A bicentennial compendium from central Kentucky.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Bicentennials and Beyond
Although social and technological changes have an impact on foodways, food practices and food preferences are somewhat stable and can lag behind other changes. There is a cultural investment in doing things a certain way. This can be seen in the Kentucky cookbooks compiled in observance of the nation’s and the state’s bicentennials and the many other cookbooks commemorating historic events associated with a particular county, church, or other entity. This chapter focuses less on the social context and more on the recipes for historically iconic foods.
One does not actually eat tradition; one eats food. In the framework of interpretive rhetoric, it is very easy to forget that food tastes great and makes one feel good. The Kentucky food practices shaped by the historical and environmental circumstances of early settlement led to certain taste preferences. These preferences meant that certain foods became especially important and dominant in the diet. In turn, some of these foods took on a special status and became cultural icons that, in a sense, represent food- ways in people’s thinking. A few of these foods are unique to Kentucky, but most are also important in the larger region.
It seems to me that if you asked Kentuckians which foods are representative of Kentucky and have an iconic status, they would tend to mention certain foods (Sohn [2005] did this for Appalachian foods using a focus group technique). Recipes based on meat might include fried chicken, chicken and dumplings, country ham, bacon, sausage, and various small-game animals, such as squirrel and turtle. In the realm of vegetables, we can include anything fresh from the garden, starting with sliced tomatoes and moving on to green beans seasoned with ham or bacon, shuck or soup beans, various greens (both wild and garden varieties), fried apples, and corn pudding. Quick breads are part of the story, from the cornbreads, including cracklin’ bread, to spoon bread and biscuits—some beaten, some not. And we cannot forget desserts, such as jam cake, stack cake, fruit cobbler, gingerbread, and chess pie and its myriad cousins.
Some foods are associated with specific parts of the state. The contrast between the Bluegrass and the mountains is clearest to me and probably to most people. If I lived in Bowling Green or Paducah, my perspective would be different. There are especially clear contrasts in baked goods in the Bluegrass versus the mountains. For instance, wheat flour biscuits are more important in central Kentucky, whereas cornbreads are more important in the mountains. It is not a matter of either-or; it requires counting and comparing. The distribution of beaten biscuits is clearer than that of biscuits in general. I think of beaten biscuits as a Bluegrass food. There are also differences in iconic cake recipes. Although stack cake is clearly a mountain recipe and jam cake is more or less a Bluegrass food, the stack cake-jam cake boundaries are anything but absolute. That said, there are probably many more jam cakes made in the mountains than stack cakes made in the Bluegrass.
When people discuss western Kentucky foodways, barbecued mutton and burgoo are mentioned early in the conversation. There is a long-standing western Kentucky practice of slow-cooking mutton over smoky hardwood fires and basting the meat with a thin, vinegar-based, chili- and pepper-flavored sauce, usually called dip. This contrasts with the Monroe County (southern Kentucky) style of cooking pork shoulder. Although these are important food icons, pulled or chopped pork and chicken slow- cooked over smoke are served in barbecue restaurants all over the state, east and west. And there are many barbecue restaurants in western Kentucky that do not serve mutton. Burgoo—a thick, long-cooked meat and vegetable soup—is part of the western Kentucky barbecue tradition that has spread across the state. Anderson County in the heart of the Bluegrass region has an annual Burgoo Festival.
Other Kentucky foods, such as goetta and rolled oysters, are more narrowly distributed. Goetta, like scrapple, is very much a northern Kentucky food. It was contributed to Kentucky foodways by German immigrants. There are published recipes for goetta, but it is generally something one buys prepared in a store or restaurant. Rolled oysters, something like oyster croquettes, originated as Louisville bar food and are not widely available. I have had them on four occasions, three of them in Louisville restaurants. Among the numerous Kentucky cookbooks I have examined, I found only one recipe for rolled oysters.
Some regional preparations have been the subject of heated disputes. For example, there are two opposing stories about the origin of beer cheese, a cracker spread made of yellow cheese (often Cheddar), beer, and spices. It was created either as Louisville bar food or at Allman’s, a prominent Clark County catfish restaurant on the banks of Howard’s Creek, a tributary of the Kentucky River. The matter was settled legislatively in 2013 when Governor Beshear signed House Bill 54, which contained an amendment giving an imprimatur to Clark County as the birthplace of beer cheese. I am glad that was settled, as Winchester in Clark County has an annual Beer Cheese Festival. The dispute over beer cheese was nothing compared with the “Pie Wars.” There has even been litigation over “Derby Pie,” which, through the aggressive application of copyright laws, can be made and sold only by Kern’s Bakery of Louisville. The recipe was devised at the Melrose Inn in Prospect, Kentucky, by members of the Kern family. As a result, if a pie recipe that approximates Derby Pie is included in a Kentucky cookbook, it is always called something else, such as Run for the Roses Pie, Pegasus Pie, First Saturday in May Pie, or even Not Derby Pie.
Many of the recipes in this chapter are for iconic dishes and from cookbooks with a focus on history, culture, or community. These include selections from cookbooks compiled to observe the nation’s bicentennial (1976) and Kentucky’s statehood bicentennial (1992), as well as those commemorating the anniversaries of other entities such as counties or churches.
