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Recipes to Remember
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Why do you think we love food stories so much? Can it be they transport us back in time and help us recall caring people and special recipes in our life. When we think about them, we feel good inside, remembering the yummy smells and delightful flavors. Most of us love those exciting events, gatherings, and holiday celebrations. Today we are traveling back to the past and recalling a few of these comfort dishes. Later in the program, Anne Byrn will share some untold stories that she collected when she wrote “Baking in the American South.” Sit back, enjoy, and remember YOUR favorite food memory.
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Chopped Steak Old Covered Wagon Inn Style
In the 1920s, diners and roadside eateries popularized this dish.
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About the Recipe: If you want an extra-special ground beef burger that is moist, simple-to-make, and top quality delicious, try this chopped steak burger. It uses simple ingredients and can be paired with a variety of side dishes.
Recipe Story: This recipe was served in the beautiful Outdoor Rainbow Terrace at the Old Covered Wagon Inn. It’s located in the area of the Valley Forge State Historical Park. Covered Wagon Inn in Strafford, PA was built around 1780 as a way station for travelers and commercial traffic on the busy road between Philadelphia and Lancaster.
See More – Chopped Steak Old Covered Wagon Inn Style
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Deviled Crab
East and West Coast recipe passed down from generation to generation.
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About the Recipe: The recipe for deviled crab was one passed down through the generations. It’s popular on the East and West coast of the U.S. Fresh crabmeat is mixed with a few onions and celery, seasonings, and in this recipe tomato sauce, sherry, and an egg. Many times, it was topped with mayo and breadcrumbs. In any case, it is a powerhouse of flavor that is vibrant, fresh, and full of crabmeat.
Recipe Story:
This recipe, served at Lazio’s Seafoods in Eureka, California, became a classic. The restaurant was started in 1944 for the employees of Tom Lazio Fish Company. Originally created as a quick lunch for loggers and seafood processors, the dish was called “deviled” due to the heat of spices in the mix.
The small lunch grew to a full-fledged restaurant specializing in fish and crab brought in by the company’s fishing fleet. Lawrence Lazio was a pioneer, and a keen businessman in his day. Lazio was the first private property owner to try to put up a new enterprise right on the waterfront.
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Anne Byrn – Cookbook Author & Writer
I write cookbooks that tell stories. The kind of book you can read like a novel if you want to—never even setting foot in the kitchen. My newest book, Baking in the American South, is filled with untold stories. Hopefully, I make you hungry and you want to heat the oven, crack the eggs, and start cooking.
Courtesy of Anne Byrn – Photographs © 2024 by Rinne Allen
This fascinating dive into the history of 14 Southern states—Texas, Florida, Kentucky, and more—features stories and beautifully photographed recipes from pre-Civil War times to today’s Southern kitchens. It’s about the places, the people, the products and the culture of the moment that influenced what people baked. It’s about African American women and the monumental contributions they have made to the art of Southern baking, about home cooks and how they’ve kept traditions alive wherever they settle by baking family recipes each year for holidays and celebrations, and about the pastry chefs who have thoughtfully reimagined how the South bakes.
Courtesy of Anne Byrn – Photographs © 2024 by Rinne Allen
Available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other fine bookstores across the country.
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Lace Cookies
Courtesy of Anne Byrn – Photographs © 2024 by Rinne Allen
About the Recipe:
Secrets. In this deeply nostalgic recipe, which Lee Barnes included in her 1977 Lee Barnes’ Cooking cookbook, she instructs you to line the baking pans with foil or parchment and drop the dough by “small ice teaspoons” on the pan. Ice or iced teaspoons, those long and slender spoons for stirring sugar into a tall glass of tea, aren’t used much anymore. But the idea is to drop just a bit of the dough onto the pan because these cookies have so little flour, they spread while baking. I use the smaller end of a melon ball scoop. I also add a sprinkling of kosher salt once the cookies are cooling, to cut the sweetness of the sugar.
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Nashville Chess Tartlets
Courtesy of Anne Byrn – Photographs © 2024 by Rinne Allen
About the Recipe:
Found in farm journals and church cookbooks, chess pie recipes were the easy, everyday pies baked by people who did their own baking. They needed no fresh fruit or refrigeration, and that was fortuitous, because before the 1930s, home refrigerators as we know them didn’t exist. Having spent a lifetime baking chess pie and eating other people’s variations on chess pie, I can confidently say this recipe is the best. What makes middle Tennessee chess pie different from that in other parts of the South is the cornmeal and apple cider vinegar. I grew up with little chess tarts at summer barbecues, packed in box lunches, and on the table at holiday parties. Because those premade tartlet shells aren’t so easy to find anymore, I make my own by cutting a piecrust into rounds, pressing them into muffin pans, then filling and baking. So good!
Recipe Story:
HOW CHESS PIE GOT ITS NAME
The words chess pie has prompted much head-scratching among food historians. Katharine Shilcutt of East Texas was told her ancestors baked chess pie and stored it in a chest of drawers, which calls to mind a variation on the name “chest” pie. Most experts, though, think “chess” is a corruption of the word “cheese,” because the baked filling has a creamy consistency like cheese curds. The late Bill Neal, chef of Crook’s Corner, pointed us to the last part of the Oxford English Dictionary’s second definition of a cheesecake: “A cake or tort of light pastry, originally containing cheese; now filled with a yellow buttermilk compound of milk-curds, sugar and butter, or a preparation of whipped egg and sugar.”
