Lightening Cake

The past few months have been busy ones for me, so I have not had much time to devote to cooking. My great-aunt, the woman who made it possible for me to see all these recipes, also passed away last month at age 89. At some point I will delve into the many mimeographed recipes she acquired, by my estimation, around the office where she was an executive secretary. For today, though, I chose an easy recipe--the second recipe of the three below--just to get myself blogging again.


Well, I say easy, but my great-grandmother's instructions are not always so simple to decipher. Lightening Cake (yes, it probably should be spelled Lightning Cake, but it's a three-syllable word to some in southern New England) supposedly got its name because it is quick as lighting to make. The cake should take 20-30 minutes in the oven. I, however, chose to bake it as a loaf cake rather than a layer cake, so I let it stay in the oven for 50 minutes at 350 degrees.

By my reading of the recipe, it seems as though you first mix together the sugar, flour, and baking soda. Then, you melt your butter and add two beaten eggs to it followed by a cup of milk. Finally, you add the liquid ingredients to the dry and put the resulting batter into a cake pan or two.

I like how my great-grandmother made it explicit that the baker should "fill cup with milk" as though that were not inherently obvious. I hope she meant this phrase to mean add one cup of milk. But who knows.

I treated myself to a slice not long after I took the cake out of the oven. Experiencing the simple taste of good butter and sugar blended together sent my mind back to all the bad grocery-store-bought and package-mix cakes I suffered as a child. Lightening Cake is by far the best everyday cake that I have even eaten. Had we only kept this recipe alive I might have saved my taste buds so much indignity.

The Old Grist Mill Tavern (and Johnny Cakes)

Seeing that so many of you enjoyed my post about johnny cakes with its mention of the Old Grist Mill Tavern in Seekonk, Massachusetts, I hope some of you find interest in these images from an Old Grist Mill Tavern menu dated January 21, 1953.  The menu's cover features a sign detailing the restaurant's johnny cakes, while the menu itself notes that johnny cakes were offered as a side and as an entree with sausages.  You should be able to enlarge at least some of the images by clicking on them.

The above two images, a view of the waterfall from the interior of the restaurant and two illustrations of the mill depicting how it looked in 1745 and 1950, are found on the front of the menu's cover.

This sign, seen here in an illustration located on the inside of the menu's cover, stood outside the Old Grist Mill Tavern.  

Below, we have images from the menu itself.

Johnny Cakes (and The OId Grist Mill Tavern)

I don’t know when, but at some point I acquired this postcard from the The Old Grist Mill Tavern in Seekonk, Massachusetts. It originally belonged to my Aunt Harriet. That much I know.

I have had quite a few meals at the Grist Mill, but never, despite the declaration on the back of the postcard, have I ever had a johnny cake there. “ ‘Home of the Johnny Cake,’ ” it reads in quotation marks as if to imply that any customer might have uttered the phrase upon hearing the words Grist Mill. Yet if you look at the Grist Mill’s present menu, there are no johnny cakes to be found.

So much for the Grist Mill’s claim to fame.

I have no intention of boycotting the Grist Mill for not keeping true to some assertion a former owner made in the late 1950s or early 1960s, when the postcard was probably printed. I don’t even know if the Grist Mill ground corn when it was in operation as an actual grist mill in the eighteenth century.

The card simply reminds me that I don’t see johnny cakes, supposedly a mainstay of New England cooking since the colonial period, too often anymore.

In December I was in Rhode Island and decided to pick up a box of Kenyon’s white corn meal so that I could remind myself of just what a johnny cake tastes like. Now, normally I’m skeptical of buying pre-mixed flours or meals, because I can just purchase corn meal or flour in bulk and save myself a lot of money. I know how to make pancakes, for instance, and it’s not so difficult that I need to buy the ingredients pre-mixed. But, seeing as Rhode Island’s economy is in the toilet, I thought I’d do my part to help out both a Rhode Island grocery store and the folks at Kenyon’s Corn Meal Company in Usquepaugh, R.I.

