, Lucretia mentions that William was blind for 12 years and had aneurysms of the brain. Though the 1950 census listed William as a farm laborer, and his 1982 obituary mentioned landscaping and masonry, Lucretia's work must have been vital to the family's sustenance as they raised their nephew Carl as a son.

Regardless of her circumstances, there can be no doubt that Lucretia Harris found meaning in cooking.

In 1982, she was given a plaque declaring her to be the “World’s Greatest Oyster Fryer” by the Somerset County Soybean Growers. She had retired by that point. She told the Salisbury Daily Times about her stints cooking in a hotel in Atlantic City and for a family in Washington, DC. “I prefer living here,” she said of Princess Anne.

Lucretia told the Times that even when she accepted the odd catering job for organizations like the Soybean Growers, she didn’t eat the food she prepared. “I’ll have just enough to see that the food is right,” she said, “but I always eat at home.” She deemed her fried chicken to be her own favorite dish to eat, but expressed her love of pastry baking. “Her diners enjoy her sticky buns best,” the paper declared — it wasn’t the last time the sticky buns would be mentioned.

In 2002, 93-year-old Lucretia was featured in a large article in the Style section of the Daily Times. The owner of Washington Hotel, Mary Murphey, was quoted as saying, “she is one of the best cooks who ever walked.” When Lucretia worked for the hotel, Murphey recalled, “every day at lunch she made 90 rolls, seven pies, a bread pudding or rice custard, and apple dumplings. By 2 p.m., there wouldn’t be a roll or piece of dessert left in the place.”

That article gave Lucretia various nicknames: “The Pie Lady,” “Miss Lu,” and “St. Lucretia,” the patron saint of cooking.

“I lo-o-o-ve to cook raccoon,” Harris told the paper, describing the process of slow roasting the meat with onions, sage, pepper, and plenty of fat. She drew the line at frog legs, having herself cooked them but recalling frogs on the farm of her childhood: Knowing the frogs that I seen through Mount Vernon jumping, I couldn’t enjoy em.”

The Pie Lady” actually credited her onetime employer Anna Brown with teaching her how to bake pies, cakes, and rolls. She’d once made Maryland Beaten Biscuits alongside Brown’s daughter Leonora Pierce. They practically broke the legs off the table beating air into the biscuits. Of the results, Harris said, “I love em but I’m not goin to fool my time away making em anymore.” She told the Times the secret to her success and legend: “I love to cook.”

Retirement didn’t mean rest for Harris. In 2003, the Times interviewed her again, not only about food but about her work sewing crafts and garments for newborns at a local hospital.

In that interview, Harris opined: “Parents are not teaching children how to live a full life. That includes teaching them everything about food — from the field to the table.” The article also mentioned her sticky buns, of course.

As did another in 2005. Harris had moved into Manokin Manor Nursing and Rehabilitation Center where she quickly joined a cooking club and demonstrated her sticky buns. She seemed wistful for her working days, which had ended due to back and leg weakness. But she remained optimistic as always. “I’ll tell you one thing,” she told reporter Liz Holland, “I had a beautiful life.”

How lucky are we that that life included teaching others and leaving behind recipes? One of Harris’ 2008 obituaries said “unlike many cooks who held the secrets of their creations out of sight, Harris was happy to share.”

She shared ten recipes with the famous and beloved 1983 “What is Cooking on Party Line” cookbook. While sticky buns are not among those recipes, she did share a recipe for cheese biscuits— the same recipe she shared and made when doing the 2001 oral history interview.

I’ve been wanting to write about Lucretia Harris for so long that I built it up into an event. I wanted to host a dinner and make those biscuits, and “coin carrot salad,” pumpkin cake, squash casserole, and “Spring Imperial Rockfish.” I never got around to it.

nd then a few weeks ago, I bought these apples. Fresh from the farmers’ market Staymans. As I looked through my many Apple Cake recipes, I noticed that unlike with her other nine recipes, Harris included a whole paragraph above this one:

“It’s a big, beautiful cake with a sugar-crisp top that shatters at the touch of the knife. Inside it is rich with chopped apples and walnuts, fragrant with spices. Well worth the effort involved in the making, it’s a cake to remember when you are expecting a crowd or baking for a bazaar. The apples keep it moist and fresh for days, in case any is left to store away for a future occasion.”

If none other than Lucretia Harris felt a need to write such a gushing description about a cake, I was going to make it.

The cake is excellent. I made it a second time. To get more mileage out of the “sugar-crisp top,” I tried a technique where you grease a pan and then sprinkle it with sugar rather than flour. This was well worth doing.

I frequently see engagement-bait videos about historic cooks. Usually, they will say that this person invented this dish or they were the first to do that technique. It makes me feel like someone has to have been forgotten in order to be remembered. They have to have been the first, the originator, the one-and-only.

I‘m more interested in people like Lucretia Harris. Is she forgotten? I have a feeling anyone who bought her sticky buns at the farmer’s market would say “no.” And she had citations and awards from the NAACP, Governors Schafer and O’Malley, Maryland House of Delegates, and more.

Throughout the oral history interview, Harris deflected questions referring directly to her culinary supremacy. When asked, “why are you famous for your cheese biscuits?” she simply replied, “I really can’t say, but I just… make them up.” But when the interviewer read an article calling Harris “”Somerset’s Best”, a woman who “loves to cook, and people love to eat her meals,” Harris simply replied “uh-huh.” In 2005 she told the Daily Times “you don’t let yourself think you are the greatest; you let other people tell how you’re doing.” And people did.

She’s not known for having invented a new dish or pioneered any kitchen revolution that we know of. I think Lucretia Harris did something more inspiring, because we can all strive towards it. She is remembered for being absolutely excellent at what she did, because she loved it and pursued it with all her heart. She freely shared expertise and recipes, and so her traditions will live on.

Recipe:

• 1 Cup butter

• 2 Cups sugar

• 3 eggs

• 3 Cup sifted all-purpose flour

• 1.5 Teaspoons baking soda

• .5 Teaspoon salt

• 1 Teaspoon cinnamon

• .25 Teaspoon mace

• 2 Teaspoons vanilla extract

• 3 Cup chopped apple

• 2 Cup chopped walnut

Cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Mix and sift flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and mace; add gradually. Stir in vanilla, apples and walnuts. Batter will be stiff. Spoon into greased and floured [note: I enjoyed this technique-Kara] 10 inch tube pan. Bake at 325° for 1 1/2 hours. Let cool in pan 10 minutes. Remove to rack.

Recipe from What Is Cooking On Party Line. Bill Phillips. Broad Creek Printing. 1983.

“Christmas passed over much as the day usually does. There was a glorious destruction of egg-nog, apple toddy, whiskey punch… turkeys, geese, ducks… mince pies, apple pies, pumpkin pies… dough nut, short cake, long cake, pound cake, ginger cake… Pleasure was the order of the day… There were a few rows, which was quite natural; not more, however, than was required to fill up the scene to the life.” - The Baltimore Sun, December 1838

In 1863, one frequent advertiser in the Sun specifically linked their December merchandise with two holiday beverages. “EGG-NOG AND APPLE TODDY”, read an ad advertising fine brandies, wines, “and a small quantity of the ‘Nations Pride,’ Monongahela Rye Whisky.” The availability of figs, nuts, canned fruits and the like is tacked on to the advertisement as an afterthought.

During the holiday season, apple toddy was most often mentioned alongside eggnog, enjoyed at the festivities of the social clubs, a requisite part of Christmas reverie (and sometimes mayhem.)

As the temperance movement gained traction, traditions began to change.

In 1873 the Sun reported that temperance advocates were already having a chilling effect on the holiday consumption of alcohol: “Several timely meetings will be held in this city with a view to break up the fashion, which is declining, of providing egg nogg, apple toddy, and other intoxicating beverages at private houses, for all visitors during Christmas and New Year’s Day.”

In 1888 the Sun observed that there was “much less drinking during the Christmas holidays than in years gone by.” The streets were quiet at midnight. Christmas arrests were down to 140 across the city, when a decade before, there had been more than that many arrests in each district.