Bicentennial Cookbooks
A landmark among Kentucky-based bicentennial cookbooks is Kentucky Hospitality: A 200-Year Tradition, compiled by the Kentucky Federation of Women’s Clubs. The project’s goals included showing “the essence of Kentucky in the essays, the illustrations and the recipes” (Cooper 1976, vii). The book’s well-researched, nicely crafted essays describe Kentucky foodways during different periods and in different settings. Some of the topics include early Kentucky food-related folk beliefs, foods and kitchens of the pioneer days, early inns and spas, the Shakers of Pleasant Hill, and elegant dining in the commonwealth. Kentucky Hospitality is an excellent source of information about Kentucky’s culinary history. Most of the recipes are contributed by members of the women’s clubs; others come from historic cookbooks or from restaurants, including Levas’ in Lexington, the Lynn Hotel in Hodgenville, and the Old South Inn in Winchester (all closed) and the still open Brown Hotel in Louisville and Talbott Tavern in Bardstown. In addition to the introductory essays, some of the recipes themselves are embellished with discussions of their history and background. This book succeeds as both a regionally focused cookbook and a culinary history.
One of the recipes is for the iconic dish known as wilted lettuce— sometimes called killed lettuce or kilt lettuce. It can also be used for various wild greens, which were traditionally collected in the early spring—the first fresh vegetables people had to eat since the fall. There are many different types of wild greens and substantial local variation in their names, leading to some confusion; they include dandelion, dock, lamb’s-quarter, plantain, poke, and wild cabbage. In Dixie Dishes, Marion Flexner refers to wild greens as “fence corner greens” (1941, 79). In addition to wild greens, people grew other greens such as spinach, turnips, mustard, kale, and collards in their gardens, tobacco beds, and newly planted cornfields.
Wilted Lettuce (1976)
6 slices bacon
¼ cup vinegar
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
⅛ teaspoon pepper
¼ pound leaf lettuce
Warm a large bowl by filling it with very hot water. Fry bacon, remove from pan, and set aside to crispen. Pour water from bowl to dry it. Put cut lettuce into the bowl. Add other ingredients to hot bacon grease and pour over lettuce immediately. Cover bowl and let lettuce wilt for 5 minutes. Uncover and sprinkle with crumbled bacon. Serve at once. Serves 4. (Cooper 1976, 166)
This recipe was contributed by Mrs. Charles Hagan of the Lexington Women’s Club. Other versions add chopped green onion to the lettuce and chopped hard-boiled egg to the bacon.
Larue County Kitchens was compiled by a committee of the Hodgenville Woman’s Club as a charity project to celebrate the nation’s bicentennial. This was a huge project, and the volume contains almost 400 pages of recipes, which are signed and presented in the standard format. Included are a few recipes from landmark restaurants such as the Brown Hotel, the Doe Run Inn, the Old Stone Inn, and the Whistle Stop restaurant in Glendale. Some of the classics are presented in multiple versions—for example, there are six recipes for spoon bread. The book’s acknowledgments state, “For months during this Bicentennial year, Larue County Cooks have been flattered, bullied, wheedled and cajoled into divulging their most outstanding culinary secrets” (Hodgenville Woman’s Club 1976, iii). Although this is not a narrative cookbook, its historical aspect is conveyed by the photographs that introduce the various sections. The cookbook is still in print. The following recipe, signed by Carol (Mrs. Robert) Haynes, is one of fifteen for jam cake included in this encyclopedic cookbook.
A bicentennial compendium from central Kentucky.
Jam Cake (1976)
3 cups all purpose flour
1 cup butter or margarine
2 cups jam (any kind)
1 cup coarsely chopped black walnuts
1 cup raisins
2 cups brown sugar
1 cup buttermilk
6 eggs
1 teaspoon soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons nutmeg
2 teaspoons allspice
Cream butter and sugar thoroughly. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each. Put the raisins in a shallow pan, cover and place in 350 degree oven until warm and plumped about 5 to 7 minutes. Measure flour, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and soda. Sift together three times. Add flour mixture and buttermilk alternately to creamed mixture, then mix in jam (medium speed on electric mixer). Stir in walnuts and raisins. Turn batter into greased, waxlined 9 inch layer cake pans. Bake at 325 degrees for about 30 to 35 minutes. Do not overbake. Makes 4 layers. (Hodgenville Woman’s Club 1976, 314)
Traditionally, jam cake has a caramel frosting. Dolly (Mrs. Jesse) Marcum contributed the following recipe to the Larue County cookbook.
Caramel Frosting (1976)
1 stick butter
1½ cups brown sugar
vanilla
⅓ cup cream
1½ cups confectioner’s sugar
Cook first 3 together at a boil for 2 minutes. Have sugar sifted and beat into mixture. (Hodgenville Woman’s Club 1976, 315)
Other bicentennial cookbooks include the Kentucky Living Cookbook: Bicentennial Edition, edited by Susan Arena (1974); the Mercer County Historical Society’s The Kentucky Bicentennial Cookbook: Famous Historical Kentucky Recipes, 1776–1976, edited by Ruth Payne of Harrodsburg; the Winchester Mrs. Jaycees’ Mrs. Jaycees Spice Centennial Cook Book (1975); Historic Cookbook—1776–1976, produced by the Woman’s Club of Marion; What’s Cooking at Athens: 1976 Bicentennial Edition, a project of the Athens Christian Church; and the Elsmere Volunteer Fire Department’s The Bicentennial Story of Elsmere, Kentucky, 1776–1976. Cookbooks have also been published to commemorate the commonwealth’s bicentennial in 1992 and various community groups’ anniversaries. These include Kentucky Bicentennial Cookbook, compiled by the Clay County Homemakers (1992), and The Springfield Woman’s Club Presents a Tasting Tour through Washington County, Kentucky (1987).