Since then I’ve been reading up on johnny cakes and, among other things, found that Kenyon’s packaged white corn meal is really stone ground, while most corn meal is made using steel blades. This means that Kenyon’s corn meal is not only more nutritious than others, but that it also has a distinctive taste and finer texture.

It’s a good thing, or so Martha Stewart Living tells me.

Strangely, in Rhode Island, by law it should be spelled jonny cakes, not johnny cakes. (So, in a state where native speakers add an h to the end of any word ending in r, you’re supposed to drop the h in the middle of this one particular word. Up to speed?) In that respect, opening a box of Kenyon’s corn meal for johnny cakes could be considered a revolutionary act.

Someone might want to alert the Rhode Island Tea Party about this.

I recently made johnny cakes for breakfast, following the recipe on the box of Kenyon’s corn meal. Judging from the company's website, the cakes I made were in South County style, as opposed to Newport style, which requires milk rather than boiled water. You can make them any way you like. Mine came out about a quarter of an inch thick, crispy on the outside, and soft on the inside. We had them with eggs and a bit of maple syrup. They were quite good. I plan to make another batch whenever I get around to cooking some sort of seafood with a cream sauce.

I like a food that works for both breakfast and supper.

Johnny cakes also remind me of a certain passage in Two Years Before the Mast, Richard Henry Dana’s 1840 account of how he, a Boston Brahmin and Harvard undergraduate, spent two years as a lowly sailor. Dana’s description of the way his brutal "down-east johnny-cake" captain, a Mainer I presume, reacted to the demands of the crew reads as follows:

“Well, what the d---l do you want now?” Whereupon we stated our grievances as respectfully as we could; but he broke in upon us, saying that we were getting fat and lazy, didn’t have enough to do, and it was that which made us find fault. This provoked us, and we began to give word for word. This would never answer. He clenched his fist, stamped and swore, and ordered us all forward, saying, with oaths enough interspersed to send the words home, “Away with you! go forward every one of you! I’ll haze you! I’ll work you up. You don’t have enough to do! If you a’n’t careful, I’ll make a hell of heaven! . . . You’ve mistaken your man! I’m Frank Thompson, all the way from ‘down east.’ I’ve been through the mill, ground, and bolted, and come out a regular-built, down-east johnny-cake, when it’s hot, d----d good; but when it’s cold, d----d sour and indigestible; -- and you’ll find me so!”

It probably goes without saying, but I made sure my Rhode Island johnny cakes were piping hot when we ate them.

Brown Bread

I can make bread in a can!

In December I posted an unnamed recipe that turned out to be my great-grandmother’s recipe for brown bread. That receipt, as she would have called it, did not explain how the brown bread ought to be cooked, but right before I began making it myself I scanned a few on-line recipes for brown bread and was reminded that in New England it is traditionally made in a can.

I knew this, but not having cooked in a can before I must have forgotten that part.

To be honest, the thought of cooking bread in a can was a bit daunting, if not also absurd.

Then I recalled my mother’s cousins’ making some references over the years to their grandmother’s cooking something in a coffee can. It had to be the brown bread, I figured, and so I began looking for something akin to a coffee can in which to cook my bread. Since I buy my coffee in the form of beans in bulk, I opted for a tin can that once held 28 oz. of tomatoes. When I make the bread again I’ll use two cans, as I had just a little overflow of bread after it rose.

Basically, you mix the ingredients and pour them into a buttered tin can. Then you find yourself a larger pot, securely cover the top of the open can with tin foil (I tied dental floss around the foil to keep it from shifting), place the can in the pot on top of some kind of platform (don’t just let the can rest on the bottom of the pot), and fill the pot with enough water to cover half the can. Bring to a boil and let it run for two-and-a-half to three hours (yes, that long), adding extra water if necessary. When it’s done, let the can cool and extract the bread. It will be in the shape of the can mold and very moist from the steam.