By 1897, when Governor Lloyd Lowndes Jr. served apple toddy at Christmastime, it was seen as a nostalgic tradition.

Gradually, the hand-wringing over the drinking of apple toddy was replaced by hand-wringing over the waning popularity of apple toddy. These laments appeared in the paper, along with plenty of stories about people serving and drinking apple toddy.

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The Sun printed an apple toddy recipe in 1906, from “The Eastern ‘Sho” (as it was routinely called), along with reflections on the “time-honored traditions,” and a completely untrue claim that apple toddy had rarely been consumed to excess. Temperance had prevailed, the article claimed, whereas “these degenerate days good and pure old apple brandy is hard to procure.” This recipe garnered an angry letter, not for its wild assertions about moderation, but because the author had suggested boiling the apples rather than roasting them.

A 1911 diatribe, written in the second-person by “L. C. A.,” told a rambling tale of a Christmas evening. In it, the author(“you”), enjoys Christmas songs, marvels at the prevalence of mail-order merchandise, and engages with some racist stereotypes. The narrative was long and weirdly written, but the message was clear: The good old days are over. The apple toddy -symbol of a traditional aristocratic Maryland Christmas- was dying out.

“If the recrudescence of apple toddy depends on you, then it will not recrudesce, you determine, and so when someone says, ‘Let’s make eggnog instead,’ you drop the half-dozen apples to which you have been holding desperately and join with the unimaginative, mediocre, conventional crowd that always does the obvious thing.” - “Christmas Echoes, With The Story of The Forgotten Recipe For An Insidious Drink”, Baltimore Sun, December 1911

It was reported that same year that apple toddy was “dispensed freely” at an open house at the Hotel Rennert.

Despite the old adage that “cobwebs on the demijohn” authenticate an apple toddy of the best quality, I didn’t plan that far ahead this year. Instead, I reached for a recipe that took mere hours. This recipe comes from the Maryland Historical Society’s ‘Hall Family Papers’, dated to around 1869. The Hall family resided around the Baltimore area and a manor in Bel Air known as Christopher’s Camp. The author of the cookbook was possibly Maria Wharton Williams Hall (1807-1871).

The combination of liquors used in apple toddy vary wildly between recipes. Some contain champagne or Curacao. Brandy is pretty standard. This recipe didn’t even contain rye whiskey. The drink should probably be strained before drinking but hey, this time of year, we could all use the extra nutriment. If you imbibe liberally, make sure to get into no more fights than are necessary to stage the scene of a proper Maryland Christmas.

Recipe:

• 6 apples, roasted

• .5 Pint French Brandy

• ½ cup peach brandy (pref. not ‘flavored’. I used apricot.)

• ½ cup Jamaica rum

• 1 Quart boiling water

• sugar to taste

• lemon rind, if desired

serve hot or cold

“To 6 apples well roasted, with the peel on (while hot pass through a colander) add a half pint of French brandy a gill of Jamaica spirits, a gill Peach brandy, and let it stand 4 hours covered closely, then add 1 qt of boiling water made very sweet with loaf sugar, if you add a few pieces lemon rind to the Brandy, take it out when you add the Water.”

From Hall Family Papers, Maryland Historical Society MS 3002

“A calico-covered journal filled with handwritten recipes” left by her paternal grandmother inspired a high-schooler to write an entire book.

The year was 2010. I was starting and lazily giving up on Old Line Plate. Meanwhile, Grace Kenneth Collins was finishing a chapter every month on a book filled with stories and recipes. Presumably, the young go-getter was also completing her homework. According to a list in the Baltimore Sun, she graduated in 2012.

I can’t begrudge Collins for having an enviable amount of gumption, however, because the resulting book, “Sour Beef & Cheesecake: A Food & Family Memoir,” is pretty enjoyable. “I must confess that I am more of a storyteller and an eater than a cook,” wrote Collins in her introduction. The book is filled with charming anecdotes from the vantage point of youth, about adventurous eating, family lore, and of course, food.

“I Think I’d Be Her Favorite” was the title of the chapter with the titular Sour Beef recipe. Collins, having never met her grandmother Mickey, knew her only from family stories and the recipes in the calico journal.

“Grandma Mickey” was born in Newark New Jersey in 1922. The Sour Beef recipe came by way of a German neighbor there. It became a fixture for the Collins’, leaving an impression on family and friends. It took Mickey’s son some doing to convince the woman to write down the recipe.

Mickey’s technique for the potato dumplings that accompany Sour Beef involves mashing potato through a ricer, forming it into golf-ball-sized dumplings, and browning them in a pan before serving them with the beef and gravy. The recipe (which I have adapted due to the book’s relatively recent publication date) uses Crisco and Gravy Master. I no longer second-guess these kinds of ingredients in favor of “natural” ones. They are the tradition now.

Collins advises to make everything a day ahead, “as it is much better the next day.”

I was unable to get in touch with Ms. Collins for this post. Perhaps that will change. Old Line Plate has reached a surprising amount of community connections. All I know for now is that “Sour Beef & Cheesecake” is a unique contribution to the Maryland cookbook catalog.

Recipe:

• 3 lbs top round or rump roast

• 1 pt cider vinegar

• 1 qt water

• 1 heaping tablespoon pickling spice

• .5 tb salt

• 3 onions, sliced

• crisco

• dash of gravy master

• 12-16 ginger snaps

• flour and water

Mix together vinegar, water, spice, salt, and onions, and submerge the beef for 4 days in the refrigerator. Turn the meat once a day.
Remove and dry the meat, and brown it in hot Crisco. Lightly brown the onions, then deglaze the pan with the marinade, placing meat back in pan. Simmer for three hours. Add some Gravy Master.

Remove the meat from the liquid and set aside in refrigerator. Add gingersnaps to the liquid, crush them, and simmer. Thicken gravy with additional flour if needed.
Strain the gravy through a sieve to remove solids. To serve, slice the meat and add back in, cooking until warm.

Potato Balls (kartoffelkloesse)

• 2.5 lbs potatoes

• 1 tsp salt

• .5 tsp pepper

• 1 egg

• .5 c flour

• .5 c plain bread crumbs

• 1 med onion, grated

• .5 tb dried parsley

Boil potatoes until cooked. When slightly cooled, remove the peels and push potato through a ricer while still warm. (Collins contends that doing this while still warm makes a better potato ball because steam escapes.) Add remaining ingredients and mix until well blended. Form into balls slightly larger than a golf ball.
Drop balls in a pot of boiling salted water and simmer until they float. When cooled, refrigerate for at least a few hours. Slice the balls in half and brown in a mixture of half butter and half Crisco, until golden brown.

“Best to serve this meal with bottled red cabbage on the side in a separate little dish.”

Recipe adapted from “Sour Beef & Cheesecake: A Food & Family Memoir,” 2011, Grace Kenneth Collins

Earlier that morning I had taken a bus from my Howard street home up to the other end of the Avenue, and waited in the shade of a church for a producer and an intern from WYPR. I got mic’d up and talked about the history of snowballs, Baltimore’s beloved flavored icy confection. Legend has it that ice trucks passing through neighborhoods would shave off ice for children and the children’s mothers started making flavorings. I don’t know about that. I do know that by the early 1900s, street vendors were peddling a variety of flavors and toppings and doing a booming business.

I also don’t know the origins of the neon yellow “egg custard” flavor, but I suspect it never contained eggs. I muttered something into the microphone about evocative names, dressing up the fact that snowballs are made mostly of water and sugar.

After the interview, I was treated to a snowball and my voice recorded while I ordered my standard - yes, egg custard, marshmallow creme. The producer took recordings of the sound of the machine crushing and grinding the ice and then conducted an informal survey of flavor preferences among the growing line of customers.

I bid my farewells and consumed my snowball as I made my way down the Avenue through the summer heat.

