Kentucky’s Cookbook Heritage

This era witnessed a culinary paradox. By the 1950s, Kentucky cookbook writing seemed to be going in a number of different directions: some cooks were motivated by novelty and complexity, and others wanted to simplify. We had both Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking (Beck, Berthole, and Child 1961) and Peg Bracken’s I Hate to Cook Book (1960).

Although there seemed to be more interest in cookbooks, there may have been less interest in cooking, or at least a greater focus on convenience. There was a sizable increase in the number of Kentucky cookbooks published, especially community cookbooks. One of the reasons for this was the creation of numerous firms, mostly in the Midwest, that specialized in the publication of limited-run cookbooks compiled by community groups. Newspapers, especially the Louisville Courier-Journal, catered to their increasingly food-interested readership. Their food editors and columnists published recipes that reflected state and regional foodways.

The development of processed foods, which started in the late nineteenth century, accelerated dramatically during this period. Branded processed foods were fully embraced: Ketchup was made by Heinz and came in a bottle; it was not some complex recipe cooked down on the stove. Soup came in a can, and it was best if the can said “Campbell’s.” Recipes made up of almost entirely canned ingredients frequently popped up in community cookbooks in this era. That said, many cookbooks were also more cosmopolitan and often included both ethnic recipes and more complex ones, labeled gourmet. Many cookbooks included recipes from around the world.

There are a number of noteworthy Louisville-based charity cookbooks from this era. One that continues to have a following is a fund-raising cookbook produced in 1952 by the Cabbage Patch Circle, a Louisville community service organization (various editions and reprints were published at least until 1972). Although it is commonly found in a comb-bound paperback format, a hardcover edition was published in 1956. The original title was Famous Kentucky Recipes (Cabbage Patch Circle 1952), but subsequent editions used the more familiar Cabbage Patch: Famous Kentucky Recipes (1956). Alton Brown (2010), the “Good Eats” guy, identifies four standards for authenticity in community cookbooks: (1) they must be spiral bound or, he says, “they are not to be trusted”; (2) the recipes must be attributed to members of the community; (3) the cookbooks must be democratic, meaning the role of the editor is muted; and (4) they must convey a strong sense of place. The Cabbage Patch cookbooks meet Brown’s criteria.

The Cabbage Patch Circle was organized by a group of women in 1910 to support a settlement house on Ninth Street in Louisville. Early in its history it provided housing for the poor, a community clothing bank, a nursery school, and a cooking school. The name Cabbage Patch came from the fact that the settlement house served an area of Louisville that had once been the site of a field used to grow cabbages. Residents of this area became characters in the novels of Alice Hegan Rice, including Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1902), which was made into a movie three times. Rice, who did volunteer social work, was on the Cabbage Patch Circle’s first board of directors. The circle recently celebrated its centenary and continues its good works.

As a community cookbook, Famous Kentucky Recipes is based on contributed recipes, most of which are signed. In addition to the women of Louisville, there are recipes from other sources, such as the Pendennis Club and the Brown Hotel in Louisville, the Old Stone Inn in Simpsonville, the Talbott Inn in Bardstown, the Beaumont Inn in Harrodsburg, and Gabe’s Restaurant in Owensboro. Except for Gabe’s, these businesses are still open and worth a visit, although the Pendennis Club is private. Gabe’s Restaurant and Motor Inn was an important Owensboro landmark before owner Gabriel Fiorella retired in 1985. In advertising, Fiorella styled his restaurant as “The Steak House of the South.” The Cabbage Patch cookbook augments his recipe for french fried onions with a short biography that states, “From hamburger wagon to one of Kentucky’s most famous eating places, he has parlayed hard work, keen wits and good humor into prosperity and eminence” (Cabbage Patch Circle 1952, 93).

Famous Kentucky Recipes also presents recipes from food writers such as Louisville’s Marion Flexner and Cissy Gregg and Mr. and Mrs. Duncan Hines of Bowling Green. Both Mr. and Mrs. Hines contributed apple pie recipes. There are a number of recipes attributed to Jennie C. Benedict, including the fruitcake recipe that started her career, as well as “Miss Jenny’s Bluegrass Chicken” and “Benedictine Spread.” The recipe for the latter, included here, was contributed by Mrs. Russell T. Walton.