I made the brown bread with baked beans and hot dogs, because that is how my great-grandmother made it every Saturday for the mid-day meal. My mom was very disappointed when she learned that I didn’t season the hot dogs with celery salt (who knew?). I guess I missed that detail of Saturday dinner over the years. At any rate, my great-grandmother made this every Saturday and one of her three daughters, Barbara, continued the tradition with her Friday night meals using canned beans and canned bread. B&M continues to sell brown bread in a can if you need a quick fix.

According to my mother, her grandmother also served her brown bread with cod cakes, so brown bread is apparently quite a versatile side.

Mom remembers this, she said, because she hated the smell of the cod in the kitchen. Nevertheless, on many Fridays mom and her Aunt Harriet would also go to Leonard’s Restaurant in Taunton, Massachusetts for cod fish cakes and carrots.

The joys of Lent and fish on Friday could not be more understated.

When my great-grandmother and her daughter Harriet lived on the second floor of a two-story house on Bradford Street in Taunton, she would steam the brown bread and two unmarried women on the first floor, the O’Brien sisters, would make the baked beans. (I assume this helped to even out the molasses purchases, as both baked beans and the brown bread, in particular, require a lot of molasses. Not to mention the fact that baked beans take something like five hours to cook. A little shared labor surely went a long way.) Every Saturday, after confession at St. Mary’s, they would bring the two dishes together for Saturday lunch. My mother and her cousins also joined in this weekly ritual.

After my great-grandmother passed away, the O’Brien sisters continued to make baked beans for Harriet. (They also apparently locked Hat out of the house if she, a woman in her thirties, stayed out past midnight. That must have added something a little stronger than molasses to Saturday dinner.)

I saved a slice of the brown bread for my mother and she said it was just like what her grandmother made. “It has that tang,” she said in reference to the pronounced molasses flavor.

The Rocky Point Shore Dinner Hall

Blame it on the cold weather, but all day my thoughts kept returning to memories of eating clam cakes and red chowder in the Shore Dinner Hall at Rocky Point Park. Located on Narragansett Bay in Warwick, Rhode Island, the park opened in 1847 and closed in 1996. The Shore Dinner Hall served its last clam cake in 2000. (Check out the film “You Must Be This Tall” for more on the history of Rocky Point Park.)

Apparently my grandfather, a labor reporter for the Providence Journal-Bulletin, was quite the shore-dinner connoisseur. He used to take my dad to Rocky Point for clam cakes and chowder and Dad, in turn, took me and my brother. This usually occurred around the Fourth of July, when my father's childhood and college friends, with their children and spouses, annually reunited in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

I must have inherited this penchant for the shore dinner, as I remember the Rocky Point Shore Dinner Hall with its seemingly endless rows of tables, watermelon, and salty, battered clam cakes better than I do the Corkscrew or the Freefall or the House of Horrors (well, my eyes were probably unnecessarily closed for much of that last one).

Around 1989 or so I picked up the above postcard of the Shore Dinner Hall, complete with a description of the menu on its backside:


With the park and the dinner hall long gone, I will have to make “Famous Rocky Point Clam Chowder” for myself.

ROCKY POINT-STYLE CHOWDER

1/2 pound ground or finely diced salt pork
1 pound onions, cut in medium dice
1 gallon clam juice
1 pound potatoes, diced
Salt, pepper to taste
1 tablespoon paprika
2 cups canned tomato puree
1 1/2 quarts chopped quahogs
Water as needed
Pilot crackers, crumbled

Heat salt pork until the fat melts. Add onions; cook over gentle heat until very soft. Add clam juice, potatoes, seasonings, tomato puree and a little water.

Simmer until potatoes are soft, then add quahogs. Heat and taste for seasoning. Add water if needed.

It is best to use old, not new potatoes, because they thicken the chowder somewhat with their starch. Crush some pilot crackers and stir them into the chowder to thicken it further near the end of cooking. Makes 20 eight-ounce servings.