On the heavenly, air-conditioned bus, Lennie Tristano’s “Turkish Mambo” played on my headphones. Its looped piano felt at one with the wheels and gears of the bus moving us through the city. We passed through neighborhoods of people on marble stoops, fanning themselves cool; groups of men hovered over the open hoods of old cars; parking lots baking in the sun and radiating heat; pedestrians dragging slowly through the thick air. I counted seven snowball stands. Most were just folding tables with an ice crusher and a modest rainbow of flavor jugs. A few had an umbrella to provide a tiny circle of reprieve from the sun. I hit the back button on my ipod to play “Turkish Mambo” again.

The bus passed the hospital and Northeast Market, places I knew well. It turned and bent southeast in right angles like an Etch-a-Sketch. We entered the thick of Highlandtown.

Disoriented, I walked several blocks in the wrong direction before turning around and finding my destination, a grocery store. For months, I had been cooking nothing but Mexican and Tex-Mex food. Ginger and cardamom languished in my pantry while I continually stocked up on dried peppers and cumin, chili powder and sazon. I filled my cart with tomatillos, cilantro and avocados; chorizos and cheeses from Central America.

Chris didn’t let the heat stop him either. He was determined to ride his bike and we met on a corner and went into an ice cream shop. Although I had only walked a few blocks from the market, I was already ready to bask in another cool interior. I sipped a tea, the smell of sausages sneaking up from the bag at my feet.

When we parted ways to meet back home, it was starting to cool down and I walked through Patterson Park to catch my last bus of the day. I would later find I had been bitten by mosquitos in the park. But I sounded alright on the radio.

In the summer of 2018, I’d been at a breaking point that turned out to be a breakthrough. I was diagnosed with ADHD for the third time. I accepted the diagnosis and found a world of resources that no one had ever proffered before. I learned a concept that changed my life: sensory overload. I found rationale for the rigid structures I had already built around me that enabled me to work, to socialize, and to create, and I bolstered those structures. I enrolled in college.

Most importantly, I found a new job. A job that didn’t crush my soul and drain my creativity. It was three blocks away from my house. I spent lunch hour at home with my dog. I prepared salsa and made wet balls of masa for dinner time before returning to work. I went to the library on Tuesdays to write blog posts.

Almost one year into my new life, I was so grateful I didn’t let the summer heat stop me from trekking through the city. In one afternoon I had traveled between neighborhoods, disparate worlds bound by a bus line.

I didn’t know it then, but a year later I would be unraveling, the pandemic undermining the stability I had only just grasped. Another year after that and grief would make me undone completely.

Each summer now will be hotter than the last one. I wonder how many times I will feel sweat tickling the back of my knees before the feeling stops reminding me of July 20, 2019.

Frank Hennessy never passed up a chance to promote National Beer. It was his job to do so for 18 years (1957 to 1975), and he approached the job with legendary gusto.

Advertising executive John Schneider III (1918-2009) has been credited with “making Boh synonymous with Baltimore.” He may also share part of the credit for making the name “Frank Hennessy” synonymous with Boh. It was Schneider who put Hennessy aboard a skipjack named “Chester Peake” and sent him “to every corner of Tidewater Maryland” as the “Roving Ambassador of the Chesapeake Bay.”

The sail of the 1915 skipjack was embroidered with the face of the iconic “Mr. Boh.”

When Hennessy passed away in 2000, the Sun had many stories to share:

“Dubbed “Commodore of the Chesapeake” by Gov. Theodore Roosevelt McKeldin, Hennessy was a familiar figure to Bay yachtsman as he cruised the Bay from the the C & D Canal to Smith Island, dressed in a snappy nautical cap, white duck pants and blue blazer.

“During the summer months we’ll be cruising the Chesapeake Bay, attending races, regattas and other special events, hoping that Chester Peake will serve as a graceful symbol of the wonderful Land of Pleasant Living,” [Hennessy] told The Sun.

Hennessy, an excellent outdoors cook who gained honors as the Male Barbecuing Champion at the national chicken grill-off in Selbyville, Del., was the creator of the Chesapeake BAYke.

“We have our wonderful crab feasts, oyster and bull roasts but there’s no identifying name like New England clambake or Hawaiian luau, and my wife and I got to thinking about a Chesapeake BAYke,” he told The Sun in an interview.

Firing up his gigantic Weber Big Smokey grill, Hennessy and his wife, Rita, whom he married in 1938, used such strictly local Maryland ingredients as rockfish, clams, oysters, blue crabs, corn and broiler chicken to create the feast.

Hennessy, who was born in St. Louis and reared in Memphis, always claimed one of his grilling secrets was using Arkansas swamp hickory chips.” - True Chesapeake Character, Frederick N. Rasmussen, Baltimore Sun, 2000

The concept of the somewhat-awkwardly-named Chesapeake BAYke provided Hennessy with more opportunities to promote Natty Boh in local newspapers.

He copyrighted the term in 1964.

In 1960, Hennessy took home the prize in the Barbeque division of the Delmarva Poultry Industry’s National Chicken Cooking Contest (more on that event can be found here). His recipe for a broiled and basted chicken features a not-so-secret addition. You guessed it.

I remember my own introduction to Boh. After watching a friend’s band at the Ottobar in the late 90s, we migrated to the bar upstairs. Someone asked what beer was the cheapest. “Natty Boh-boh!” was a friend’s lyrical reply. At a buck fifty, no one needed any further rationale for drinking National Bohemian.

A lot of Baltimoreans still carry the banner of Natty Boh from bars to backyard barbecues, despite the fact that the beer is now brewed in North Carolina and Georgia. It no longer costs a buck fifty, but neither does anything else. Nor are you likely to hear about raconteurs cruising the bay for the sole purpose of glorifying a beer. The unchanging label of Natty Boh remains a reminder of a time when Baltimore was a little bit cheaper and a little bit weirder.

Recipe:

"You don't cry when someone dies," Elsie Czerkovich told the Baltimore Sun in April 1974. "You rejoice because he is going to heaven to live with the Lord."

It was the day after Easter, and Czerkovich was gathering with other worshipers from the congregation of the Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Church for a picnic. Women sold raffle tickets. Children played baseball. Families waited for the priest to bless the dead.

Czerkovich sat at the picnic with her 80-year-old father, Sedor Romanuk. She explained to the journalist, J.S. Bainbridge, Jr., that her father had come to Baltimore intending to make money to bring back to Russia. Instead, he had stayed.

Elsie Romanuk married Paul Czerkovich sometime between 1947 and 1950. Paul's own parents' countries of origin on censuses alternate between Russia, Ukraine, and Austria, demonstrating how meaningless borders can be.

Paul Czerkovich identified firmly as Russian, as evidenced by his heavy involvement in the Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Church, as well as his appearances in local newspapers commenting on matters of Russian culture - particularly food. In a 2000 article about the Russian Festival at Holy Trinity church, Paul said that his father had been an officer in the Russian Imperial Army, and that Paul and Elsie had both attended Holy Trinity since they were children.

The Holy Trinity Russian Festival is still held each fall, with food, music, and dancing to celebrate the heritage of the church, which was founded in 1919.

Holy Trinity has produced at least two cookbooks: "Baba's Kitchen Secrets" in 1981, and a decade later, a book simply titled "Favorite Recipes." Both books are chock full of contributions from Paul and Elsie Czerkovich, each of whom participated in making food for the church's various events.

In 1986, Paul told the Evening Sun that one of the main reasons Russian food hadn't caught on more in the United States was the relatively small number of Russians here, as well as the fact that "Russian cooking is a hodgepodge" of different people and language dialects.

Of the many recipes shared by the Czerkoviches, I chose the most idiosyncratic, naturally.

I couldn't really find any traditional analog to "Russian Easter Ham." In scanned newspapers, the recipe first appeared in the Carlisle Pennsylvania Sentinel in 1984, and the version shared by Paul is not much different. The ham is cooked in a mustard sauce, and then cooled and topped with a cream cheese mixture, hard-boiled egg whites, and vegetables. Instead of cottage cheese, I used Polish farmer's cheese.

When I made the ham, it occurred to me that it was possibly meant to be decorated like a lamb or something like that.

I served the so-called "Russian Easter Ham" to my family at (non-Orthodox) Easter. Surprisingly, it was enjoyed by all. It had a bit of a ham-salad effect.