Cookbooks beyond the Bicentennial
Not all the cookbooks of this era were motivated by a desire to commemorate the bicentennial or other anniversaries. One of these is Kathryn M. Fraser’s By the Seasons: Cookery at the Homeplace—1850 (1983). This cookbook was developed to support the educational program of the U.S. Forest Service’s Land between the Lakes living history center: The Homeplace—1850. The Land between the Lakes consists of the land remaining after the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers were impounded. The Homeplace, located on the Tennessee portion of the land, is a re-creation of an 1850s homestead and farm; it maintains some heritage breeds of farm animals, such as Cotswold sheep and Tamworth hogs. Reenactors demonstrate mid-nineteenth-century rural food preparation techniques at the Home- place. Some of the recipes in Fraser’s book are adapted from nineteenth- century cookbooks, some originated from the people who inhabited the Land between the Lakes in the past, and others were developed at the Homeplace. Fraser has modernized the recipes for contemporary use, providing standard measures as well as specific cooking times and tem-peratures. The book is organized by season; each section begins with a well-informed essay describing the typical farming and cooking processes of the season. Further, many of the recipes are accompanied by short discussions of their historical context.
The brief introduction to the recipe for sauerkraut with apples points out that while we think of sauerkraut as an example of German cooking, during the 1850s, pickling was a common method of food preservation. Sauerkraut may not seem like an iconic Kentucky dish, but pickling vegetables was an important strategy for farm families who had to make the bountiful harvest of their summer and fall gardens last through the winter.
Sauerkraut with Apples (1983)
2 tablespoons bacon drippings or lard
½ cup chopped onion
2 medium-sized apples (about ¾ pound)
2 cups sauerkraut
1 medium-sized potato (about ⅓ pound)
1 cup water
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
Melt the bacon drippings or lard in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onions, and cook them gently for about ten minutes, stirring occasionally, or until they are limp and transparent. Meanwhile, peel the apples, quarter them, remove the cores, and slice the quarters about ⅛ inch thick. Add the apples, the potato, the sauerkraut, the water, the brown sugar, and the salt to the onion. Stir together thoroughly. Cover and simmer 15–20 minutes or until the potatoes are tender when pierced with the point of a sharp knife. Transfer to a heated platter and serve at once. Makes six servings. (Fraser 1983, 111)
Appalachian Kentucky cookbooks are another rich source of iconic recipes. These cookbooks can be divided into four types: personal narrative, analytical, family, and community. A good place to start is Sidney Saylor Farr’s More than Moonshine: Appalachian Recipes and Recollections (1983). It is a classic cookbook organized around the author’s personal narrative. Farr incorporates reminiscences about her younger days spent near Stoney Fork, situated alongside Black Mountain in Bell County. This is a narrative cookbook at its most personal, and the rich cultural narrative enhances her presentation of traditional recipes. Farr followed More than Moonshine with Table Talk: Appalachian Meals and Memories (1995). This volume makes use of oral history interviews with various individuals from North Carolina, Kentucky, and elsewhere, and the recipes were provided by the women and men interviewed. A shorter volume entitled Spoon Bread Cook Book was published in 1997. Farr worked as a librarian at Berea College and served as an associate editor of the magazine Mountain Life and Work and the editor of Appalachian Heritage. Her last book was My Appalachia: A Memoir (2007), which won the best book award of the Appalachian Writers’ Association.
The greens in the following recipe were the kind gathered by Farr’s grandmother: watercress, poke shoots, lamb’s-quarter, sheep sorrel, dock, and many others (as noted earlier, there is a great deal of local variation in the names of these greens).
Granny Brock’s Greens (1983)
4 cups early greens
4 slices bacon
3 green onions
3 tablespoons vinegar
2 tablespoons sugar
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon dry mustard
Dash of pepper
Gather greens early in the day if possible. Wash in pure spring water until all grit is removed. Fry bacon and remove from skillet, leaving fat to cool. Mix chopped onions and greens together in large bowl and then put in individual bowls if desired. Crumble bacon over greens. To the fat in skillet, add vinegar, sugar, salt, mustard, and pepper. Heat and pour over greens. Toss until wilted. Serve immediately. (Farr 1983, 86)
More recently, Mark F. Sohn (an avid recipe collector and a skilled cook) produced Mountain Country Cooking: A Gathering of the Best Recipes from the Smokies to the Blue Ridge (1996). Although the book addresses all of southern Appalachia, it is clearly based on Sohn’s experiences living in Pikeville, in eastern Kentucky, where he is a faculty member at the University of Pikeville. He also wrote a food and cooking column for the Pikeville-based Appalachian News-Express for a number of years, which serves as the foundation for this book. The recipes are presented with historical notes, cooking information, and variations, including what Sohn calls “Healthy Choice Alternatives” that feature reduced fat, sugar, or salt. Included here is his recipe for soup beans.