Note that the above recipe, located with others in a 1997 Providence Journal-Bulletin article, suggests that you make the chowder with pilot crackers. But like Famous Rocky Point Clam Chowder that, too, is a bygone food unless you make it yourself. (Nabisco discontinued Crown Pilot Crackers despite a concerted effort against this move by residents of Chebeague Island, Maine. But that’s another story.)

The Recipe with No Name

Joyeux NyQuil! 'Tis the season when I follow a strict schedule of sleep, cough, repeat.

To safeguard the health of others, I have steered clear of the kitchen.

Yet in my moments of mental clarity I have been thinking of what I call "The Recipe with No Name." Graham flour, cornmeal, molasses. Is it brown bread? May some kind soul help me solve this mystery.

Hot Milk Cake

A few weeks ago, I tried to make my great-grandmother’s recipe for Hot Milk Cake. I failed miserably. It looked wonderful coming out of the oven, but it sank into a light-yellow gelatinous form resembling something like lemon curd trapped inside of a cake’s deflated body.

In retrospect, I probably baked it a few minutes too few and improperly sifted the flour. This time, just to be sure, I beat the eggs longer until they were really fluffy and made certain to sift the first half-cup of flour with the baking powder. I put the mixture in the oven at 350 degrees for about thirty minutes and got a cake that I think my great-grandmother would recognize.

The cake should be baked in a round tin or pan, which I left behind at my mother’s over Thanksgiving. Next time, I will make it round and I might also add a filling, as Hot Milk Cake usually had one in the middle between two layers.

Just thankful to get the cake to what I imagined to be right, I accompanied it with a honey glaze made by bringing to a boil a quarter-cup of honey, two tablespoons of sugar, and one tablespoon of butter.

Both my father’s maternal grandmother and Alice, my mother’s maternal grandmother, made Hot Milk Cake. That’s not terribly surprising. Hot Milk Cake was very popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when both women came of age. Home cooks considered it an “everyday cake,” which seemed strange to me after first attempting to make it given how horribly I failed. How can something be an “everyday cake” if it is this hard to make? Yet if you know what you’re doing, which they probably did, it’s not difficult. The cake is sweet, but not too sweet, and it’s definitely not rich, rendering it something that people could conceivably eat everyday.

Recipes for Hot Milk Cake can be found in many late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century cookbooks written by middle- or upper-class women who deemed themselves experienced cooks with a mission to instruct working-class women, who they supposed inexperienced in the kitchen, on how to run a proper household. The Lowney’s Cook Book, in which I found this recipe inserted, was intended to encourage women to use Lowney’s flour, but it also purported to help the unseasoned or working-class cook to gain the skills to run something akin to a middle-class home.

Alice's recipe for Hot Milk Cake, I discovered, is almost identical to one that can be found in The Cook Book by Jane Rush, published in 1918. Rush, the president of the Massachusetts Auxiliary to the Navy Relief Society, prided herself on writing easy-to-read recipes. She was therefore perfectly suited to compose a cookbook for the “inexperienced cooks” who might have trouble intuiting the under-detailed recipes usually found in cookbooks (much like those in the Lowney’s Cook Book). Rush admitted that such recipes had ruined her efforts in the past, but she was no working-class, green cook. Not only did she know how to render recipes intelligible, her domestic servants, a sign of her wealth, encouraged her to write the cookbook.

I have no idea if Alice read Rush’s cookbook. Yet given how detailed her recipe for Hot Milk Cake is in contrast to some of the others written down by her and how similar it is to Rush’s version, my guess is that she penned this recipe at a point in her life when she was familiar with reading the more-detailed cookbooks written, like Rush’s, around World War I and later. In other words, this was probably not a recipe she inherited from her mother.

By 1918 my great-grandmother was thirty years old and recently married with an infant daughter. Until her wedding she worked outside the home. Once married she tended to the household; her husband, Ned, had a good job in a rivet factory. The recipe as my great-grandmother wrote it spoke to how middle-class, domestic ideals expressed in cookbooks informed her life as a working-class mother and housewife.