I would love to hear from readers who are familiar with anything similar to this dish.

Other guests made recipes from "Baba's Kitchen Secrets," including marinated mushrooms, lasagna, pickled beets, and cake.

"Baba's Kitchen Secrets" has many Russian recipes, but also lots of community cookbook fare - occasionally with a twist. I was excited when I saw a chili recipe containing buckwheat groats, aka kasha. I thought I was witnessing homegrown cultural fusion. I later noticed that the recipe is on the back of boxes of kasha.

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Articles about the food served at the church, and the cookbooks tend to emphasize the breads, but the secret of good bread often lies in the hands of the baker. Elsie shared a recipe for her yeast dough for meat pies with the Baltimore Sun in 1979. I doubt that the likes of her meat pies will be tasted again. I didn't even try to make her bread.

Elsie Czerkovich passed away in 2008, and Paul died in 2012. The couple are buried in the Holy Trinity's cemetery in Elkridge, the same cemetery where they had convened in 1974 to pay respects to tradition and to the dead.

That day, some parishioners had left eggs on graves, an offering to their loved ones. "It symbolizes new life," Father Mark Odell explained.

The Sun interviewed Joseph G. Brittle, who was born into a German family but converted to Russian Orthodox when he got married. "The Russian people don't forget the dead, even though it's a picnic," he said. "They are with them. It's a happy time."

Recipe:

• 1 whole, smoked ham about 12 lbs

• .5 Cup sugar

• 1 Tablespoon mustard powder

• 3 Tablespoons mayonnaise

• 1 8 oz package of softened cream cheese

• .5 Cup cottage cheese (I used farmers' cheese from the Polish store)

• 4 Tablespoons mustard, prepared

• 7 hard-cooked egg whites

• green strips pepper

• pitted sliced ripe black olives

• lemon leaves if desired

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Trim ring and all but one-quarter inch of fat from ham. Place ham fat side up on rack in shallow roasting pan. Mix sugar and dry mustard in small bowl; blend with mayonnaise to make a thick paste. Spread paste on top and sides of ham. Bake ham 1 hour. Increase oven temperature to 400 degrees; bake until brown, about 30 minutes. Remove ham from oven; cool slightly. Refrigerate covered until cold. Beat cheeses and prepared mustard in small mixer bowl until smooth; spread cheese mixture on top and sides of chilled ham. Press egg whites through sieve; sprinkle on cheese mixture. Garnish with green pepper strips, olives and lemon leaves. Refrigerate ham at least 1 hour before serving.

Recipe from Favorite Recipes, Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Church. 1992.

I first came out onto the porch in pet-fur covered yoga pants and a t-shirt, with a vacuum in hand. I sucked up all the bits of earth and leaves that have settled onto the floor, paying special attention to the dusty corners. I wiped pollen off tables and chairs.

I took a shower and put on a beautiful frock, tying the long band around my waist, and returned to my newly-tidied haven. My dog eagerly pushed open the screen door, which doesn't latch all the way. He rushed onto the porch and stopped at the top step as if just barely avoiding falling off a cliff.

The trees don't have leaves yet and sounds dominate the landscape. Passing cars; chirping birds; distant yelling; yard work. Occasionally, a particularly loud vehicle rips through the fabric of it all.

Here on the porch, every moment is the curtain coming up on that stage. I'm forever too occupied taking in the set to wonder where the plot is heading.

And when we enter the theater, we leave our own world behind; I can feel it leaving me now. The things I've been striving for suddenly seem unimportant. There is nothing but this messy scenery. There is nowhere but here. There is only the promise of beginning and the troubling but faint memory of tomorrow, softly whispered on the breeze.

Benjamin Chew Howard wrote genuinely loving letters to his wife, the former Jane Grant Gilmor. In one he quoted a poem, telling Mrs. Howard "time has not 'dimmed your eye.'" It was 1835 and Jane Howard was 34, hardly an old matron. Still, the sentiment was sweet.

The letters between Mr. and Mrs. B. C. Howard also occasionally offer a peek into something that would seal Jane's legacy: food.

In 1837, Mr. Howard wrote of having fish for breakfast on his travels. He referenced not being a fan of fish skin. He mentioned eating saddle of venison for most meals on a trip south. And he singled out something to Jane: "There was some soup the like of which I never saw before. It was so ropy that half of it slipped out of the spoon. On looking at the bill of fare I found that it was called Chicken Gumbo. I wonder if this is the kind of Gumbo you wanted which is not made out of gumbo at all but something else."

Benjamin Howard used the word 'gumbo' to refer to okra, language possibly used by many of the people he enslaved in Maryland. Perhaps the very recipe he tried on that trip ended up, in some form, in Mrs. B.C. Howard's 1873 book "Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen." That book contained four recipes for "Gumbo Filet Soup," among recipes influenced by regions around the country and world. But despite it's wide range of source material, this is the book that would write Maryland's cuisine into history.

Jane Grant Gilmor was born in 1801 to wealthy mercant and art collector William Gilmor, and Virginian Mary Ann Drysdale Gilmor. In 1818, she became the wife of Benjamin Chew Howard, a politician and businessman. She moved to Belvidere, the Howards' estate in what is now the Mt. Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore. The manor became known for hospitality.

Over the course of Jane's life, the world changed dramatically. She spent most of her time as a plantation mistress at Belvidere, overseeing the kitchen and an enslaved staff whose names we may never know.

In 1842, the Howards sold Belvidere. Jane wrote a letter to her husband, brokenhearted at moving, and lamenting how life was changing. The letter mentions that Jane hoped "Caroline [would] be again in the kitchen."

"Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen" became such a famous book that it overshadowed a previous Maryland recipe book, "Queen of the Kitchen," written three years earlier by a semi-anonymous "Miss Tyson." Miss Tyson was actually Mary Lloyd Tyson, daughter of Rebecca Ann Key, a relative of Francis Scott Key. Rebecca Key's first husband William Howard was Benjamin's brother, making Rebecca and Jane sisters-in-law.

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Whether Jane Howard's niece cared that Jane copied a large amount of her recipes into a more-successful book is unknown. The practice was common at the time, and Tyson herself copied recipes from elsewhere. Jane Howard's book also pilfered recipes from another Maryland cookbook, "Domestic Cookery," 1845, by Elizabeth Ellicott Lea. One other source was Mary Randolph's classic "Virginia Housewife," first published in 1828. Despite the decades between the books, the recipes changed little.

At any rate, many of the recipes in these books had come from the hands of enslaved workers in the kitchen. Whether they were taken down firsthand, or passed through networks of wealthy women, the recipes often serve to obscure who was doing the actual work in these authors' kitchens.

"Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen" contains a number of recipes by way of India, from chutney and pickled mangoes to rice pilau, to this recipe for "Binderloo Curry."

The journey of curry making its way from India to England and to the United States is a long and complicated story fraught with colonialism and empire, not to mention the strange warping of the recipes themselves along the way.

In "Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerers," Lizzie Collingham wrote, "curry was firmly established as a part of the British culinary landscape by the 1850s." In fitting with Mrs. B.C. Howard's Binderloo recipe, "curries came into favor as an excellent way of using up cold meat… In Mrs. Beeton's definitive middle-class [British] recipe book, all the beef and chicken curries were labeled as suitable for 'cold meat cookery.' The irony of this state of affairs was unappreciated by most British consumers of curries who were unaware that consumption of leftovers was taboo among the majority of Hindus."

Several vindaloo recipes appeared in an 1869 book called "The Indian Cookery Book; a Practical Handbook to the Kitchen in India, Adapted to the Three Presidencies By a Thirty-five Years Resident." That author wrote "this well-known Portuguese curry can only be made properly of beef, pork, or duck," and presented a few variations, including one with shelf-life in mind: "Pickled Vindaloo (adapted as a Present to Friends at a Distance)."