Benedictine Sandwich Filling (1952)

1 cucumber

1 cake of Philadelphia cream cheese

1 small onion

salt to taste

mayonnaise

Grind cucumber and onion together, very fine. Put in strainer or cheese cloth and press out juice. Soften cream cheese, add cucumber and onion juice and salt. Add enough mayonnaise to make a soft spread. A little green vegetable coloring may be added, if desired. A dash of Accent (MSG) also enhances the flavor of this always delightful sandwich spread. If a stronger flavor is desired, add a tablespoon or two of the finely ground pulp—let your taste guide you. (Cabbage Patch Circle 1952, 14)

Some consider the green food coloring a characteristic component of “authentic” Benedictine spread. Contemporary recipes treat it as optional, and one recipe uses spinach as a colorant. It seems to me that using only the juice of the onion and cucumber is more authentic than adding the pulp to the spread. Mrs. Walton’s inclusion of MSG is unusual, if not unique.

The selection of recipes reflects the food traditions of Louisville expressed earlier, albeit with some differences, in Mary Harris Frazer’s Kentucky Receipt Book (1903) and Marion Flexner’s Dixie Dishes (1941) and Out of Kentucky Kitchens (1949). Again, we find recipes for the foods of rural Kentucky, including cornbread, biscuits, and greens with seasoning, merged with Creole and Cajun classics from New Orleans and the Gulf coast. For example, the 1952 Cabbage Patch cookbook includes a recipe for jambalaya contributed by Ohio River Green Line Steamers, a towboat company. Another important element is the inclusion of foods for Kentucky Derby parties and other events. Following the table of contents is a suggested menu for a Derby breakfast: old Kentucky country ham, thinly sliced; hot beaten biscuits; turkey hash, served shortcake style with southern cornbread; green asparagus vinaigrette on Bibb lettuce; tiny chess tarts; and Miss Jenny’s party mints.

In addition to Kentucky classics, the 1952 Cabbage Patch cookbook includes ethnic dishes of Italian, German, Indian, and Chinese origin. The Louisville community of cooks was becoming much more cosmopolitan over time, and this was reflected by changes in the ethnic composition of Louisville and an increase in ethnic foods in cookbooks. Here is a recipe for German potato salad contributed by Mrs. Linton A. Caulfield Jr.

German Potato Salad (1952)

potatoes

1 stalk celery

2 hard cooked eggs

1 tablespoon parsley (chopped)

2 eggs beaten

1 onion, diced

½ tablespoon pepper

6 slices breakfast bacon

½ cup sugar

½ cup vinegar

½ cup water

½ tablespoon salt

¼ tablespoon dry mustard

Boil potatoes, peel, dice; add celery, sliced hard-boiled eggs and onion. Beat eggs and add sugar, spices, vinegar and water. Mix well. Pour mixture into hot bacon fat, stir until mixture thickens. Pour over potatoes, etc. Break crisp bacon into small pieces and mix in salad. (Cabbage Patch Circle 1952, 121)

The trend toward a more cosmopolitan selection of recipes was also evident in Marion W. Flexner’s Cocktail Supper Cookbook (1955), which took a more sophisticated path than her earlier Dixie Dishes (1941) and Out of Kentucky Kitchens (1949). Her new cookbook was organized around a number of menus with various themes suitable for a cocktail party. As the dust jacket states, the emphasis was on “planned-ahead and cooked-ahead food that knows how to wait.” The recipes include arroz con pollo, cannelloni with cheese sauce, Baltimore crab cakes, chocolate mousse, lasagne, paella Valenciana, Philadelphia pepper pot, veal scaloppine, and zuppa Inglese. I included a recipe here from her 1955 cookbook.

Red Cabbage, Sweet-and-Sour (1955)

¼ cup bacon drippings or butter

1 large onion, peeled and minced

2 tablespoons flour

1 large firm head red cabbage, shredded fine

1 bay leaf

Salt and black pepper

2 whole cloves

2 apples pared and shredded

⅓ cup cider vinegar or more

⅓ cup dark brown sugar or more

Melt fat, add onion and flour, stir until brown. Pour in 1 cup water, stirring to make a smooth sauce. Add cabbage, enough water to barely cover, bay leaf, salt, and pepper. Cover, bring to a hard boil. Reduce heat and simmer 30 to 40 minutes. Add rest of ingredients; cook ½ hour longer. Cabbage should be tender by then and sauce spicy. Correct flavoring to your taste. (Flexner 1955, 168)

This resembles one of my family’s heirloom German recipes. The interesting difference is that Flexner uses the classic New Orleans practice of producing a roux as the first step. My version is from my cousin’s grandfather, Billy Schubert, who was the cook at a German restaurant in Watertown, Wisconsin. He just added a sprinkling of flour near the end of the process to thicken the sauce. Clearly, Flexner’s version is a traditional middle European recipe put through a Gulf coast sieve.