Virginia historian Katharine E. Harbury wrote in Colonial Virginia’s Cooking Dynasty (2004) that the Virginia chess pie, cheesecake, and lemon cheese didn’t contain cheese at all, and the name simply describes their texture. In 1891 in The People’s Press newspaper of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, “cheese pie” is the name given to a pie in which eggs are beaten with butter and sugar, poured into pans of pastry, and baked with a meringue in a hot oven, while a similar recipe in nearby Greensboro was called “chess pie.” The Piedmont of North Carolina had been settled by English Quakers, Scottish Highlanders, Moravians, and Germans who came down the Great Wagon Road from Pennsylvania.
See More – Nashville Chess Tartlets
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Bratwurst with Caramelized Onions and Sweet Apples
One-dish dinner brought by German and Bohemian immigrants.
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About the Recipe: This one-pot meal is filled with bratwurst sausage pieces, cabbage, and sweet apple slices. It has a brothy sauce and should be served in a deep plate or shallow pasta bowl. Letting the sausages marinade in beer provided a rich flavor and juicy sausages.
Story about Sausages:
German and Bohemian immigrants brought their knowledge of curing and smoking meats to the Heartland in the nineteenth century. The typical house built by an immigrant family was surrounded by a vegetable garden, a chicken coop, a fenced hog yard, cow stalls, a toolshed, outhouse, and a smokehouse. Hams, bacon, sausages, and cheese were smoked to help preserve them during the winter. Smoked meats are widely available from midwestern purveyors to this day.
For More Information See:
201, 416 Prairie Home Cooking by Judith M. Fertig
See More – Bratwurst with Caramelized Onions and Sweet Apples
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Midwest Meatloaf
Farm country style originally from Eastern Europe.
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About the Recipe: Meatloaf combines simple ingredients, is easy to make, and uses basic ingredients to feed a family for dinner. The texture of our meatloaf was very tender since we used some plant-based meat in the recipe. We enjoyed its delightful flavor and moist texture. Meatloaf makes a perfect partner for a large bowl of mashed potatoes or veggie mash. It’s easy to see why this classic dish has a long history as a favorite dinner dish.
Recipe Story:
When John was growing up on a Minnesota dairy farm, he watched his mother garden and preserve her fruits and vegetables. He helped with the milking, butchering, hunting, and fishing. Today, he uses homestyle basics to make dishes for his own restaurant. The meatloaf and mashed potatoes are flavorful and traditional eastern European.
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Stampotten Veggie Mash
A Scandinavian special dish with 2 or 3 root vegetables.
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About the Recipe: The potatoes can be combined with other root vegetables if desired. They are a tasty side dish to serve with meatloaf. This is a recipe that would be a great side for a dinner party.
Recipe Story: Stampotten
“When my sister and I were kids, my mother used to serve us potatoes and carrots mashed together, a dish she learned from her father. Eventually I learned that my Dutch great—grandfather, Benjamin Vanderhorst, who had a restaurant in Maineville, Ohio, was the source of the dish. Stampotten (stappa in Scandinavian cuisines) are simple purees of two or three root vegetables, usually potato plus carrot or parsnip or rutabaga, and they remain popular in old Dutch towns like Holland, Michigan, Pella, Iowa, and Minster, Ohio.
See More – Stampotten Veggie Mash
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Layered Enchilada Casserole
A favorite flavor from the West.
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About the Recipe: It’s a casserole from yesteryears, easy to prepare, reduced fat content, kid-popular, and taste-bud tingling. The Kansas Wheat Commission said it uses one of the most popular wheat foods. Prepare two baking pans at one time and freeze one for another dinner.
Recipe Story:
Refugees brought Mexican food to the U.S. during the Mexican Revolution. The taco was popular in southern and central Mexico, and the name taco appeared around the 1880’s. Around 1920’s the first famous tacos were taquitos rolled tacos and found a home in southern California. By 1959, places like The Pink Adobe in Santa Fe, New Mexico featured a special dinner called Chicken Enchiladas with Sour Cream
See More – Layered Enchilada Casserole
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Creamed Spinach
Served with prime rib or steaks in the best restaurants.
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About the Recipe: This is a creamy sauced hot spinach side dish that is flavored with onions, bacon, and garlic. It was very popular long ago in gourmet restaurants.
Recipe Story:
If you were going out to a fancy restaurant like Lawry’s The Prime Rib in Beverly Hills, California, you probably would be ordering prime ribs of beef that are roasted in a coating of rock salt. Then the chef would wheel it to the diner’s table and carve it to your individual order. After that, the most popular side dishes would be added, double whipped baked potatoes and creamed spinach.
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Union Pacific Apple Pancake
1910 recipe from the Union Pacific Railroad chefs.
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About the Recipe: Everyone loves pancakes, especially apple cakes made with fresh apples. The sweetness of the pancakes depends on the applesauce that you use. I can just imagine riding on a train like this and enjoying a chef’s pancake breakfast. How exciting!
Recipe Story:
“Oregon apples were readily available to the chefs of the railroad and were frequently a part of the menus. Giant baked apples, apple pies, fried apple rings, and apple pancakes were served on the Union Pacific.”
See More – Union Pacific Apple Pancakes
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