Lost Recipes of Prohibition

The weird thing about blogs is how attached one gets to them.  There is this vicarious living through the exploits of others that is incredibly satisfying. You know what the person likes, loves actually.  You know what they eat and what they are working on, and what you have in common. They teach you new things, and old things, and introduce you to things you might have never heard of. They share your book fetish and encourage you to buy more books.  They make you laugh and think and view the world with wonder.  And for the confirmed introvert, you never have to meet them. 

But even thought your paths has never crossed, you know you would be the best of friends, in your mind you are already the best of friends. Then one day, they stop blogging.  They have a good excuse.  But you feel as though in some way they have died.  You miss them.  Every week you think, what are they doing now.  Sometimes you go back and re-read old blog posts.  It is a very sad realization.

This is how I felt the day I found out the Matthew Rowley was suspending Rowley's Whiskey Forge.  I was so devastated. I lost a friend.  Rowley loved pickles and pie.  He had a library that rivaled mine and he was always suggesting books to add to it.  He loved old drawings, and language and ice cream and he wrote a book about moonshine and waxed poetic about Tiki drinks.

Well, Matthew Rowley is alive and well, even though he's not contributing to my weekly fix of fun facts, he has been busy.  Lost Recipes of Prohibition is one of the reasons he left the forge.  Like much of his work, it is a twisted tale of discovery.  It seems that friend and fellow collector offered up a book that might just be right up Rowley's alley. 

It appeared to be a particular bound book on the outside, but the blank pages within offered up detailed notes from a bootlegger's recipe book. It offered up how to concoct this and that in an era when this and that were illegal.  So Rowley set out not only to find out who the author was, he set out to recreate the manual for the modern day bootlegger, or avid reader of Rowley's Whiskey Forge. 

To start with, the book is handwritten, so deciphering the notes is not an easy task. The author was knowledgeable in several languages, and had a fondness for jotting notes on scraps of paper. Botanicals and bases from the 1920's are not always the same as they are in today's world so recreate some recipes required advanced chemistry. Matthew Rowley takes us along on his journey  to hunt and cook and distill with fun and flair. 

There are all the instructions one needs to set up a chemistry lab, for those of you so inclined, but there are also nifty drinks to make from your own paltry liquor cabinet. Like this one.

Mary Pickford

2 oz light rum
1 oz fresh pineapple juice
1 tsp grenadine
1 tsp maraschino liqueur
1 brandied cherry

Shake in a cocktail shaker with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass or coupe. Garnish with a brandied cherry.

Cocktail enthusiast, book nerd, mystery lover, this book covers a lot of bases. Add Lost Recipes of Prohibition to your collection.  Hey everybody needs another book. 

Did we mention he was a fencer? A fencer.  Of course he was a fencer. Ah Matthew, we hardly knew ye.

A Book of Flowers

I recently lamented that the fabulously eccentric Sitwell siblings never compiled a family cookbook. I have no doubt it would have been a wonderful document. In his memoir, Voices, Frederic Prokosch remembers Edith Sitwell:

“It was delightful to watch Miss Sitwell. Her face was rather llamalike, but she had a gift amounting to genius for adapting it to a “period.” When she spoke of the Elizabethan it assumed a jeweled symmetry. She touched an imaginary ruffle and fingered an invisible necklace. When I mentioned the medieval she looked Gothic instantaneously. Her voice grew liturgical, her hands were peaked in prayer, even the wrinkles of her dress assumed a sculptural rigidity.”

And he tells this story about Sitwell and the critic Edmund Wilson:

The butler slid past with a tray of boiled shrimps. Edmund Wilson approached the sofa with a glass in his hand. He plucked a shrimp from the tray and dipped it in the mayonnaise. He held it in the air as he sipped his whisky. I watched him with frozen horror as the shrimp slid from its toothpick and gracefully landed on Miss Sitwell’s coiffure. But Miss Sitwell ignored it and continued with serenity.
“It is always the incantatory element which basically appeals to me. In Paradise Lost the incantatory is dominant. ‘The Ancient Mariner’ is a murmuration of the cryptomagical. And as for Eliot….”
“’The Holy Men’ is pure incantation,” said Edmund Wilson. He kept peering at the shrimp with a scrupulous curiosity. “I heard Eliot read it aloud once. It was a marvel of rhythmically.”
“Even in Dryden,” said Miss Sitwell, “there is a sense of abracadabra. When I read Dryden I can hear the tom-toms beating in the jungle. Now with Pope it is different. There is still a hint of incantation but it has risen to a fragile, almost crystalline tinkle…”
I kept staring at the shrimp with a feverish fascination. It lay poised on Miss Sitwell like and amulet of ivory. I visualized it in terms of the Victorian, the Elizabethan, the Gothic. I suddenly began to rather like Edith Sitwell.”