Soup Beans (1996)
1 pound dried pinto beans, washed and picked over for pebbles
7 cups of water
8 ounces salt pork or two ham hocks
In a glass or ceramic container, soak the beans in the water over night. Do not drain. Place the beans and water in a saucepan and add the pork. Simmer on medium heat, covered, for 4 to 8 hours. Add water as needed to keep the beans covered. When cooked, the beans hold their shape but are soft throughout. Remove the pork, and serve as a side dish. (Sohn 1996, 138)
Sohn offers the following soup-making alternative: “While many serve the broth as pot likker to be sopped up with corn bread, I like it thick, like cream soup. To thicken, boil down the liquid, or use a fork to mash some cooked beans. When I am in a hurry, I take a cup of beans, puree them in a blender, and return them to the soup” (ibid.). He also provides a number of menu ideas, such as soup beans coupled with buttermilk, cornbread, and wilted lettuce. He also suggests serving the beans with fried potatoes and sauerkraut.
A more analytical companion to Mountain Country Cooking is Sohn’s Appalachian Home Cooking: History, Culture, and Recipes (2005). He clarifies some of the interesting links between European and Appalachian cuisines and provides information about regional food festivals and mail-order sources for some foods. He discusses the historical and cultural context of this cuisine and includes a listing of “iconic recipes” based on focus group research. The recipes contained in Appalachian Home Cooking are adapted from traditional prototypes and formatted in an innovative way. The following recipe is for a classic Kentucky summertime dish made with white half-runner or pole beans and bacon. These beans are heavily seeded but produce an excellent result with somewhat longer than usual cooking times.
Green Beans with Bacon (2005)
2 strips (2 ounces) bacon, cut into ¼ inch pieces
2 pounds white half-runner beans or pole beans
1 cup (1 medium) onion (optional)
½ cup water
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
Procedure
Step 1. Break, string, and remove the ends from fresh beans. If using, dice the onion.
Step 2. Fry the bacon in a large covered saucepan and then remove it to drain on a paper towel. Dump the beans, optional onion, water, salt, and pepper into the saucepan with the bacon grease. Bring to a boil and reduce the heat to a simmer.
Step 3. Braise covered until the beans are tender, about 25 minutes. Add water if necessary, but when the beans are ready, most of the water should have evaporated. Stir and serve. (Sohn 2005, 205–6)
Appalachian Kentucky culinary traditions are also nicely dealt with in some noteworthy community cookbooks. The cookbooks published by the Magoffin County Historical Society are excellent in this regard. The first, Olde Tyme Cookbook, was published in 1989; this was followed with Cooking with Memories: Recipes and Stories of Magoffin County Kentucky Past and Present (1998), Circle of Friends Cookbook (2003), and Good Times Cookbook: Now Being Served in Magoffin County (2006). The Magoffin County Historical Society has also published several family-type cookbooks (1997, 2000, 2009) as part of its annual Founders’ Day celebration. Community members contributed the recipes, which are accompanied by photographs of their families. In some cases, there are also stories about the person who originated the recipe, historical reflection on the food, or some other interesting bit of information to put the recipe in context.
The earliest Magoffin County cookbook is an especially strong collection of iconic recipes such as fried chicken, fried apples, tomato gravy, gingerbread, gritted bread, jam cake, stack cake, dried apple pies, and blackberry cobbler. Patty Auxier was the editor of this first cookbook and played an important role in the others. The recipe for fried apples was submitted by Sue Hamilton Shackelford, who attributes the recipe to Dora Wisecup Hamilton. In the narrative accompanying the recipe, Shackelford writes: “As I was growing up on the farm on Mash Fork, we always had all the apples we wanted to eat of several varieties from the apple trees originally planted in the old orchard by the Rev. ‘Uncle’ Smith Adams from whom my Dad bought the farm many years ago. Later, these old trees were replaced by the ones my Mother set out herself in our yard” (Magoffin County Historical Society 1989, 27).
The earliest of the Magoffin County Historical Society cookbooks.
Fried Apples (1989)
8 apples (any cooking variety) These can be sliced and peeled or unpeeled. Especially good are Golden Grimes—my first choice— or Rome Beauty or Jonathan.
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon vegetable oil or bacon drippings
Cook and fry for about 10 minutes on medium low heat. Then, sprinkle granulated sugar over the top of the apples and cook for a few minutes more. Cook covered. During the last few minutes, remove cover. (ibid.)
Shackelford goes on to say that she normally employs a different method that uses less fat: “The way I normally fry them, is I only add enough vegetable shortening to keep the apples from sticking and sprinkle the sugar over the apples as they first begin to cook. Cover the apples and keep a low medium heat and enough juice will cook out of the apples, so very little oil is needed. By removing the lid near the end of the process, a nice glaze is formed over them, if using Golden Grimes apples. Makes a pretty dish” (ibid.).
Stack cake is another iconic Kentucky dish. As Ronni Lundy describes it, “Stack cake is the ultimate mountaineer’s dessert—a not too sweet, but satisfying and complexly flavored dessert made of 4–6 thin layers of molasses tinged, biscuit-like cake covered with a dark, rich dried apple puree” (1991, 310). Even though stack cakes required store-bought spices, “the cake was popular [in the past] because the ingredients (flour, molasses, and eggs) were inexpensive and usually kept on hand” (Magoffin County Historical Society 1998, 147). With the skill of a good cook, these simple ingredients could produce a delicious dessert.