If you caught that reference to Portugal, the history of vindaloo lies within it. According to Collingham, "Vindaloo is normally regarded as an Indian curry, but in fact it is a Goan adaptation of the Portuguese dish carne de vinho e alhos, or meat cooked in wine vinegar and garlic. The name vindaloo is simply a garbled pronunciation of vinho e alhos. The Portuguese particularly savored the sour, but fruity, taste of meat marinated and cooked in wine vinegar. When they arrived in India, however, they found that Indians did not make vinegar… some ingenious Franciscan priests are said to have solved the problem by manufacturing vinegar from coconut toddy, the alcoholic drink fermented from the sap of the palm tree."

Mrs. B. C. Howard's unusual spelling "binderloo" may be indicative of a recipe passed along orally. She also gives the Hindi names of several of the spices, perhaps in an attempt to demonstrate authenticity.

The recipe is really something. To make eight to ten pounds of meat, Howard used a half pound of garlic, three-quarter pounds of ginger, over a cup of coriander and turmeric, and almost as much cumin and chili peppers. The meat is marinated - or rather, pickled - in vinegar for nearly 24 hours and then slow cooked and jarred for future use.

Howard didn't mention salt. This could be because it was a given, or maybe even that the meat was meant to be already salted. I added salt because I didn't want to ruin my meat any further than this flavor-blast of ingredients already was at risk of doing.

This wasn't the best thing I've ever eaten but we got through it, with lots of rice and vegetables to dilute the seasoning. Imagining Americans eating like this in the 19th centry changes your whole perspective on historic food.

Jane Howard's vantage point, too, must have changed, as Baltimore grew and densified around her, and the country transformed even more. In 1837, Benjamin Chew Howard wrote of "abolition which that miserable state of Vermont is meddling with." In 1861 he ran for the governorship of Maryland under a "states rights" platform. He lost.

Mrs. Howard dedicated herself to "Southern Relief" after the war - raising funds for formerly wealthy families whose fortunes had turned downward.

When Benjamin died in 1872, one obituary in the Charleston South Carolina Daily Courier wrote "When friends were rare, and gaunt want came pinching, Benjamin Chew Howard, and the revered ladies of his household, noiselessly as the dews of morning, but effectively as the meridian sun, lifted up many a bowed spirit." "The eye of many a Confederate window moistens with genuine sorrow," to learn of his death, the paper concluded.

"Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen" saw publication the year following Benjamin's death. With its lavish ingredients and massive quantities, Howard's book bore a subtle message of a fabled time of plenty and a life of ease - a Southern fantasy that continued to sell well into the civil rights era.

Howard's cookbook spoke to readers who upheld this fantasy, but also to plenty of people who just liked good food. For decades after its publication, newspapers continued to share Howard's recipes, often affixing the word "Maryland" to them, such as "Maryland Cream Waffles." A 1944 edition, revised by Florence Brobeck, reduced the serving quantities as well as the butter and sugar ratios. It omitted the "Binderloo" entirely.

Jane Howard died in 1890, and is buried in Green Mount with generations of her parents' family. She left five children; she was preceded in death by five others. Her name continued to be associated with Maryland cuisine, which enjoyed prestige for over a half-century after her death.

The recipes she left behind reflect the complicated and ugly histories of the ways imperialism and slavery benefitted Maryland. They also contain traces of the obscured talent of anonymous cooks like Caroline.

While the legend of Belvidere hospitality has largely been forgotten, Howard's recipes still serve as references for all the Maryland classic dishes, from Maryland Fried Chicken to Deviled Crabs. Even her "Kitchen Pepper" recipe reveals a template for the seasoning that would become Old Bay. Her Binderloo, though, is one recipe best left in the past.

Recipe:

"Garlic, half a pound.
Ginger, three-quarters of a pound.
Coriander seed (Dhunia), three-eighths of a pound.
Turmeric (Huldee), three-eighths of a pound.
Cummin seed(Zebrah),quarter of a pound.
Chili peppers, quarter of a pound.
Pepper, one ounce.
Bay leaf,one ounce.
Vinegar, one and a half bottles.
Pork, eight or ten pounds.
Mix some salt and vinegar with the meat and leave
it for six hours—no water. Then mix to a paste in a mortar with the vinegar, the ingredients mentioned above. Let it stand twelve hours after adding to it the meat, after which it must be carefully cooked over a slow fire until all the water in the meat has evaporated, after which let it cool and put it in stoppered jars for use. When it is required, it must be thoroughly warmed and sent to table to be eaten with rice."

[Note: I wrote this in 2023. Krakus is now closed 😔. An alternative shop in Baltimore is At the Polish Table. - k]

I love going to Krakus deli on Fleet street. As soon as you step inside you're greeted with the smell of the various sausages, which hang behind the counter. A small selection of Polish books, cosmetics and supplements always piques my curiosity. Towards the back, at the end of the rows of jams and jellies and pickles and soups, there lays a box of baked goods. When I go into Krakus to buy myśliwska, a type of sausage, or twaróg farmer's cheese, I almost always leave with a pączek, a polish doughnut filled with jam.

They sell them year-round, but the time for pączki is Fat Tuesday. They're the Polish version of fastnachts or king cakes. In many areas with historic Polish communities, like Hamtramck, Michigan, pączki have spread in popularity. Bakers develop wild new recipes topped with cereal and sprinkles, and people line up around the block to get one on Pączki Day.

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I admit I'm a little bit envious of the hubbub of Hamtramck pączki culture. Not so much the over-the-top instragram-bait abominations, but the recognition and excitement of "Pączki Day." Every year, I do my best to generate as much excitement as I can here in Baltimore.

I have three recipes for these doughnuts in my Maryland cookbooks. This post isn't about any of them. Frankly, they are all a little too "Americanized." The pączki I enjoy are like the ones my husband remembers from his childhood. His Polish mother made the doughnuts herself, filling them with plum jam.

She never works from exact recipes, so the closest thing we have is the instructions in "Old Polish Traditions in the Kitchen and at the Table" by Maria Lemnis & Henryk Vitry.

This 1979 book declares that making pączki is "not for young housewives who are taking their first steps in the noble art of cooking." Deep frying is indeed intimidating, and the accompanying recipe doesn't do much to help the beginner.
For starters, the yeast quantity —"2 1/2 ounces (about 1/3 cup)" — is probably referring to a liquid yeast that is not commonly available. To make matters more confusing, an online conversion for liquid yeast translates to about two tablespoons, which is still a somewhat unusually large quantity of yeast.

Looking for more guidance, I searched online for pączki recipes. I can't say I was impressed. Many of the recipes cut back on the amount of egg yolks. One called for bread flour.

I bought a bag of flour at Krakus because it had a picture of pączki on the front, and a recipe on the side of the bag. The texture was finely milled like cake flour.

There are a few things about making pączki that will make an experienced doughnut-maker second-guess themselves.

The dough tends to be a bit wet. I am always tempted to add more flour, but in the kneading the dough will start to form a ball. It should pull away from the bowl and hands.. but barely.

But you still have to use judgment, because flour and moisture vary so much. See here how much egg white snuck in with my yolks. It necessitated a little extra flour:

I've learned to fry these a few shades darker than my instinct would allow. They need to cook through and the jam needs to get gooey. The dark exterior may be part of why pączki are so much better fresh. They don't get bad or anything but once you've had a fresh one, its hard to accept an hours' old doughnut.

There's also the whole filling-before-frying thing. You can always skip it.

None of the blog recipes I cross-referenced insisted on frying the pączki with the filling in them, but the recipe on the side of the flour bag did, so I take it to be more standard in Poland. And I do like suffering in the name of food. The singular, Pączek means "bud" as in a flower bud. If you make these the traditional way, by filling and pinching, you can see where it got the name. In the fryer, the plum butter pączki fared better than any that I filled with other preserves. Authenticity pays off.

As of yet, I don't have any Maryland-originating Polish cookbooks in my collection. Luckily, evidence of this culinary influence is alive and well, especially in Fells Point.

Along with the Kielbasa Factory in Rockville, Krakus stands as a draw to the Polish community of Maryland, a special place to go when you need just the right thing.

It benefits me to steer my neighbors towards Krakus on Pączki Day. Presumably, a swift business in doughnuts will help ensure that I'll be able to get my twaróg, myśliwska, krówki caramels… and the plum butter needed to make my own pączki.

