CUISINE OF MARYLAND CUISINE OF MARYLAND Oliver Wendell Holmes in nThe Professor at the Breakfast Table" called Baltimore "the gastronomic metropolis of the Union." While it is un­ doubtedly true that there is no disputing about tastes, it is equally true that menu cards have borne the names of Maryland and of Baltimore more often than those of any other section of the country. Maryland's cooking is as diversified as her topography. Her lower counties specialize in what the rest of the nation regards as typically southern cooking, fried chicken, planked shad, soft crabs, hominy, grits, spoon- bread, corn pone, Sally Lunn, beaten biscuit ("knead for five minutes and beat hard with a hatchet for thirty minutes"). The counties of both "Shores" bordering on the Bay with their wealth of sea food and migratory water-fowl, cherish recipes handed down from one generation to another, while in those counties lying just across the border from rural Pennsylvania, German and Pennsylvania Dutch influence is noticed. In the mountain sections of Western Maryland the cooking of big game and gamey fish is specialized in. Chesapeake Bay produces in teeming abundance much of the East's supply of oysters, crabs and fish. Cambridge in Dorchester county is one of the largest shipping points in the country for all kinds of sea food, as is also Crisfield on the lower Eastern Shore, where are located nurseries for the diamond- back terrapin. Deal Island in Tangier Sound is one of the finest hunting grounds for wild fowl in the United States and is a crabbing and fishing center of importance. Hooper's Island, also in Dorchester, is one of the greatest 2 concentration areas for wild geese and ducks, canvas backs, mallards, red heads and muscovies in the country is an important sea food point. At Kent Island in Queen*s county, a large fleet of fishing craft at anchor in the harbor give picturesque evidence of its main industry. The tidewater also produce in abundance sea trout, large mouth black bass, croakers, shad, blue fish, and rock (striped bass). Trolling for the latter is a popular pastime in Chesapeake Bay throughout the summer and fall. The rivers of the state teem with trout of all varieties, rainbow, brook, and brown, with small mouth black bass and other varieties of inland fish. Maninose, a shell fish something like a clam with a softer shell and very easily opened, lies buried near the surface and is found at low tide during the winter months. In the mountain regions of western Maryland still are found an occasional deer, as well as wild turkey, ruffed grouse and game fish. Throughout the State partridges, doves, rabbits and an occasional pheasant are found. Maryland’s remarkable dairy farm and garden truck sections doubtless are in part responsible for Baltimore’s culinary reputation. In dairying the State has for many years ranked near the top in quality of production and more recently quantity of production has been stepped up. The fertile and level land of the counties bordering both shores of the bay pro­ duces luxuriant crops of vegetables and fruits of all kinds. The high tradition of eating in Maryland harks back to Revolutionary days. Soon after the p>eace was signed in Paris, Baltimore began to grow. Roads were built, contacts established with the West and taverns sprang up along Market Street, now Baltimore Street. One of the most famous of these was the Fountain Inn which stood a few doors off of Market Street on s the site of today’s Southern Hotel. It was a low old fashioned structure, shaded by a row of trees and its gaily painted sign-board, portraying a gushing fountain, swung above the heads of passengers alighting from the mail coach on its way to Richmond from Philadelphia. Washington and Lafayette were guests at this hostelry— the latter repeatedly— and it was here that Francis Scott Key came for breakfast the morning after the bombardment of Fort McHenry and here he revised his hasty notes of the "Star-Spangled Banner" and gave it to the printer that same day. The Indian Queen at Market and Hanover Streets and the General Wayne Inn at Market and Paca Streets were other famous taverns giving shelter and sustenance to the notables of those early days. The latter, a stately Georgian building of brick, swung its sign board from its northwest corner, flaunting a portrait of "Mad Anthony" himself, brave in continental blue and buff. Guy's Hotel in Calvert Street where the present Post Office stands was another inn popular with epicures. It was here that Thackeray came according to Kennedy's Journal after his lecture on George IV. Around the corner on Fayette Street was the first location of the Rennert and diagonally across the street, at the southwest corner of Calvert and Fayette Streets, on the site of the present Equitable Building, stood the celebrated Bamum's Hotel. Charles Dickens in his "American Notes" — visit of 1842 — writes of it thus: "The most comfortable of all the hotels of which I had any experience in the United States— and