Emergence of the Charity Cookbook Publishing Industry

Starting in the 1950s, there was a substantial increase in the number of fund-raising cookbooks published by companies that specialized in this business. In part, this was attributable to technological advances, with off-set printing becoming widely available in around 1950. Offset printing was less expensive than letterpress printing, as it could be done from a clean typescript rather than requiring typesetting and linotypes. In contrast, earlier fund-raisers, such as those created by the Women’s Guild of the Christ Church Cathedral in the 1920s and Housekeeping in the Blue Grass, first published in 1875, were hardbound books printed with a letterpress, typically by printing companies located in the same town as the group that compiled the book. There were many companies that specialized in publishing charity cookbooks, including Fundcraft Publishers (Collierville, Tennessee); Bev-Ron Publishers (Kansas City, Kansas), which became Cookbook Publishers (Lenexa, Kansas); Walter’s Cook-books (Waseca, Minnesota); Cookbooks by Morris (Kearney, Nebraska); Walsworth Brothers (Marceline, Missouri); Circulation Service (Leawood, Kansas); General Publishing and Printing (Iowa Falls, Iowa); G&R Publishing (Waverly, Iowa); Jumbo Jack’s (Audubon, Iowa); Famous Recipe Press (Nashville, Tennessee); and Wimmer Cookbooks (Memphis, Tennessee). There were probably others, and some of these have merged or ceased operations. Fundcraft and Cookbooks by Morris seem to be the most prominent, and Tennessee-based Fundcraft has the greatest presence in Kentucky. Wimmer of Memphis and Famous Recipe Press of Nashville produce cookbooks with high production values.

Many of these companies emerged in the Midwest in the 1930s and 1940s. For example, Fundcraft started as a small eastern Kansas print shop in the early 1940s. According to its corporate history, its first cook-book was a fund-raiser for the local Methodist church. By the early 1950s, Fundcraft had purchased new offset printers to reduce costs and make short print runs more feasible. The company expanded through acquisitions and eventually purchased a new building in Collierville, Tennessee, just outside of Memphis. In the 1990s its cookbook production system became Internet based. Today, Fundcraft, Cookbook Publishers, Cookbooks by Morris, and others offer a wide range of services through their websites, including downloadable guides to cookbook preparation, software programs for recipe data entry, cookbook sales, and apparently even access to recipes.

All this procedural assistance, however useful, has had an impact on the product. Many of the cookbooks published by these firms share certain characteristics. One important feature is that descriptions of cooking procedures are limited. Further, with a few exceptions, there is almost no narrative about local or family history or the stories behind the recipes and their origins. Because the cost of printing cookbooks is based in part on length, there is less incentive to include storytelling. Often these cookbooks and recipes are formulaic in form and content. Their repetitive nature is increased by the availability of online “recipe banks” and the “canned” artwork and kitchen hints used by the firms that produce these cookbooks. Cookbook historian Janice Longone summarizes this situation: “More often, these mass-produced books are poorly produced, with much ‘canned’ material and little or no uniqueness or regional flavor” (1997, 28). This critique does not extend to all the contemporary charity cookbooks produced—especially those that are not published by these cookbook companies. In some, the voices of the cooks and the community can be heard. Many independently and locally produced charity cookbooks are culturally interesting and include excellent narratives about cooking, local history, and families.

Among the Kentucky cookbooks considered here, the earliest example produced by one of these specialized publishers is dated 1950. There are probably earlier ones, but it is sometimes hard to tell, given that a number of cookbooks are undated. This modest volume, published by Bev-Ron of Kansas City, Missouri, was compiled by Trinity Methodist Church of Latonia in Kenton County and is entitled Latonia’s Favorite Recipes. There are a few anachronisms: one recipe calls for “butter, the size of a walnut,” and another evokes the pre-homogenization era by calling for “top milk” in a recipe for custard filling (Trinity Methodist Church 1950, 49, 50). The following recipe for apple crisp was contributed by Mrs. Wm. Sowder.