Now that I am comfortably able to produce quality pączki at home, they're served up alongside fastnacht in an all-out doughnut-palooza. Fat Tuesday is supposed to be a celebration after all. It's the last you're going to get before Lent begins. Then you're just piously reflecting on religious matters… and secretly biding your time until Dyngus Day.

Recipe:

• 1 tb sugar

• 1/3 cup milk

• 1/3 cup flour

• 1 tb yeast (or 1 envelope)

• 3 oz about 4 tb sugar

• 1 stick butter

• 8 egg yolks

• 6 cups flour

• 1 c milk

• about 1 tsp lemon zest or to taste

• 1 tb vanilla

• 2 tb rum

Make sure all ingredients are room temperature. Really. Leave them out overnight at least. You can even soften the butter some more by microwaving a mug of water and leaving the butter in the microwave with the mug for awhile.

Warm the milk to a little above room temperature but no hotter than 110°. Stir in the 1/3 cup flour, tablespoon sugar, and yeast and let it sit to turn bubbly.

Cream the butter and sugar until soft and smooth. I use a stand mixer. Add egg yolks one at a time and beat well.

I make this like cake: add some flour, then the yeast sponge, then some more flour, then some of the milk, more flour, add vanilla, rum, and lemon zest, followed by the last of the flour. Let continue to mix until it pulls away from the side of the bowl. If it continues to stick to bowl, add more flour 1 tablespoon at a time.

Once it begins to form a ball, I switch to the dough hook but you could also hand-knead. If doing the latter, I would do it with oiled hands to avoid incorporating much more flour. Knead until smooth and put in a covered bowl to rise until doubled in bulk.

Once the dough has risen, punch it down and separate into golf-ball-sized portions. Roll each until smooth. If you are filling them now, press onto board and flatten out, stretching edges slightly. Put about 1-2 tablespoons plum butter in the center, and pinch the sides up to purse the jam. Seal the pinched dough closed and lay seam side down. If you are not doing this, you can flatten the ball slightly and set to rise.

Let the doughnuts rise again until nearly doubled in bulk.

Fry in hot vegetable oil until dark brown. If you haven't filled them before frying, make a hole inside the doughnut with a chopstick and pipe the jam inside.

Dust or roll in powdered sugar and serve as soon as they are cool enough to eat.

Recipe developed by Kara Mae Harris for Old Line Plate. Special thanks to Justyn Lopaczynski for translation assistance.

The box is full of folders. Your cookbook is in one of them. You can’t wait to see it.

But what else is in the box? Suddenly you are faced with folders with things like “Letters 1810-1850”; “Commonplace Book c. 1840”; “clippings 1895”; “family tree.”

Oftentimes, these letters are the reason that this cookbook was saved at all; swept in with the history of a family, of the country, of things considered important and worth saving.

To be continued…

Note to reader(s): I am considering using this substack occasionally as a repository for my writing craft and a place to share some of what I’m working on. But I don’t want to annoy people or burden inboxes with something you didn’t sign up for so this is very tentative. I could always add them but not have the emails go out, other than this once.

“And so we are really going to have a tea room after all; it is to be a perfect love of a place, all little blue and white China teacups, and walls papered in cunning blue figures, and the name of this delicate place of amusement is going to be the ‘Dutch Tea Room.’ If you have happened to go to Baltimore, or visit Baltimore, or have friends who have, why you know all about the little tea room there that has the same name and has - been run by society girls for the past several years.” - The Times Dispatch, Richmond, VA, 1912

In 1907, Harriet Stanton Blatch met her friend Hettie Wright Graham for dinner. The destination was the famous Hoffman House hotel in New York. The “palace hotel” was known for fine food, expensive artwork, celebrity guests, and rye whiskey. Blatch and Graham took the elevator up to the fashionable rooftop garden dining area but were denied a table. The owner told Blatch that women diners were not allowed without a male escort. The policy was meant to protect women such as Blatch and Graham from having to dine near “objectionable” women. “When I have been annoyed it has been by men,” Blatch remarked. “I do not suppose you make any effort to keep objectionable men out.” She attempted to sue the hotel, and lost.

In the decades after the Civil War, a glamorous new era of restaurant dining was emerging. It wasn’t considered respectable for women to dine without male accompaniment in these places.

Clothing sale in the Dutch Tea Room, 1913

At the same time, women were spending more time outside of the home, whether it was working, shopping, or socializing. In “Ten Restaurants That Changed America”, author Paul Freedman wrote that “the period from 1890 to 1910 saw the proliferation of many types of middle-class restaurants, ranging from those featuring Chinese and other foreign cuisines to tearooms, coffee shops, cafeterias, and other inexpensive but orderly places to have lunch. These were not necessarily intended exclusively for women, but the fact that they did not serve alcohol made them seem appropriate places for unaccompanied women to dine.” (Note: Some accounts claim that it wasn’t always tea in those ladies’ teapots!) These types of establishments offered up “decorous but economical refuge, a midday oasis of sorts, where women who were shopping could dine and recuperate, or where women who worked in offices or stores could have a tranquil if more hurried lunch."

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A 1904 article in The Carlisle Pennsylvania Sentinal advised that opening a tea room was "a profitable occupation for women,” as long as the woman had “a business head and [knew] how to count up profit and loss” as well as experience “making all kinds of cakes in the best homemade way.”

Baltimore was the 6th-largest city in the United States around this time, and had a number of tea rooms. The most famous and enduring is the tea room in the Women’s Exchange. Department stores like Hutzler’s had a tea room inside the store. The Parkway Theater on North Avenue had a tea room which was “swarmed” with people waiting for the second showing of films each day. In segregated Baltimore there was also at least one Black-owned tea room - “The Little Gem” in Sandtown on Robert Street.

In 1914, author Julian Street came to Baltimore and visited the Women’s Exchange where he encountered a “great numbers of ladies sitting upon tall stools and eating at a lunch-counter.” He described the sight as “a somewhat curious spectacle, perhaps, but neither pleasing to the eye nor thrilling to the senses.”

1915 promotional cookbook showing “Dainty” food, Duke University

In the mid-19th century, American society began to develop the stereotype that women preferred different kinds of foods than men. Delmonico steak might be alright for men, but women require something “daintier” - things like cakes, fruit, salads, and egg dishes.

“The development of dining-out options for women was accompanied by a growing sense that women had their own preferences and could, at least in the company of other ladies, indulge them. The obvious advantage of all-female lunches was that women could partake of what they actually liked to eat.” - Ten Restaurants That Changed America

The tea rooms became a place not just for socializing but for politics including suffrage and prohibition. The Southern Tea Room at 206 Park Avenue hosted lectures on women’s suffrage and greeted suffragette Alice Paul with a reception in 1910.

Alice Paul visits the Southern Tea Room, Baltimore Sun, 1910

Marguerite Schertle was a tea room waitress for nearly 80 years. At age 92 she was profiled in “Maryland’s Vanishing Lives” where she shared the memories of tea room culture, where the customers were known by name as “Miss this and Miss that,” desserts like butterscotch and charlotte russe were still served, and where oftentimes sisters were employed side by side. Her own sister “Miss Anna” had worked with her at the Women’s Exchange until her death in 1992. The women had even married “look-alike” brothers and started families in adjacent bungalows in Hamilton. Schertle passed away in 2001 at 100 years old.

Before her half-century-long tenure at the Women’s Exchange, Schertle had worked for 20 years across the street at the Dutch Tea Room at 314 N. Charles.

The Dutch Tea Room had been opened in 1904 by Natalie Cole, who was, according to the Baltimore Sun, a “lady of social standing.” The popular tea room was even visited by President Wilson - almost. In 1913 he stopped by with his family but the place was too crowded so they went to the Rennert instead. Cole still got to serve her country in 1917, when the tea room baked 300 “extra fine” fruit cakes for soldiers at Camp Meade.

In 1918 Natalie Cole married William Wilson Galbreath, who is listed in some directories as a salesman of “porcelain products.” Hmm. Cole and her husband passed away in 1959 and 1952, respectively. I’m not sure when the Dutch Tea Room actually closed for business.