Various stack cake recipes call for four to eight layers—or even more. The layers are thinner than those used in other kinds of cake. Rather than the typical pourable cake batter, the dough is stiff and is rolled out, similar to biscuit making. Because of this, recipes often give indeterminate directions, such as, “Add flour until you have a stiff dough.” The dough always contains spices—cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and allspice—and it is sweetened with molasses and brown sugar. Some recipes call for sorghum or sorghum molasses, and I expect molasses is sometimes used as a synonym for sorghum. Because there are multiple layers—usually more layers than the cook has pans—the cake is baked in relays. Although cake pans are generally used today, stack cake was originally baked layer by layer in an iron skillet. The filling, based on dried apples, contains the same spices and sweetening ingredients as the dough. The dried apples are cooked into a thick, robust, dark brown filling. Recipes typically call for the stack cake to set for at least a day (and up to a week), wrapped with a towel, before eating: “cake should be stored in a cake saver for a couple of days before it is eaten” (Magoffin County Historic Society 1989, 149). This “aging” is an important step, as it allows the apple filling flavors to blend with the cake and the layers to soften.
Stack cake was originally more of an everyday item rather than a food for festive occasions—some called them “washday” cakes. However, these cakes have taken on iconic status as a culturally significant Appalachian food (Sohn 2005, 267–70). According to Sidney Saylor Farr, they were used as wedding cakes in the mountains, and relatives of the bride would bring prepared layers to compose the cake. The following Magoffin County recipe is in two parts—the cake and the filling.
Apple Stack Cake (2003)
Cake Ingredients
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup granulated sugar
½ cup molasses
1 cup shortening or margarine
2 teaspoons ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon allspice
¼ teaspoon cloves
6 cups self-rising flour (not to be used all at once)
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Combine all ingredients but use only 3 cups flour to begin. As you mix the ingredients, gradually add the remaining flour, a cup at a time, until the dough is slightly stiff. Divide the dough into six balls of equal size.
Using an iron skillet, rub a small amount of shortening into skillet and heat in oven. When skillet is hot, sift a small amount of flour into skillet then mash one ball of dough evenly into skillet. Bake for 4 to 6 minutes, being careful not to scorch the bottom. Remove cake from skillet. Coat a paper towel with shortening to wipe excess flour out of skillet. Lightly grease skillet again and repeat the same process with remaining balls of dough. As each layer bakes, assemble the stack cake, coating the top of each layer with the apple filling. Store in a covered container for a couple of days before eating.
Apple Filling Ingredients
3 (8 ounce) bags dried apples
1 cup sugar (or more if apples are tart or if you like sweeter apples)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon cloves
½ teaspoon allspice
Cook and stir this mixture until it is thick and smooth. After it has cooked, remove from heat. Place filling on top of each layer of stack cake as it comes from the oven. (Magoffin County Historical Society 2003, 101)
Restaurants are another important source of recipes for iconic dishes. Beaumont Inn: Special Recipes (Dedman and Dedman 1983), produced by a historic restaurant in central Kentucky, provides excellent examples of traditional Bluegrass cooking. One of the Beaumont Inn’s specialties is country ham, and as I understand it, the inn buys one-year-old hams from Meacham’s, near Sturgis in western Kentucky, and then ages them for another year in a specially built meat house at its Harrodsburg facility in Mercer County. The result is spectacular. The Beaumont Inn’s ver sion of corn pudding (see below) may be the most frequently published restaurant-contributed recipe in Kentucky cookbooks.
Beaumont Inn’s Corn Pudding (1983)
2 cups white whole kernel corn, or fresh corn cut off the cob
4 eggs
8 level tablespoons flour
1 quart milk
4 rounded teaspoons sugar
4 tablespoons butter, melted
1 teaspoon salt
Stir into the corn, the flour, salt, sugar and butter. Beat up the eggs well; put them into the milk, then stir into the corn and put into a pan or Pyrex dish. Bake inside of oven at 450 degrees for about 10 minute then 350 degrees for 30–35 minutes.
Stir vigorously with long prong fork three times, approximately 10 minutes apart, while baking, disturbing the top as little as possible. (Dedman and Dedman 1983, 72)
Kentucky Junior League Cookbooks
The Junior League of Louisville published The Cooking Book in 1978, the earliest of the Kentucky Junior League cookbooks. This volume was followed by To Market, To Market in 1984, compiled by the Junior League of Owensboro; it is still in print. In 1988 the Junior League of Louisville published Cordon Bluegrass: Blue Ribbon Recipes from Kentucky and, more recently, Splendor in the Blue Grass, a Cookbook (2000) and Bluegrass Gatherings (2013). The most recent release from its Owensboro counterpart is Home Again, Home Again (2004). The recipes are very sophisticated and oriented toward entertaining rather than everyday family cooking.
These attractive cookbooks are part of a phenomenon started by the Junior League of Augusta (Georgia) in 1940 with the publication of Recipes from Southern Kitchens. Junior League cookbooks are big sellers both nationally and in Kentucky. Over time, they evolved into large-format, well-designed, slick publications with sophisticated and complex recipes that emphasize entertaining. Junior League cookbooks sell well and often remain in print for some time. Charleston Receipts, published in 1950, is the oldest Junior League cookbook still in print; it has sold nearly 1 million copies. These cookbooks are often sold through bookstores, and a few were actually published by commercial publishers. The Kentucky Junior League cookbooks have been good sellers, but not on the same scale as the Charleston classic. The Cooking Book had three print runs, which took it to 25,000 books; it is now out of print.