The closest thing there is to an Edith Sitwell “cookbook” is in her edited collection entitled, A Book of Flowers. Sitwell complied a book of writings by gardeners, poets, philosophers, a saint and a few cooks. She seemed rather fond of the elixirs and waters blended in old books. Here is a famous tonic.

A Cordial Water of Sir Walter Raleigh

Take a gallon of Strawberries, and put into them a pinte of aqua vitae, let them stand four or five dayes, strain them gently out, and sweeten the water as you please, with fine Sugar, or else with perfume.

Sitwell credits the recipe to a cook for Queen Henrietta Maria of France from the 1655 edition of a book entitled, The Queen’s Closet Opened.



We never find out if Edmund Wilson retrieves the crustacean from Miss Sitwell’s coif. Use your imagination for a cryptomagical conclusion…

... and give a listen to Edith Sitwell discussing her poem, Two Loves.

Hometown Appetites

Hometown Appetites by Kelly Alexander Cynthia Harris is a biography/cookbook. It brings to light the life of one of the greatest food journalists America ever produced, Clementine Paddleford. If you haven’t heard of Clementine Paddleford, you are not alone. During her lifetime, however, Paddleford was named by Time Magazine as the most famous Food Editor in America. She had a daily column in the New York Herald Tribune and a longer piece in their Sunday magazine.

Her monumental work, How America Eats compiled recipes from around the country. She spent 12 years and traveled 800,000 miles compiling regional recipes that showcased the food of America.


Harris and Alexander cite several reasons for Paddleford’s work falling out of favor. First, The Tribune folded while the New York Times became the newspaper of record. Craig Claiborne was Paddleford’s main competition and he wrote for the Times. At roughly the same time How America Eats was published, The New York Times Cookbook with Claiborne’s byline came out. Both books featured home cooking from around the country, but Paddleford’s was folksier and didn’t have the imprimatur of the Times. How America Eats went out of print while Claiborne’s book remains in print to this day. Paddleford also suffered from having her publishing company change hands as Scribner’s merged with Athenaeum which became Scribner’s Book company which merged with Macmillan which was purchased by Simon and Schuster, which kept reference books under the Scribner’s name who were then sold to Thomson Gale. I think that’s right. So who knows who owned Paddleford’s copyrights or cared about keeping her in print.

Paddleford’s writing career and the heyday of her fame culminated in an era before television. Not that Paddleford was suited for television. She was no raving beauty and she developed throat cancer in at 33. Not wanting to give up her career, Paddleford underwent a rare surgery where a metal tube was inserted into her throat. She was able to speak by placing her finger over the hole in her throat, giving her a raspy and shallow voice. Paddleford disguised her problem with a choker that became part of her “look.”


Paddleford also rose to fame before the wave of individual “branding” where your name is a commodity. Paddleford had an offer to continue her byline by selling her name. As there was really no precedent for such a thing, she declined. Her contemporary, Duncan Hines, chose a different route. One wonders what might have been if Paddleford had taken the money!

From her article, “Those Refreshing Melons” is a recipe for a lemonade.

Watermelon Lemonade
1/2 cup of sugar
3/4 cup boiling water
1 1/2 cups finely chopped watermelon
1 cup lemon juice
1 quart carbonated water
Crushed ice
Mint

Dissolve sugar in the boiling water. Put watermelon pulp through a fine sieve; make sure no seeds get through. Combine strained watermelon juice with lemon juice and add to sugar syrup. Chill thoroughly. At serving time, add carbonated water and pour into tall glasses a quarter filled with crushed ice. Garnish with mint.

If you care about food, Clementine Paddleford is a name you need to know. We often loose the work of women, because they write about “women’s work” and that is regularly undervalued. Paddleford was a writer, traveler, journalist, pilot, editor and pioneer in culinary history and a woman who knew how America eats.

The Williamsburg Art of Cookery

The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation reprinted Helen Bullock’s treatise on cooking, The Williamsburg art of cookery; or, Accomplish'd gentlewoman's companion. The cookbook has been kept in its original form which includes a "long s." The "long s" resembles our letter "f". While there are many rules surrounding its use, generally in the middle of a word, the "long s" appears. That means that one often sees words that look like, “paftry”, Muftard” and “difh.” Reading through the text make one think the book was transcribed from a lisping speaker to a very literal stenographer, but in fact, just printed at a time when the "long s" was still used.

