OLD LINE PLATE - COOKING / MARYLAND / HISTORY

Eastern Sho’ Bar-B-Q Chicken a.k.a. Delmarva Barbecued Chicken

April 10, 2024April 19, 2024

There is only one thing that excites me more than finding an old cookbook that I didn’t know about, and that’s finding a local dish that I didn’t know was local.

When Matthew Korfhage wrote to me last summer to ask about Delmarva Barbecued Chicken I was confused. We have a barbecue tradition in Maryland other than pit beef? Don’t organizations everywhere raise funds by selling chicken by the side of the road?

Maybe they do, but on the Eastern Shore, the chicken in question is a little bit different.

With a sauce made from vinegar, oil, poultry seasoning, and the strange addition of an egg, this “barbecue sauce” is nothing like the dozens of ketchup-based personal barbecue sauce recipes found in my database.

Korfhage’s email inspired me to take a closer look at those recipes. It wasn’t long until I found exactly what I was looking for.

In none other than Maryland First Lady Helen Avalynne Tawes’ 1964 cookbook, “My Favorite Maryland Recipes” is a recipe for “Eastern Sho’ Bar-B-Q Chicken.” Later local cookbooks like “What Is Cooking On Party Line” and cookbooks from local fire departments had similar recipes. The style of chicken is particularly associated with volunteer fire departments, for which the roadside sales are a big money-maker.

Ham-Lettuce Mixture, Dodie Rupprecht

March 31, 2024April 6, 2024

“Ham-Lettuce Mixture”: the awkward title caught my eye. The recipe opened with this: “A hearty country dinner, fit for guests or family. A good conversation menu!” I thought the recipe was so odd, I had to make it immediately. I invited friends over for dinner. I told them what I was making. My friends politely declined.

In practice, “Ham-Lettuce Mixture” is basically a warm salad, packed with hearty eggs and potatoes and topped in a sweet-and-tangy cooked dressing. It was just fine! Tasty even.

The recipe appears in the 1969 “Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread,” a hefty 350-page cookbook compiled by St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hagerstown.

The recipe’s author, Dodie Rupprecht, included lots of commentary in her recipe. “To serve, let each one help himself,” to helpings of ham, eggs, lettuce, onion, potatoes, and gravy. “Heap it on a dinner plate, and cut it all up finely (this is the true country spirit),” she wrote. “If you have enough small platters for each guest, this is an ideal way to eat lettuce mixture.”

I ignored this last bit and cut the items up in advance. Sorry, Dodie.

I believe “Dodie” Rupprecht to be Dorothy Eleanor Rupprecht, born in Baltimore in 1909.

Slippery Pot Pie, Shirley Fout Miller

March 22, 2024March 23, 2024

“Shirley Fout Miller was a walking medical miracle.”

So opens her 2012 obituary in the Hagerstown Herald-Mail. “She contracted tuberculosis at age 12 from her mother… Shirley was not expected to live more than a few months.”

As an adult, she twice survived breast cancer and tuberculosis resurgence. Her daughter Holly Miller said, “She’s been cheating death for 75 years.”

Shirley spent many years being ill. Unable to participate in a lot of typical childhood and teenage activities, she turned to another outlet: art.

Shirley Fout Miller may not be a household name, but she left an admirable body of artwork celebrating regional and historic sites, including a calendar of sketches of Colonial Williamsburg, and prints of local sights in her hometown of Hagerstown.

*Shirley Fout Miller artwork of the Governor’s Palace in Colonial Williamsburg*

Miller’s obituary portrays a colorful and vivacious character. “She wanted to live in the kind of society of Edith Wharton and Jane Eyre,” Miller’s partner said.

“My mother was the queen of entertaining,” Shirley’s daughter Holly recalled. The obituary declared Miller’s life to have been filled with “style, entertaining and Chardonnay,” and invitations for guests to dine at a “beautiful table set with china, silver, flowers, and hand-painted place-cards.”

Shirley’s oldest son Barrick Miller said “She had such a zest for life. It came from the sanatorium, being a bystander in life for more than a decade. She had to figure out how to use this life that she didn’t expect to have.”

I had to figure out how to use some beef stock I didn’t expect to have, and I thought it a good opportunity to make a Pennsylvania-Dutch-influenced favorite, Slippery Pot Pie.

Many churches in the Hagerstown area make the dish as a fundraiser. A friend of mine who grew up there remembers it being served in the school cafeteria.

Despite the name, Slippery Pot Pie is not served in a crust. It is instead a variation on Slippery Dumplings, Chicken n’ Dumplings, or “Slick” Dumplings. Dumplings rolled out and cooked in a stew broth help to spread the ingredients further, creating a perfect hearty meal for a chilly evening.

Slippery Pot Pie is comfort food. I did not grow up eating this and yet I was somehow comforted by the feeling of biting into a dumpling, the rich gravy flavor, and the tender meat and veggies.

Orange Carrot Cake, Anna D. Cannon

March 17, 2024March 20, 2024

I imagine that Anna D. Cannon had some stories. After graduating high school in 1942, she became the first female school bus driver in Montgomery County, and worked the job for 30 years.

Unfortunately, Anna is another person whose stories I may never know. I know only that she was born in 1924 in Garrett County to Gilmore and Linna DeWitt. Anna and several of her eight siblings on the family farm were listed as “unpaid family worker” in the 1940 census.

Anna married Lawrence A. Winters, who died in 1960. Her second husband, Frank Cannon, died in 1994.

Anna Cannon lived to be 93, and her 2017 obituary lists many losses in her life aside from her two husbands. Two of her children preceded her in death, as did five sisters and four brothers.

She did leave two daughters and four sons.

She was from a large family and she had a large family, most of whom dispersed from their Oakland, Maryland roots.

Gertrude’s Crazy Chowder, Gertrude Comer

March 9, 2024March 9, 2024

One of these days I’m going to stop choosing recipes before looking into whether there’s an uncover-able story. This is another new post with scant facts.
Still, I enjoyed looking into the life of Gertrude Comer, who contributed her “crazy” chowder to a cookbook put out by the Gatch Memorial United Methodist Church in the 1960s.

I do know that Gertrude lived most of her life in Northeast Baltimore, near where the Gatch Memorial United Methodist Church stands on Bel Air Road. In 1996, she told the Baltimore Sun about her desire to remain in the neighborhood. She looked forward to affordable senior housing being built nearby. “I would like to stay in my neighborhood and not have to repair an old house,” she said.

The old house in question was 5722 Belair Road, where Gertrude had lived with the Rubshaw family for many decades, just down the street from Gatch UMC.
I found Gertrude in many other peoples’ obituaries, including that of her mother, who died in 1961. Gertrude is mentioned, along with her sisters Helen Zepp, Mildred Kelly, and Betty Lou Rubshaw.

When and how Gertrude became a part of this family is a bit of a mystery. Her biological parents, according to her 2006 death certificate, were James C. Myers and Mary Jane Yager. Gertrude was born in West Virginia in 1916. The Rubshaw family, meanwhile, lived in Indiana at the time. By 1940, they had made their way to Martinsburg, WV, and Betty Lou worked with Gertrude at the Carlile Paper Box Company factory. They must have enjoyed working together – the sisters would later open a beauty parlor in Baltimore called the Shamrock Beauty Shop.

*Gertrude’s death certificate, reclaimtherecords.org*

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