Although these are fund-raising cookbooks compiled by local groups, they differ in style from most other community cookbooks. Clearly, they are intended to be sold in a much larger region than just the local neighborhood. They are much more elaborately produced, with far better graphics and illustrations, and they are executed with a more consistent editorial voice than a typical community cookbook. The recipes are more complex, which one might associate with entertaining rather than home cooking or “harried housewife” simplicity. Though technically not “Junior League” cookbooks, similar non-Junior League works have the same high production value. Some examples are Bluegrass Winners: A Cookbook, compiled by the Garden Club of Lexington (1985); Creating a Stir in the Bluegrass and Beyond, produced by the Fayette County Medical Auxiliary (1999); and Beyond the Fence: A Culinary View of Historic Lexington, a fund-raising effort of Central Baptist Hospital Foundation’s Cancer Program (2010). I selected a recipe for burgoo from Bluegrass Winners.
Kentucky Burgoo (1985)
2 pounds beef, cubed
soup bone
½ pound lamb, cubed
1 frying chicken, cut up
4 quarts water
salt and pepper to taste
red pepper to taste
2 cups diced potatoes
3 cups chopped onions
2 cups lima beans
4 carrots, diced
2 green peppers, diced
3 cups corn (fresh, if possible)
2 cups okra, diced
6 cups tomatoes
½ teaspoon garlic
1 cup minced parsley
Put the beef, soup bone, lamb, chicken, water, salt, pepper, and red pepper in a heavy pot with a tight-fitting lid. Bring to a boil, then simmer, covered, for two hours. Remove the chicken skin and bones and cut meat into bite-sized pieces. Return meat to pot. Add potatoes, onions, lima beans, carrots, green peppers, and corn. Simmer two hours. Mixture will be thick but should not stick. Add water sparingly, if necessary. Add okra, tomatoes, and garlic and simmer 1½ hours longer. Add parsley and remove from stove. This soup will keep in refrigerator for a long time. The flavor improves with standing. Makes 10 servings. (Garden Club of Lexington 1985, 124)
A comprehensive collection by the Garden Club of Lexington.
Food Professionals’ Cookbooks
During this period, Kentucky’s professional food writers continued to produce some fine cookbooks. Camille Glenn wrote two noteworthy Kentucky cookbooks. Raised in the setting of her family’s hotel business in Dawson Springs, Glenn was a caterer and a cooking teacher in addition to writing food features and a column for the Louisville Courier-Journal. Chef Kathy Cary, the proprietor of Lilley’s: A Kentucky Bistro, reported that her mother took cooking lessons from Glenn. The most significant of Glenn’s cookbooks is The Heritage of Southern Cooking (1986). Although this is a southern rather than a Kentucky cookbook, Glenn’s Kentucky roots clearly show in her recipe selection.
The Heritage of Southern Cooking, a collection of regional recipes from Camille Glenn, a respected Louisville food writer and teacher.
Old Kentucky Beer Cheese (1986)
2 pounds sharp Cheddar cheese, at room temperature
2 cloves garlic, mashed
3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon dry mustard
Tabasco sauce to taste
½ bottle beer, or more as necessary
1 teaspoon salt, or to taste
1. Cut the cheese into cubes and place them in a food processor or electric mixer. Process until perfectly smooth. Add the garlic, Worcestershire, mustard, and Tabasco.
2. Add the beer, a little at a time, while continuing to beat the cheese, until the mixture is a good, firm spreading consistency. (Too much beer will make the cheese too fluffy.) Stir in the salt, and refrigerate. (This is a superb keeper.)
3. Serve on small slices of rye or pumpernickel bread, or on crackers. Delicious with cold, cold beer. (Glenn 1986, 27)
Another noteworthy single-author Kentucky cookbook is Charles Patteson’s Kentucky Cooking (1988). Drawing on his Kentucky background and his experience running a New York-based catering business, Patteson provides a number of iconic recipes, coupled with a rich narrative about them. In addition to his own early experiences in Kentucky, Patteson’s recipes come from other noteworthy Kentucky cookbook authors, such as Marion Flexner, and a distinguished list of Kentucky restaurants and ham curers. Many iconic recipes are included: burgoo, beaten biscuits, chess pie, Benedictine spread, Hot Brown sandwich, country ham, corn pudding, and caramel-iced jam cake. Patteson’s cookbook parallels the narrative style of Flexner’s classics of the 1940s—Dixie Dishes and Out of Kentucky Kitchens. Like Jennie Benedict, Flexner, and others more recent, he credits the role of African American cooks in the development of his culinary skills. The stories about his boyhood and the social context of food in Kentucky, including Derby Day, are written for an audience that is less familiar with Kentucky life. The recipes and narrative are enhanced by attractive pen-and-ink drawings by Shirley Felts. The recipe reproduced here is part of a set for Derby entertaining.