While much has changed since the writing of this cookbook, much hasn’t. Roughly half of the cookbook features recipes for sweets! Cookies have always been a temptation. There is also a section on Christmas in Williamsburg. In that section we find Mrs. Tucker’s recipe for a toddy.

To make toddy – Mrs. Tucker

Take one Gallon of Rum and one Pound of Sugar, brown, well mixed in a pot, keep clofely stopped till clear -–fay two Days –and then carefully rack off in a Jug.

It’s hard to argue with a recipe that begins with a gallon of rum!

My most memorable Williamsburg food adventure came courtesy of my elderly aunt. My father came from a large family. Of his brothers and sister, those who had children, with one exception, had only children. Those children who had children had only children. After my father’s generation was gone his sister-in-law remained. Several years ago, she announced that all of the only children, who had never seen each other, should meet and vacation together and she was taking us all to Williamsburg. Williamsburg is fine place to visit, unless you happen to be 15 years old, the age of most of my cousins on this trip. Once you’ve seen the blacksmith and the glass blower, the rest is history and of little interest to the average/any teenager. For dinner she booked us into an “authentic” Williamsburg inn where the authentic menu was squab and creamed beets. Being in her 70’s and a fan of history, my aunt felt that forking over $60 a head for this “authentic” experience would thrill this band of loner teeny-boppers. She seriously miscalculated. They demanded fries and burgers. Dinner was, shall we say, a trying experience.

Being older than my cousins, I handled dinner more maturity knowing two very important things: 1. I could drive. 2. I could buy beer. After my disillusioned aunt retired for the evening, I headed for the car to do both. My fellow only children were in hot pursuit, and demanded I take them with me to the one thing colonial Williamsburg did not have, a 7-11. They bought Big Gulps, hot dogs, chips and magazines. I bought beer and magazines. Back in my hotel room, we band of "onlys" migrated as far from each other as the room would allow and sat quietly, alone, drinking and reading.

I found that in lieu of Mrs. Tucker and her toddy, 7-11 comes in handy.

The Herbal Pantry

Vin d’Orange is a popular aperitif and light after-dinner drink served often in the South of France. It is made in the kitchen with a nice Provencal rosé, some vodka and oranges. I was looking for a twist on this recipe to take as a hostess gift for some foodie friends. I began looking through Emelie Tolley's book, The Herbal Pantry for some ideas. She had this great recipe for a slightly more savory spin on an aperitif.

Rosey Sage Aperitif

1 bottle rose wine
1 cup vodka, brandy, or white wine
3 small sprigs fresh sage
1/4 cup honey

Place the wine, vodka or brandy and sage in a glass jar with a tight fitting lid. Steep in a cool , dark place for two weeks. Filter, stir in the honey, and pour into a bottle with a tight fitting cork. Store in a cool, dark place.

It turned out to be a very lovely drink and a much appreciated gift.

Serena, Food and Stories

Serena Bass is a Londoner who caterers in New York. Her book, Serena, Food & Stories features fun recipes and chatty banter that’s tons of fun. It really wouldn’t matter if she served cat food on toast, this cookbook would be great fun. Fortunately for us, there is no cat food, just hip fun food with entertaining tips to match.

“We use these muffins as the bribe of choice to get the sanitation men to move our extra garbage, bloody butchers to move their carnage, and the super next door to hose down our sidewalk when we can’t be bothered.”

“As self-help books keep reminding us, “no one is thinking of you,” but they may very well be thinking about your food.”

She name drops from dogs to duchesses, from Julia Child to Elizabeth David without the slightest pretense.

What better recipe to give you than her recipe for Pimm’s Cup. Serena says, “Unless you have a fast drinking crowd, don’t make too much at once, as it’s nice to keep the ginger ale sparkling.

Pimm’s Cup

2 ounces Pimm’s No.1
2 ounces Tanquery Gin
6 ounces ginger ale
Slices of orange and lemon
Cucumber peel
Sprigs of fresh mint.

Keep the Pimm’s, gin and ginger ale well chilled. Mix everything together and serve over ice, with some fruit, cucumber, and mint in each glass. Multiply the ingredients proportionately if you want to fill a punch bowl or a pitcher.

Now get out there and throw a party! And if you don’t have a good story, steal one of Serena’s