An October 1904 Baltimore Sun article claimed the great fire in February brought enterprising women to open lunch rooms

According to the Baltimore Sun obituary for Marguerite Schertle, when she’d worked at the Dutch Tea Room she had baked “Lady Baltimore, orange and Wellesley fudge cakes.”

I don’t have recipes for those cakes but I found a recipe in an undated, unpublished manuscript for a “Martha Washington Cake,” attributed to the Dutch Tea Room. The cake is actually a predecessor to Boston Creme Pie, with a custard filling and minus the chocolate topping. Although Boston Creme Pie has been sometimes called “Washington Pie” (or Cake), the Martha name is rarer - it’s typically known as a “Martha Washington Cream Pie.” The name is obviously more dainty and befitting a tea room.

Early 20th century menus suggest that both a cup of tea and a slice of cake would run about fifteen cents - $1.92 in today’s money. At that price, I could go for a tea room lunch. Myself and most dainty ladies would be quick to notice that it leaves more money and appetite for a burger and a beer for dinner. Male accompaniment optional, thanks.

Recipe:

Cake:

• ½ cup sugar

• ½ cup flour

• 3 eggs

Beat yolks then add the sugar. Fold in stiffly beaten whites, then gently fold in flour, stirring as little as possible. Bake in one cake tin. (A smaller taller cake might be preferable to the 9″ tin I used.)

Filling:

• 1 cup milk

• 1 egg

• ½ cup sugar

• ¼ cup flour

• vanilla to taste

Scald the milk. Beat flour, sugar and egg in a separate bowl then mix in ¼ to ½ cup of the scalded milk. Return to pan and cook over medium heat until thickened. Cool thoroughly.

Split the cake vertically and spread filling in the middle. Top with powdered sugar.

Recipe Adapted from “Cookbook of Maryland and Virginia Recipes” manuscript in the American Antiquarian Society collection.

Note: This is the cake shown on my appearance on CBS Mornings, September 16, 2021

Robert H. Clark was one of the two-thirds of Civil War fatalities who died not from the violence on the battlefield, but of disease. The Canada-born Union soldier enlisted in the 7th Maine Infantry in August 1862 at the age of 23. He left behind his wife Mary Ann and one-year-old baby Henry Gilbert, and headed for Maryland. The Maine 7th took part in the Maryland Campaign and a battle at South Mountain, before fighting at Antietam, a significant and bloody turning point in the war.

Constant campaigning had cost the regiment the loss of many men. They returned to Portland, Maine through January of 1863 before reporting to Northern Virginia for more fighting, including the Union victory at the Second Battle of Fredericksburg. In June, the company would pass through Maryland on their way to the fateful battle at Gettysburg. As it happened, Robert H. Clark would never make it to Pennsylvania.

Sources differ on whether the young man had contracted typhoid or died from sunstroke. According to Lt. Colonel Selden Connor, men "fell out by scores… by the heat, dust and exertion" on the trip, some dying in the road.

Clark made it to a hotel in Westminster Maryland, where he was tended to by Mary Bostwick Shellman, a 14-year old who routinely volunteered with the care, feeding and entertainment of residents of the town almshouse. That day, the dutiful girl was caring for soldiers at the City Hotel, which was inundated with infirm soldiers passing through town between battles. She fanned Clark for hours, but it was in vain. Young Mary Shellman watched as Robert Clark died. She would never forget the experience.

Born in 1849, Mary B. Shellman was one of four children born to Westminster citizens Catherine Jones and Col. James M. Shellman. At 14, Shellman was already shaping up to be the stuff of local legend. It's said that one of the first entities she crusaded to memorialize was a sycamore tree, sentenced to be cut to make way for a street. Shellman persuaded the mayor to rename the lane Sycamore Street in the tree's honor.

Shortly before her experience caring for the Union Soldier Robert Clark, J.E.B. Stuart greeted Shellman and a group of Westminster children and was apparently rebuffed. Stories vary, but in one, she replied “I’m southern by birth but Yankee in principle," irritating the Confederate general. In another she mocked him by calling him "Jonny Red Coat."

At one point, passing herself off as "M.B. Shellman", Mary started Westminster's first boy scout troop, serving as a scoutmaster until the organization found out her gender.

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As telephone lines made their way into towns like Westminster, Mary made sure her home was the first residence in Carroll county to have one. She became the manager of the regional division of the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company. When Alexander Graham Bell came to inspect the system, he gave Mary a telephone pin, which remained among her possessions and became a part of her legend.

Shellman had another pin in her collection —a Red Cross Pin, care of Clara Barton— earned in 1889 when Mary joined Marylanders who rushed to Pennsylvania to assist in the aftermath of the Johnstown Flood.

Mary was a suffragette, also championing suffrage's companion cause, temperance. Stereotypes aside, she seemed to have some fun. After Christmas of 1865, she wrote to a cousin in Frederick, describing a joyful holiday party spent dancing with "would you believe it… a returned Reb." She playfully mentioned a visit from "a fair-haired friend," and her eagerness to meet his friends.

"Rose Geranium Cake" is one of four recipes that Shellman contributed to "Choice Maryland Cookery," a 1902 cookbook compiled by the women of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Uniontown. Other recipes are for a horehound "Cough Remedy"", Pink Watermelon Preserves, and Pineapple Marmalade. Shellman's interest in food continued during the first World War, when she worked in Herbert Hoover's Food Administration.

In the 1920s, Shellman did work preserving Westminster's history, laying the groundwork for the institutions that preserve her own memory to this day. The "Sherman-Fisher-Shellman House" where she grew up is now a property of the Carroll County Historical Society. She wrote a book on Westminster history that is in the collections of the Pratt Library and the Maryland Center for History and Culture. The latter library houses an additional history manuscript she wrote, as well as some poems and letters. A plaque honoring her suffrage work was unveiled in Westminster in December 2021.

Mary's motley life was also peppered with the arts. She performed in community theater and wrote poetry, including lyrics to a rally song for William McKinley's 1900 presidential campaign, a poem honoring the life of Nicholas Paroway (a Westminster citizen who was born into slavery in Baltimore), and a memorial hymn for Arlington National Cemetery.

The hymn reflects Mary's lasting effort to honor the lives and deaths of soldiers.

In May 1868, when Mary was 18, she responded to a call from Union veterans’ organization commander Gen. John A. Logan to decorate the graves of soldiers. She led an assembly of local children through town on their way to Westminster Cemetery to lay flowers on soldier's graves. "Decoration Day" eventually became Memorial Day, and Mary Shellman would remain involved in Westminster's Memorial Day Parade for the next 60 years. Five Union soldiers are buried in a plot that Shellman set aside to spare the men from "pauper burials." Robert H. Clark's grave marker is the first and the largest.

The soldier's death that cemented Mary B. Shellman's commitment to honor fallen soldiers remained personal. In the 1880s, Shellman corresponded with Henry Gilbert Clark, Robert's son. Another child left fatherless by the Civil War, Henry Clark had been just an infant when Robert left for war. Henry's mother lost custody or abandoned him after the war, and he was raised by family. Historians' attempts to trace his later life and whereabouts dead-end at 1924.

Mary isn't buried near the soliders at Westminster. In later life, she moved to live near her nephew Rev. Paul Reese in Rockland Texas. She died in 1938, shortly after instituting Memorial Day ceremonies there. She is buried in Rockland Cemetery.

I didn't even do much of my own primary-source research for this post. There is just too much. Volunteers at the Historical Society of Carroll County have done much to chronicle the varied events in the life of Mary B. Shellman and of those she came into contact with. It's a wide web with threads cast via the memorialization of the casualties of the Civil War, of the history of the telephone, the Red Cross, of votes for women, a street named Sycamore, and now, by a cake recipe.