Grits Soufflé Casserole (1988)
6 cups water
1½ cups hominy grits
½ cup (1 stick) butter
1 teaspoon salt
8 ounces sharp Cheddar cheese, grated
1 teaspoon Tabasco sauce
4 eggs, separated
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 2-quart baking dish or bowl. Combine the grits, butter and salt with the water in a saucepan. Cook, stirring constantly, 5 to 10 minutes until thick. Remove from the heat. Stir in the cheese and Tabasco. Beat the eggs yolks until light and lemon colored; fold into the grits mixture. Beat the egg whites until they hold stiff peaks. Gently fold them into the grits. Scrape into the prepared dish.
Bake for 1 hour, until set and browned on top. (Patteson 1988, 33)
Ronni Lundy’s cookbooks of the 1990s are gems of the narrative cookbook genre. They celebrate local culinary traditions and discuss local culture in a respectful and informed way. Lundy’s cookbooks are very readable and are excellent sources for both historically authentic and contemporary versions of many iconic dishes from rural Kentucky. She provides detailed descriptions of technique in the context of her regionally focused narrative. Although her recipes focus on the South, Lundy draws on her extensive Kentucky experiences. She was born in Corbin and moved to Louisville at age one. A former restaurant reviewer and music critic for the Courier-Journal, Lundy was also the editor of Louisville Magazine and one of the founders the Southern Foodways Alliance.
An example of Ronni Lundy’s narrative cookbook craftsmanship.
Readers can learn a great deal about Kentucky foodways from Lundy’s cookbooks. She is a master at creating a rich narrative flavoring around both iconic dishes and country-themed innovations. Her Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes, and Honest Fried Chicken: The Heart and Soul of Southern Country Kitchens (1991) is organized around a country music narrative, and many of the recipes are from well-known performers. The Festive Table: Recipes and Stories for Creating Your Own Holiday Traditions (1995) focuses on holiday meals such as Thanksgiving, Kwanzaa, and Easter. Her most recent cookbook is Butter Beans to Blackberries: Recipes from the Southern Garden (1999), which has an autobiographical cast. In addition to family recipes, Lundy includes recipes from both well-known chefs and relatively obscure everyday restaurants. The following is from Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes, and Honest Fried Chicken.
Green Tomato Casserole (1991)
5 medium green tomatoes, some just starting to ripen
1 medium onion
2 dozen soda crackers
1 tablespoon melted butter
⅛ teaspoon salt
ground black pepper
½ cup buttermilk
Chop tomatoes into pieces about ¼ inch square and put in a large bowl. Chop onion very fine and toss to mix well with tomatoes. With a rolling pin, crush crackers and add to tomatoes. Pour butter, salt, and as much pepper as you want (we like a lot) over the tomatoes and mix. Then add buttermilk and mix well. Pour into a 2-quart buttered casserole and bake at 325 degrees for 45 minutes. If top isn’t brown, run under broiler for a few minutes. (Lundy 1991, 187–89)
Following a somewhat similar strategy as Lundy’s are the cookbooks of Linda Allison-Lewis. Allison-Lewis wrote the food column for Kentucky Living, the membership magazine for the Kentucky Rural Electric Cooperatives, from 1995 until her death in 2011. She compiled two recipe collections based largely on that column and rooted in Kentucky food traditions: Kentucky’s Best: Fifty Years of Great Recipes (1998) and Kentucky Cooks: Favorite Recipes from Kentucky Living (2009). These books also include recipes from Kentucky restaurants, Kentucky bed-and-breakfasts, readers of her column, Kentucky chefs, and her mentor, the much-loved Louisville food columnist Cissy Gregg. Allison-Lewis has a flair for story-telling, which comes across nicely in her cookbooks.
Sausage and Egg Casserole (1998)
1 pound bulk pork sausage
6 eggs
2 cups milk
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon dry mustard
6 slices white bread, cut into ½-inch cubes
4 ounces Cheddar cheese, grated (1 cup)
¼ cup chopped mushrooms (optional)
Brown and crumble sausage in skillet; drain and set aside. In a large bowl, beat eggs; add milk, salt, and mustard. Stir in bread pieces, Cheddar cheese, sausage, and mushrooms, if desired. Pour into greased 13×9×2 baking dish. Cover and refrigerate overnight, if desired (remove 30 minutes before baking), or bake immediately. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake uncovered for 40 minutes, or until knife inserted comes out clean. (Allison-Lewis 1998, 102)
Allison-Lewis suggests that whole wheat or sourdough bread can be substituted for the white bread.
African American Cookbook Writers
Some accomplished African American cooks produced cookbooks that present their share of recipes for iconic foods. This includes Thelma’s Treasures: The Secret Recipes of the Best Cook in Harrodsburg (Thomas, Evans, Curry, and Linton 1992). Thelma Clay Linton of Harrodsburg was a re spected caterer and an important leader in the business, social services, and religious communities. Susanna Thomas’s introductory essay states, “In our town of Harrodsburg in Mercer County, Kentucky, Thelma Clay Linton is an institution, revered for her outstanding country cuisine and her remarkable character” (ibid., 10). The recipes are presented in the standard format, with detailed and often nuanced discussions of the process, accompanied by Linton’s commentary. Here is what she has to say about cooking green beans:
Half Runners are my favorite bean, but Kentucky Wonders will do, too. I use a pepper pod from the garden to season. … There’s a girl in town who brings her cooked beans by so I can season ’em, but she says they still don’t taste like mine. Then I found out what she done. She was stirring ’em and addin’ more water. You are not supposed to stir green beans. When I put mine on, I let them cook about three hours. Well, after they’ve cooked about two hours, you might take a fork or spoon and just kinda turn ’em over from the bottom lightly. (Ibid., 62)
Here is Linton’s approach to frying chicken.