Apple Crisp (1950)

6 juicy apples

1 cup sugar

2 teaspoons lemon juice

1 teaspoon cinnamon

½ cup butter

¾ cup flour

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

Peel and core apples and cut into quarters. Arrange in greased Pyrex pie plate or shallow baking dish and pour lemon juice over apples. Blend butter, flour, sugar and spices as for pie crust. Press this mixture over top of apples. Bake, temperature 375 degrees for 1 hour. Serve with whipped cream or nutmeg sauce or hard sauce. (Trinity Methodist Church 1950, 55)

In some cases, a cookbook that began as a community fund-raiser was transformed into something resembling a single-author cookbook. First compiled in 1965 by Irene Hayes, What’s Cooking in Kentucky started as a fund-raiser for the Hueysville Church of Christ in Floyd County, which needed a new roof. Nearly fifty years and several editions later, it has evolved into a Kentucky classic that has sold more than 200,000 copies. Back in 1965, Mrs. Hayes, then the Hueysville postmaster, contacted other Kentucky postmasters to facilitate recipe collection beyond her own community. She even interviewed some cooks to reconstruct recipes that were not written down. The recipes selected are a tribute to skilled Kentucky home cooking, according to John Egerton, who calls Hayes’s cookbook “an all-Kentucky favorite” (1993, 361). Although the recipes come from many contributors, Hayes produced a cookbook with a consistent voice. The recipes follow an action format that integrates the process with the ingredients list, very much like The Joy of Cooking. Although Mrs. Hayes died recently, her cookbook continues under the guidance of her daughter. The current edition has more than 800 recipes. Here is a recipe from the original 1965 edition contributed by Mrs. Mary Franklin of Salyersville, in Magoffin County.

The original 1965 version of Irene Hayes’s What’s Cooking in Kentucky.

Fresh Apple Cake (1965)

BEAT WELL TOGETHER:

2 cups white sugar

3 eggs

1½ cups cooking oil

DO NOT use mixer for balance of cake.

SIFT TOGETHER:

½ scant teaspoon cinnamon

1 scant teaspoon salt

½ scant teaspoon nutmeg

1½ scant teaspoon soda

½ scant teaspoon cloves

3 cups sifted flour

ADD to above mixture.

THEN ADD:

3 cups finely chopped, soft apples

1 cup finely chopped pecans

BAKE 1½ hours in 325 degree oven. (Hayes 1965, 35)

Early Restaurant and Chef Cookbooks

The first restaurant-based cookbooks were published in the 1950s. These include a series written by Richard T. Hougen, who managed the Boone Tavern of Berea College from 1940 to 1976. The first, Look No Further: A Cookbook of Favorite Recipes from Boone Tavern Hotel, Berea College, Kentucky (1955), has the recipe for the tavern’s famous spoon bread, which is linked to the creation of Berea’s Spoon Bread Festival, and the recipe for what Hougen calls “Chicken Flakes in Birds Nest” (1955, 16, 132). The other volumes are Cooking with Hougen (1960) and More Hougen Favorites (1971).

The first of the Hougen’s Boone Tavern cookbooks.

Southern Spoon Bread (1955)

3 cups milk

1¼ cups cornmeal

3 eggs

2 tablespoons butter

1¾ teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1. Stir meal into rapidly boiling milk. Cook until very thick, stirring constantly, to prevent scorching.

2. Remove from fire and allow to cool. The mixture will be cold and very stiff.

3. Add well egg, salt, baking powder and melted butter. Beat with electric beater for 15 minutes. If hand beating is used break the hardened cornmeal into the beaten eggs in small amounts until all is well mixed. Then beat thoroughly for 10 minutes using a wooden spoon.

4. Pour into well-greased casserole. Bake for 30 minutes at 375 degrees F. Serve from casserole by spoonfuls. (Hougen 1955, 16)

Hougen tells us, “Be sure to use white cornmeal for the true Southern bread” (ibid.).