they were not a few— is Barnum's Hotel in that city (Baltimore) where the English traveler will find curtains to his bed for the first time, and probably the last time, in America— (this is a dis­ interested remark for I never use them) and where he will be likely to have enough water for washing himself which is not at all a common case." 4 Another Britisher, G. W. Featherstonhaugh, F.K. S., in his book "Travels in the Slave States of North America," published in London in 1844, gives Mr. Barnum this tribute: "If there is a hotel keeper in the United States who merits the commendation of a traveler, the veteran Mr. Barnum may claim to be that person— His neat parlors and bedrooms, his quiet house, his excellent table and the ready and obliging attendance found there leave the traveler little to desire." Baltimore's markets have equally as long and famous a tradition as her inns. The most noted of them and the one no tourist should fail to see is Lexington Market. Its site is part of the original Howard estate, given by that same John Eager Howard, whose equestrian statue by Fremiet stands today north of the Washington Monument. Deeded to the city in 1782, the market was laid out that same year but for some reason was not open for business until 1803. Its open air sheds extend in a triple row for three city blocks. Its fruit and vegetable stalls overflow the sheds and stretch along the throughfares. Green peas in their moist green pods, bunches of spiky carrots with feathery plumes, snowy cauliflower, stalks of celery with golden yellow tips, oranges, luscious apricots, lemons, grape fruit, tawny pears and purple plums, all lend their rich and glowing tones to the symmetrical arrangements on the stalls. Center Market at Baltimore Street and Jones* Falls— or Marsh Market as it was more popularly known— the name being a hangover from the days of the swamp upon which it was originally built in 1784, is a dramatic scene, vivid with local color. William Wirt, the distinguished Maryland jurist of the early nineteenth century, wrote of this market "I rose before day, shaved and dressed by candle light, took my cane and walked to market." "0, what a quantity of s superb beef, mutton, lamb and veal, and all sorts of fowls; hogheads full of wild duck, geese, pheasants and partridges." Center Market was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1904 but was rebuilt. Today it is largely wholesale and supplies the other markets. Other open air markets such as Belair, Richmond, Broadway, Hollins lure thousands of Baltimore housewives to their laden stands. No chapter on Maryland cooking would be complete without mention of Baltimore1s street cries. They are, in their way, as unique as London's and merit more space than can here be given. With the coming of the R months, the demand for oysters begins, for Maryland law forbids dredging during May, June, July and August and the white aproned darky with his enamelled buckets makes his rounds and sings his wares: "OYEEE, 0IEEE---E— E" in a grand opera tenor which at times approaches the best efforts of a Swiss yodeller. During the summer months the same negro appears with a large market basket covered with a napkin and now his cry has changed to: "Crabbee, crabbee, don* yo' wan' "To buy my debbel cra-a-abs," "Debbel, debbel, debbel era— a— abs." Perhaps you do. If so, you may find them as delicious as many a crab imperial for which you pay double the price. "Straw-bay-rees, Ann 'Ran'l straw-bay-rees" announces to housekeepers that Maryland's own home grown berries from nearby Anne Arundel Coirnty are in the market. "Sawf crabs, sawf crabs," or "Fresh feesh, fresh feesh." 6 "Red, ripe mattusses," "Fresh grass an* cab-buges," are other cries frequently heard. The old traditions of Maryland cuisine, the fine heritages of native fare and cooking that has made Maryland food famous are still upheld in private homes, clubs, an in a few hotels and public eating places. But gone from the hotels are the large menus of yesteryear. Contrast the present day hotel fare with this average weekday dinner menu at Baraum’s City Hotel in 1885. Gumbo Soup Consomme Macaroni Boiled Blue Fish Egg Sauce Boiled Leg of Mutton Caper Sauce Chicken, Butter Sauce Corned Beef Tongue Roast Ribs of Beef Tame Duck, Stuffed Ham, Champagne Sauce Chicken, Stuffed Lamb, Mint Sauce Loin of Veal Filet of Beef, Braise, aux Champignones Macaroni, au Tomat Baked Tomatoes, Stuffed Calves Head, a la Italienne Chicken Liver Croquettes with Peas Deviled Crab Cold Roast Beef Smoked Beef Tongue Ham Pressed Corned Beef Sliced Tomatoes Olives Lettuce Cucumbers Boiled Potatoes Rice Lima Beans Sweet Potatoes Cabbage Mashed Potatoes Stewed Tomatoes Green Corn Apple Pie Whortleberry Pie Bread and Butter Pudding Wine Sauce Vanilla Ice Cream Jelly Cake Ginger Pound Cake Butter Cake Watermelons Peaches Grapes English Walnuts Pecans Filberts Almonds Raisins Confectionery Cheese Coffee Ahd this was a $1.50 dinner! With weekly rates, it was less than a dollar.