Fried Chicken (1992)
chicken
salt
flour
pepper
paprika
Puritan oil
Put the chicken pieces in a big pot of water. Add two tablespoons of salt for every one chicken that you use. Soak the chicken in the salty water overnight in the refrigerator. The next day, drain off the water, pat the chicken pieces dry.
Mix the flour (enough to coat all of the chicken) with the pepper and the paprika and a little bit of salt to taste. Coat each piece of chicken with this mixture.
In an iron skillet, add the Puritan oil and cook it until it sizzles. The grease should be even up with the chicken. Then add a few pieces of chicken and turn down the heat to medium. Cook the chicken a half hour or so on one side and flip it and cook it a half hour on the other side until it is evenly browned.
Remove the pieces from the pan as they are done and drain them on a paper towel. (Thomas et al. 1992, 45)
Cookin’ up a Storm: The Life and Recipes of Annie Johnson, published in 2003 (this is the second edition; the first was published in 1998), is also based on a collaboration—this one between Annie Johnson, the cook, and Jane Lee Rankin, the author. Annie Johnson was born to sharecropping parents in the Deep South and died in 2001, when she was in her early eighties. She moved with her husband to Louisville and eventually went to work for Rankin’s family when Jane Lee was six years old. She performed various duties, including being the family’s cook. The two became quite close. Rankin eventually graduated from culinary school, and while she was testing Johnson’s recipes, they were written down (apparently, until then, they had existed to some extent only in her memory). The recipes in the book are accompanied by both aphorisms about living one’s life and cooking advice from Johnson. She says this about her recipe for hummingbird cake: “I leave the butter out at night if I’m gonna bake a cake the next day. I leave it out so it be soft. See, ’causin’ you not supposed to melt butter to make a cake. It makes it tough” (Rankin 2003, 112). Here is Johnson’s recipe for macaroni and cheese—it is the one I use.
Macaroni and Cheese (2003)
2 ½ tablespoons salt
4 cups uncooked macaroni (1 pound)
¼ cup vegetable oil
¼ cup all-purpose flour
3 cups milk
½ teaspoon salt
1 pound (3 cups plus one cup) sharp Cheddar cheese, grated
Butter a 2-quart casserole dish.
In a large pot, bring 6 quarts of water and 2½ tablespoons of salt to a boil.
Add the macaroni and cook until almost tender. It should be a little chewy.
Drain the macaroni and rinse with cold water. Pour into buttered casserole dish and set aside.
To make the sauce, heat the oil in a skillet and add the flour, stirring and cooking over medium heat until all the lumps are gone. Slowly add in the milk, stirring all the time. Bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes.
Add ½ teaspoon of salt and 3 cups of the cheese to the sauce and stir until melted. Pour over the macaroni and stir to combine.
Sprinkle the remaining 1 cup of cheese on top of the dish.
Bake in a 350 degree oven for 30–40 minutes, or until the cheese topping is golden brown. (Rankin 2003, 64)
A collaborative effort from Annie Johnson and Jane Lee Rankin.
The African-American Heritage Center of Simpson County, located in Franklin, has compiled an excellent community cookbook. The center, which includes a museum focused on African American life, is housed in the bungalow home of African American business leader George W. Mahin and his wife, Gertrude. Heritage Cookbook: A Collection of Traditional and Favorite Recipes (1998) contains recipes contributed by residents of this southern Kentucky community. It is described as “a collection of African American recipes. … Most of them are real heirlooms handed down through generations with a few alterations. We treasure the generosity of those who have given them to us and have made it possible for us to pass them on to others” (African-American Heritage Center 1998, 1). The recipes are presented in the standard format. As in many community cookbooks, there are sometimes a number of different recipes for the same dish, such as five versions of chess pie. The center’s monthly e-mail newsletter often includes a recipe from the cookbook. The following recipe was contributed by Mary B. Moss.
A fund-raiser with an African American focus.
Peach Cobbler (1998)
Crust
1⅓ cups all-purpose flour
8 tablespoons butter, cut into at least 8 pieces
½ teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons sugar
1 egg
1½ tablespoons cold water
Filling
6 cups sliced, peeled peaches (or a combination of peaches and blueberries)
3 tablespoons flour
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons butter
Combine flour, sugar, butter, and salt in a medium-size bowl. Use a pastry cutter or 2 knives to cut the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse meal. In a small bowl, beat egg and water together. Stir into flour mixture until well combined, then press the mixture together with your hands to form a ball. Flatten the ball into a 1-inch disk; wrap in plastic and refrigerate. Slice peaches into a 10-inch deep dish pie plate. Combine flour and sugar in a bowl and stir to disperse flour. Sprinkle mixture over peaches. Cut butter into small nuggets and sprinkle over peaches.
Heat oven to 450 degrees. Roll pastry into a circle to fit the top of the pan, leaving about ½-inch space around the rim. Cut 3 slits in the center. Put the cobbler into the oven and reduce heat to 425 degrees. Bake 40 minutes or until interior is bubbly. Yield: 8 servings. (African-American Heritage Center 1998, 54)