Food Journalism

A fascinating aspect of the 1950s and 1960s was the influence of news-paper-based food columnists, especially those of Louisville’s Courier- Journal. Easily the most influential culinary writer of this era was Mary “Cissy” Gregg, who served as the paper’s food editor from 1942 until her retirement in 1963 (Finley 1985, 6). Gregg, a native of Cynthiana in Harrison County, graduated from the University of Kentucky with a degree in agriculture and home economics. Her popular food column had an enthusiastic following, and she also wrote two cookbooks for distribution with the paper: Cissy Gregg’s Cookbook and Guide to Gracious Living (1953) and Cissy Gregg’s Cookbook (1959). These were combined and published as Cissy Gregg’s Cook Book in 1981, with an introduction by Deni Hamilton, another Courier-Journal food editor. Gregg’s recipes appear in many other Louisville-based cookbooks and in more historically oriented anthologies of recipes, including The Courier-Journal & Times Cookbook (1971) edited by one of her successors, Lillian Marshall. That collection declares on the cover that it contains “91 favorite Cissy Gregg Recipes” (Marshall 1971). Many of Gregg’s recipes also appear in The Courier- Journal Kentucky Cookbook (Finley 1985). In addition, one occasionally finds recipes attributed to her in community cookbooks of the era. Gregg is often mentioned by contemporary Kentucky cookbook authors as an important influence.

Cissy Gregg’s style is distinctive. She often places herself very much in the kitchen scene, enhancing her recipes with good-natured chats about the meaning of food, regional differences, variations in recipes, and the sensory delights associated with food. Her informal style, totally lacking in pretense, fosters trust and affection. According to Deni Hamilton, “Reading Cissy was like standing beside her at the stove. She conjured up a good picture of what the cook was getting into in the preparation of the dish, and exactly what to expect when it was prepared, even though she was a bit ‘wordy’ by today’s journalistic standards” (quoted in Finley 1985, 6). In a few cases, she presents alternative strategies for preparing the same dish, giving her readers a choice. An excellent example is her classic take on dumplings. She starts with the premise that men prefer dumplings like the ones their mothers used to make. But, as she observes, “All mothers did not make them alike, we have found out.” She therefore presents three approaches and tells her readers to “decide for themselves” (Finley 1985, 8). Gregg’s discourse on dumplings appears in at least four cookbooks: Cissy Gregg’s Cookbook and Guide to Gracious Living (1953), John Finley’s The Courier-Journal Kentucky Cookbook (1985), Linda Allison-Lewis’s Kentucky’s Best: Fifty Years of Great Recipes (1998), and Mark F. Sohn’s Appalachian Home Cooking: History, Culture, and Recipes (2005). Here it is again.

One of the Sunday supplement cookbooks by the much-loved Cissy Gregg.

Chicken ’N’ Dumplings

Dumpling No. 1

Make the same kind of pastry you would for pie crust. Use more flour than usual on the board when rolling them out. Roll the dough very- very thin. Cut in strips and drop them into the broth.

Dumpling No. 2

Make a richer-than-average biscuit dough. Go to the half-way place between biscuits and pastry, and at that point you’ll find the perfect proportion for a dumpling. Cook the same as dumpling No 1.

Dumpling No. 3

Place in a bowl the amount of flour you want to make up. Two cups of flour, we’ll say. Add salt to taste—we used a good teaspoonful. The chicken has been cooked until it is at the place in doneness that, if it had to take one more simmer, it would suffer a complete break-away from the bones.

At this point, tenderly lift it from the stew pot to a serving bowl and keep hot. … Dip up a spoonful of the hot liquid and add it to the measured flour in the bowl. Add enough of the chicken broth to make a rather stiff dough. Roll out thin on a well-floured board, cut in strips, I’d say an inch wide, and drop them into the boiling stew. Cover the pot and cook about 10 to 15 minutes. They must be done, though the thickness the dough is rolled will hold the accurate time needed. (Finley 1985, 8)

Cissy Gregg was much loved and had a real following in central Kentucky; her recipes appeared in community cookbooks into the 1960s. Kentucky cookbook author Ronni Lundy includes a story about a Cissy Gregg cookbook in her Butter Beans to Blackberries: Recipes from the Southern Garden (1999). When Lundy’s mother decided to move from a seven-room house to a smaller condo, she held a big yard sale. As Lundy recounts:

One of Cissy Gregg’s tattered and splattered rotogravure cookbooks ended up in the “Any Book for a Quarter” box. Fortunately for me, my fairy godmother arrived at 7:30 A.M. on the day of the sale, wearing a scarf tied under her chin and cat’s-eye glasses. She spotted the Cissy Gregg immediately, pulled it out of the box, snorted with shock, and marched right up to me. “Do you cook?” she barked. “Sure,” I said. “Well then why in heaven’s name would you let this go?” She shoved the magazine into my hands and pointed square at my nose. “You take this back in the house and don’t you sell it for any price. And you’d better thank your lucky stars it was me that found it and not one of those antique dealers.” (Lundy 1999, 60–61)

Starting with the work of Marie Gibson in 1936 and continuing with Cissy Gregg, the Louisville Courier-Journal has had important food editors and columnists. They include Loyta Higgins, Deni Hamilton, Lillian Marshall, Camille Glenn, Elaine Corn, Sarah Fritschner, Pableaux Johnson, and Ron Mikulak.

Can Opener Cookery and the Quest for Convenience

Although recipes that called for commercial packaged goods first appeared much earlier, the cookbooks of the 1950s included many more brand-name prepared ingredients as cooking became geared toward convenience. This shift relates to changes in the social context of cooking, including whether a household had a kitchen staff, the still strict gender-based division of labor, and the dramatic increase in women’s participation in the off-farm labor force. As the primary cook assumed a wider array of responsibilities, convenience became more important, and recipes featured more convenience foods.

According to Laura Shapiro’s Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America, what she calls “package food cuisine” or “can- opener cooking” grew rapidly from the end of World War II until the early 1960s (2004, 6). Cooks used cake mixes, canned soups as noodle binders in casseroles, and Jell-O as a base for various desserts and salads. As more and more women joined the labor force, the need to save time became acute, and the food industry responded by developing products to address that need. Shapiro writes that the “food industry began leaving unmistakable finger prints on the meal and the recipes that characterized home cooking” (ibid., xvii). This change did not happen overnight. The first U.S. patent for manufactured gelatin was issued in 1845, and Jell-O was introduced in 1897 (Wyman 2001). By the 1950s, packaged foods had become mainstream. Some argue that our collective taste adjusted to this change and came to expect the taste of highly processed food (think Heinz ketchup). This kind of cooking continues.

The following recipe from Famous Kentucky Recipes was contributed by Mrs. James B. Young and makes use of canned soups and crab meat.

Crab Meat Bisque (1952)

1 can cream of tomato soup

1 can green pea soup

½ cup single cream

1 can crab meat

¼ cup sherry

salt and pepper to taste

Mix tomato and pea soup in a sauce pan until smooth, add cream and mix. Rinse and pick over crab meat. Add to mixture. Heat to a boiling point, add sherry and serve. 1 can of black bean soup can be substituted for the pea soup. Serves four to six. (Cabbage Patch Circle 1952, 24)

The cookbook compiled by the Charity League of Paducah uses the same strategy, known as the soup merger—that is, mixing two different canned soups to create a new soup. In a series of combinations signed by “Petty Larceny,” cream of oyster and cream of tomato soups become oyster soup Louisiane, cream of celery and chicken noodle soups make Aunt Ellen’s soup, and corn chowder and onion soup result in Indian chowder (Charity League of Paducah 1967, 17).

The following recipe, contributed by Velma Smith, comes from Kentucky Cooking New and Old, compiled by the Colonelettes—wives of members of the Louisville Chamber of Commerce. With certain substitutions, it could be what the French’s website refers to as an “American Classic.” For its rendition of a green bean casserole, French’s uses condensed cream of mushroom soup and its own brand of canned french fried onions. According to Jean Anderson’s The American Century Cookbook (1997, 162), the classic version was developed by Campbell’s in 1955.

A Louisville collection with a foreword by Cissy Gregg.

Green Bean-French Fried Onion Bake (1958)

1 can water chestnuts (sliced)

1 4-ounce can mushrooms (sliced)

2 packages French style green beans (frozen)

2 cans French fried onion rings

Buttered crumbs, about ½ cup

2 ounces slivered almonds

About 1½ half cups thick white sauce (4½ tablespoons butter, 4½ tablespoons flour, 1½ cups milk)

Combine above ingredients except onion rings and crumbs. Bake in 350 degree oven and cover with onions and buttered crumbs. Bake additional 10 to 15 minutes. 6–8 servings. Truly a gourmet’s delight when served with a standing rib roast. (Colonelettes of Louisville 1958, 41)