Recipe:

• 1 Cups butter

• 1 Lb sugar

• 6 egg yolks, 4 whites

• 3.5 Cups sifted flour

• 3 Teaspoons Royal baking powder

• 6 Rose Geranium leaves

• 1 Cups cold water

"One cup butter, one pound A sugar, yolks of six eggs, whites of four eggs, one cup cold water, three and one-half cups sifted flour, three teaspoons Royal baking powder. Cream butter and sugar together, add yolks and beat well, then stir in the water.Beat whites of eggs to a stiff froth; sift baking powder in flour; add whites of eggs and flour, alternately; stir well, but do not beat. Grease and flour well two mountain cake pans, lay three rose geranium leaves in each, pour the batter on them and bake in a moderate oven. Use the whites of the two eggs left from the cake for iceing, and flavor iceing with vanilla. When the cake is baked, remove geranium leaves before putting cakes together. Put iceing between layers, on top and sides. The leaves give cake a delicious flavor."

Recipe from “Choice Maryland Cookery“, Printed at the Caroll Record Office, 1902

“Christmas comes but once a year, when eggnog takes the place of beer.” – 1918

These days, Christmastime can feel tainted by materialism, compulsory spending, thoughtless gifts, and waste. Greedy corporations manipulate our nostalgia with limited edition Coke cans and the like. But there was a time, over a century ago, when things were simple and pure. Back in those days, before the Black Friday sales or department store extravaganzas, the Christmas holidays were more grounded, centered in the true reason for the season: getting #$@%*! up.

Make no mistake – our agrarian ancestors indeed worked their fingers to the bone day in, day out for the most of the year. But when winter rolled around, the harvests were put up, and the hogs had been killed and cured, one of the primary duties to attend to was partying. Families would travel or host visitors. When possible, food was shared in all directions. Spirits were consumed, often to excess. The large quantities called for in old eggnog recipes hearken to a time when a huge batch was made in late November to serve to guests throughout the season.

This annual cycle remained in the social DNA even as the nature of work changed, and more and more people flocked to cities and manned machines year round (or sat in offices and collected on the work of others). In this environment, things could get a little chaotic.

Especially in the rough-and-tumble environment of late 1800s Baltimore, the winter holidays correlated with a time of increased accidents, petty crimes, and some not-so-petty crimes.

In old newspapers, I found accounts of several incidents of murder or drugging by eggnog. The ubiquitous holiday beverage with its potent combination of liquors must have been a tempting vehicle for sinister motives in December.

More innocuously, eggnog was generally associated with the type of rowdiness that drew the finger-wagging of the temperance movement and the cautioning of elders. In 1890, two Baltimore men, aged 19 and 21, successfully used “egg-nogg” as a defense when they went to trial for stealing a horse and buggy on a lark.

Each year, news editorials appeared, admonishing would-be eggnog hellions to stop the insanity. In 1905, a Baptist reverend took to the pages of the Afro-American to decry the debauchery, firecrackers, and revealing clothing associated with Christmas revelry. Many young men, he warned, have their “lives blotted out” on this one day, and many young women “start to hell.”

“The enjoyments of the Christmas festival were accompanied, as usual, with the usual number of accidents, some resulting from the careless use of firearms, whilst others may perhaps be attributed to the too free use of “egg-nogg and apple toddy.” – Baltimore Sun, 1868

During the holiday season, temperance advocates gladly took on the title of “Anti Egg-Nog Movement” when holding meetings.

Still, the popularity of eggnog continued right on up to —and through— Prohibition. In 1921, the Sun declared that “eggnog is properly seasoned with real Jamaica rum, bootlegged at $8 a quart.”

Although it was blamed for sowing mayhem, eggnog had its defenders. When in 1910 the Annapolis Capital paper quipped, “With eggs at 42 cents per dozen the Mint Julep Association is glad it does not belong to the Eggnog Clan,” the Baltimore Sun indignantly reprinted the comment with a reply. “Clan, sister? It is a hierarchy, a universal brotherhood, a winged saraband that measures its membership by the millions and counts its kingdoms by the stars.”

Recipe:

• 12 eggs, separated

• 3 pints cream

• 2 pints milk

• 1.25 pints brandy (peach if you can find it, apple is the likely option)

• .5 pints Jamaican rum

• .5 pints Bourbon

• 9 oz sugar (or to taste)

• nutmeg (optional)

• 1 tsp vanilla extract (optional)

Beat eggs until smooth and yellow. Gradually beat in sugar, followed by liquors, vanilla (if using) and finish with milk and cream. Optional: top with beaten egg whites or fold them in last. Top with nutmeg if desired.

I'm accustomed to unsolved food mysteries. Cycles of confusion and research are so ingrained into my process that it is hard to write without them. The mystery IS the story, and so there is no story to "John Masetta - A Recipe from Hollywood."

I imagine that Helen Virginia Halpine (née Bullard), got the recipe on a visit to Los Angeles when her husband, Captain Charles Greham Halpine, was stationed at the Naval base in Coronado around 1935.

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The recipe name intrigued me, although the dish is simple - pork, tomatoes, cheese, noodles, onions, garlic. ("whew," wrote Mrs. Halpine next to the called-for two cloves).

I started my research with a wild goose chase.

A friend once told me that her mother mixes red wine and coca cola and calls it a "Mojo" - a misheard derivative of the cocktail's Basque name, "kalimotxo." At first I thought that "John Masetta" might be a case of something similar. I even thought that despite the Italian-sounding name, it could have a different origin entirely. Some versions of German Geschnetzeltes, for instance, is similar to this recipe for meat served with noodles. Perhaps John Masetta is just a sound someone heard for a version of some German dish, I thought.

A 1919 advertisement for the Logan Delicatessen in Dayton Ohio asked prospective customers: "Do you like hot tamales or chile con carne, or John Mazetta"? "If so, we have it," the ad declared without further explanation, suggesting that the dish was at least somewhat commonly known.

A Pennsylvania newspaper mentioned "John Mazetta" as a recipe contest winner in 1937, and claimed that the "dinner dish is an old favorite among German Cooks."

In 1941, a newspaper ad in Illinois attributed John Mazetta to a "chef at a famous New York Hotel." According to that ad "the contents of the concoction [are] beef, veal, noodles, celery, tomato soup, green peppers, onions, mushrooms" and "bitey cheese." That sounds pretty different from Mrs. Halpine's John Masetta.

You can see why confusion is the norm in food history.

A 1989 article about casseroles in the LA Times mentioned "Johnny Mousetti," stating that the dish's origins were a mystery.

As it turns out, the recipe in my cookbook for "John Masetta - A Recipe from Hollywood" is just a version of "Johnny Marzetti," a midwestern casserole originating at Marzetti's restaurant in Columbus, Ohio. You may be familiar with the line of nationally-available salad dressings named for the restaurant.

I found similar recipes in other Maryland cookbooks under different names: "Johhny Mazetti," just "Marzetti," the hilarious "Whozit," and the somewhat less hilarious "Ground Beef Casserole."

These recipes, with variations on cheese and meats, raise the question of what truly constitutes the authentic Johnny Marzetti. Most recipes call for ground meat. Inclusions like celery, mushrooms and green peppers are common. Different recipes call for different cheeses. The LA Times article claimed the casserole contains corn.

True to most community-sourced recipes of the 1950s, Mrs. Halpine's recipe was simple. Luckily, it's hard to go wrong with this type of thing. A little extra garlic and a little extra seasoning on the plate made this a nice dinner, even if it didn't give me a good story to tell.

Recipe:

• 2 Lb pork, steaks or boiled (if latter boil and simmer until tender)

• 10 or 12 large onions, sliced [I only had red onions and I only used 2 or 3! - k]

• 2 cloves garlic (whew')

• salt

• 1 large or 2 small packages inch wide noodles

• 1 2 1/2 can solid pack tomato

• 1 Lb American cheese

Dice pork into cubes and fry in hot skillet until golden brown. Add onions and fry until all are brown. Boil noodles while pork is sizzling and put tomatoes through colander. When noodles are done and drained add them to tomatoes and combine with pork and onions. Add chopped garlic, salt, and part of grated cheese.Put all in large baking dish, cover with grated cheese and bake until brown. It is better if cooked the day before and reheated.Serve with green salad, French bread, dry wine and coffee.

Recipe from "Evening Capital's 'Chow Down' Cook Book," 1954, Capital-Gazette Press