There is a simple explanation for this column. In moving stuff around in office cupboards, I came across three recipe boxes. While the recipes within them seem quite ordinary, all three boxes have special meaning.
In choosing just one letter, the S for September, I found it intriguing what each woman felt the need to save. It seemed that hand-written recipes and yellowed clippings pointed to an aspect of the personality behind each box’s original owner: Hilda Cox, Martha Fitzgerald-Yowler and Evah Lewis.
A large green tin with a hinged lid made for PET Brand evaporated milk was made by the Barringer Wallis and Manners Company of Mansfield, England. The company has been in business since 1890. The tin was a commemorative issue for the Pet Brand Family Recipes, the inside label reading: “This Family Recipe Box is an antique reproduction of Mary Lee Taylor’s original tin. She was Pet’s original food authority, dating back to the 1930s. She spent a lifetime creating and sharing delightful family recipes using PET evaporated milk.”
When offered to the public, the tin included recipe cards indexed by seasons. Now though the box was stuffed with a family’s lifetime of meals, snacks, cherished dishes from friends. Taking a look at the letter S, one could see a bit of Hilda Cox’s taste in sauces and soups. Cards held ingredient lists for white sauce (a basic for many dishes), chili sauce (from her friend, Esther Steele), creamy chocolate sauce (one of the PET recipes) and mustard sauce (for ham dishes).
Soups included Hilda’s own vegetable soup, lite baked potato soup (from Good Samaritan Hospital, Dayton, Ohio), three recipes for chili (one marked delicious! the other marked good! and one called Ohio-Style-no marks). Hilda used a code of exclamation marks and asterisks to rate all her recipes, especially her cakes which she was locally famous for.
There was corn chowder soup, English beef stew, creamy green pea soup and a much-used card with Spaghetti (Kelly’s) EXCELLENT! EXCELENTE! written on it.
Hilda loved to cook and enjoyed eating good food with friends. I had the privilege of attending a luncheon at Hilda’s house back in September, 1997. She was a lively, friendly person who made me feel welcome and at ease. Clearly, she put a bit of herself in everything she cooked. When I brought home her recipe tin and scrapbooks from her estate auction, it was like bringing her kitchen into mine. I adapted her code of exclamation marks and asterisks for my own recipe box.
A flat white box, taped together at the seams, held all of Martha Fitzgerald-Yowler’s recipes. Placed in rows with the alphabet dividers held in place by the sheer weight and volume of clippings, cards and magazine pages, Martha’s talent for organizing her recipes was a little lacking. It seemed she couldn’t decide which letter some dishes should go under so they were in rows at the back. Her tastes were decidedly sophisticated, as she often held small dinner parties for friends. Being an artist, Martha enjoyed the colors and textures of ingredients as was evident in the large amount of salad and salad dressing recipes.
Eighteen salad dressings started off the s-category. Following those were no less than twenty gelatin molded salads that Martha no doubt served at luncheons for her church group friends. The stack of salads themselves was over an inch high and included such old-fashioned ones as chicken salad, pea salad, kidney bean salad, macaroni salad and the ever-popular potato salad. The artistic side of Martha was a definite influence in her choice of keepers for her recipe box. Besides the good old standbys, there were colorful dishes such as marinated zucchini/tomato salad (using lots of fresh garden produce), green & orange salad (cabbage & carrots) and crunchy pea salad (peas, celery, peanuts, bacon). Probably the most colorful salad plate was of red apples, green pears and stuffed yellow peach halves.
A small, deep-brown, wooden box, worn smooth from years of handling, held all Evah Lewis’s favorite scone recipes. My mother did not bake scones as my siblings and I were growing up. Her love of breads was a basic, down-to-earth, bake-for-the-family talent that came from her own childhood and lived on in her cinnamon rolls, biscuits, cornbread and assorted loaves. Many times our weekend supper would consist of fresh baked bread of one sort or the other and whatever fruit (fresh or canned) was on hand.
Later in life however, Mom was smitten with the scones she purchased at the local Panera Bread store. She loved the crisp, golden tops, sometimes sprinkled with sugar. She loved the fruit and nut laden, soft inner texture. So, being a baker at heart and knowing homemade was always less expensive, she set about learning the knack for baking great scones.
A dozen recipes for scones, from plain drop to fancy bounce-berry, from dried fruits to chocolate chips were all tested and evaluated by Mom and her taste panel of one-me. She favored the basics, as she always had. If they were golden brown, sweet and creamy, tasted down-to-earth, if they reminded her of her own childhood or her years of family baking, then she made them again and froze them.
Unlike the first two ladies, Mom never gave luncheons or dinner parties. She preferred sitting down at the kitchen table, hot tea in large mugs, a plate of scones (quickly thawed in the toaster oven) and a friend who dropped by for a few minutes of catching up.
Three boxes, three women, three different tastes, all under one letter. S for September.
Next week, some recipes from the three boxes. Contact Connie at
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