By the 1950s, cookbook recipes made it clear that meat, especially chicken, was being marketed much differently, reflecting the quest for convenience. In the distant past, chickens had to be raised, captured, slaughtered, cleaned, and cut into usable pieces before they were cooked (in urban settings, some of these steps would likely be done by butchers). Early cookbooks reflected the fact that people had to deal directly with the process of chicken production—from egg laying to butchering. They exhorted cooks to prepare meat only from freshly killed animals or to take care when butchering to ensure the meat looked good for the table. Further, chicken and egg production had seasons, as did just about everything else. Housekeeping in the Blue Grass includes a recipe (lime, salt, and water) for preserving eggs over the winter, when fewer eggs were laid (Presbyterian Church 1888, 165). There was a season for fried chickens and a season for chicken and dumplings—the age-related label “spring chicken” is in our vocabulary for a reason. Because folks had to deal with chickens at the far end of the age spectrum, we have lots of recipes for chicken cooked a long time in water and then cut up or ground—there was a big commitment to chicken and dumplings, chicken salad, and chicken croquettes. By the mid-1950s, recipes that called for specific parts of the chicken, such as breasts and occasionally thighs, started to appear. Whereas earlier recipes consisted, for the most part, of instructions to cut up a chicken and then boil it, bake it, or fry it, the implied first step in today’s recipes is “Go to Kroger’s and buy a package of boneless, skinless chicken breasts,” rather than “Find a chicken, take your ax….” Cooks no longer know where their food originates.

Despite the convenience, recipes that depend on processed food are largely assembly exercises. As Rona Roberts (who read an early version of this manuscript) commented to me, “Ugh, I remember well the twentyplus years these recipes held sway at the cute little country church [in southeastern Kentucky] where I grew up. [The transition] from completely homegrown, home-butchered, homemade dishes at church to ‘assembled’ dishes probably happened later [there] than in most places. Now thank goodness homegrown and homemade is making a comeback” (2013).

Historic Preservation at “Shakertown”

A series of significant, historically oriented fund-raising cookbooks are those based on food served at the Trustee’s House restaurant at the Shaker Village in Pleasant Hill, in Mercer County. Known as Shakertown to central Kentuckians, Shaker Village is at the center of an important success story for historic preservation. One part of the preservation strategy was to create regional dining destinations to draw people to this collection of restored buildings and farmlands. Elizabeth C. Kremer was a crucial part of the Shakertown restoration and preservation strategy starting in the late 1960s, when she was recruited to manage the Shakertown restaurants. Raised in Cynthiana, Kremer had experience establishing restaurants in Cincinnati, Louisville, and New York. She came to Mercer County after being food manager for Schrafft’s, the famous Boston-based chain. Shakertown became one of central Kentucky’s fine dining destinations during her tenure.

The publication of cookbooks was an important part of the Shakertown culinary program. Kremer researched Shaker foodways and then adapted the original recipes. Her first Shakertown cookbook was We Make You Kindly Welcome (1970), followed by Welcome Back to Pleasant Hill (1977). Here is a classic recipe for Shaker lemon pie.

Shaker Lemon Pie (1970)

2 large lemons

4 eggs, well beaten

2 cups sugar

Slice lemons as thin as paper, rind and all. Combine with sugar; mix well. Let stand 2 hours, or preferably overnight, blending occasionally. Add beaten eggs to lemon mixture; mix well. Turn into nine inch pie shell, arranging lemon slices evenly. Cover with top crust. Cut several slits near center. Bake at 450 degrees for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 375 degrees and bake for about 20 minutes or until silver knife inserted near edge of pie comes out clean. Cool before serving. (Kremer 1970, 12)

The Kremer volume acknowledges that this recipe comes from The Shaker Cook Book by Caroline B. Piercy (1953). The unique “all-in” treatment of lemons no doubt reflects their cost and their value to the Shaker communities. Apparently, the Shakers obtained lemons as a result of their commercial activities, which took them all the way to New Orleans and the Gulf. In 2001 We Make You Kindly Welcome was named to the Walter S. McIlhenny Community Cookbook Hall of Fame. This award recognizes community cookbooks that have sold more than 100,000 copies and is sponsored by the McIlhenny Company (the maker of Tabasco sauce), headquartered at Avery Island, Louisiana. It is the only Kentucky cookbook so honored.

Convenience and Innovation