In cake aristocracy, we have the Lady Baltimore (His Lordship has one, too), the Regent, the Prince of Wales, and of course king cakes. Then there are queen cakes, somewhat larger than cupcakes, baked in ribbed “patty-pans.”
The recipe is like a pound cake’s, but an essential ingredient is currents. Currants were popular in this country up until the early 20th century when their production and shipment were banned under federal law in 1911 because the plants were unjustly tagged as vectors for a timber blight. The ban was later relegated to local jurisdictions, but it’s unlikely you’ll find currants–fresh, frozen, or dried–in markets. You might find Zante currants, which are actually dried seedless grapes, which on most days I call raisins.
Me, I cut to the chase and use Sun-Maid.
Queen Cakes
Cream 2 cups softened butter with 2 cups sugar, then beat in 8 eggs one at a time. Mix the batter very well, then add a teaspoon vanilla; a half teaspoon mace, and 2 tablespoons brandy or rosewater are traditional, but optional. Sift a teaspoon baking powder with 4 cups cake flour. Mix very well until stiff, but not dry. Add your “currants” liberally, but toss them with a bit of corn starch first, since they tend to clump. Use softened butter to grease your “patty-pans” (cupcake pans to us commoners) and paper liners. Fill cups a little over half-way with batter, and bake at 350 on the middle rack until golden and springy. Allow to cool completely before removing from pans. Feel free to top with royal icing.
In July, 2018, Epicurious, “the ultimate food resource for the home cook,” tasted 16 brands of mayonnaise to determine the very best one. The testers selected top-selling brands widely available across the country, and included a few regional cult favorites (e.g. Duke’s and Blue Plate) easily available online. They also included Miracle Whip, which isn’t technically mayonnaise, but is a popular as a mayo substitute in the Midwest and elsewhere. In a blind tasting, their panel of editors found Blue Plate Mayonnaise “The Best Mayonnaise You Can Buy at the Grocery Store.”
The panel described its flavor as “bright, lemony even, and though it looked a bit gloppy upon opening, a quick stir revealed that it had the perfect creamy texture.” Blue Plate was one of the few brands in the taste test made exclusively with egg yolks as opposed to whole eggs, which testers claimed gave it “a more satisfying, homemade flavor.” Editor Emily Johnson detected the “sharp bite” Blue Plate has at the back of the tongue, which is ideal for a sauce, and when eaten with cherry tomatoes, the acidity softens, enhancing the fruit, and making the whole bite taste more tomatoey. “This is 100% the mayo you want on your next BLT,” she added. And on your favorite Po-Boy; Blue Plate Mayonnaise guarantees an authentic New Orleans flavor.
Gretna, LA, late ’30s/early ’40s.
Before the early 1900’s, mayonnaise was considered a gourmet condiment that could only be acquired from what today we would call “artisan” sources. Blue Plate was one of the first commercially prepared mayonnaise producers and distributors in the United States, beginning in 1929 when Wesson-Snowdrift Company, an offshoot of The Southern Oil Company, began to produce mayonnaise in a warehouse in Gretna, Louisiana. The company chose “Blue Plate” for its product from the popular term “blue plate special,” meaning a full meal at a modest price. The commercial production of mayonnaise in a city renowned for its food was considered a revolutionary culinary modernization.
Original Blue Plate Factory c. 1978
In 1941, construction began on a sleek, white concrete factory with rounded glass-brick corners across the river in Mid-City, at what is now 1315 S. Jefferson Davis Parkway. Designed by New Orleans architect, August Perez Junior, the Blue Plate building was completed and opened for business in November 1943. The Streamline Moderne structure, with its terra-cotta tile and dazzling art deco sign, soon became known to many New Orleanians as the place where “ya mama’s mynezz” was made. Over time, the Blue Plate brand also included margarine, jelly, salad dressing, and barbecue sauce.
Locally delivered daily in small trucks to each store, Blue Plate Mayonnaise was marketed throughout the Southeast. In 1960, Hunt Foods of California bought Wesson Oil and Blue Plate Foods, Inc., but in 1974, William B. Reily III, whose grandfather founded the popular Luzianne brand, acquired Blue Plate Foods from Hunt-Wesson, and the mayonnaise ownership returned to its Louisiana homeland and became part of the Wm. B. Reily and Company family. Over the next 30 years, Reily acquired several brands from both regional and national companies. They include Swans Down Cake Flour, Try Me Sauces & Seasonings (namely Tiger Sauce), French Market Coffees, New England Tea & Coffee.
While the Reily Foods Company is still headquartered in New Orleans, the company made the decision to shut down operations there in 2000, moving production to the company factory in Knoxville. The factory closure, coupled with the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, seemed to ensure the factory’s destruction, but developers turned the iconic building into loft apartments in 2011. If you find Blue Plate there, it will be in someone’s refrigerator.
I ran up on this recipe while thumbing through the Giant Houseparty Cookbook put out by the Philadelphia-Neshoba County Mississippi Chamber of Commerce in 1981.
Ronald Reagan appeared at the Neshoba County Fair in August, 1980. Many—including me—consider both Reagan’s choice of an appearance in a locale with a bloody and brutal history in the struggle for civil rights as well as his speech, in which he stated, “I support states’ rights,” and promised to “restore to states and local governments the power that properly belongs to them” perpetuated Richard Nixon’s “Southern strategy,” a game plan that eventually made the Old Confederacy the Republican party’s home field.
Reagan defeated Carter by a landslide, winning every Southern state except Georgia, ushering in an era of tax cuts that enriched corporate interests and decimated the middle class with a profound recession, reduced wages, and the highest level of unemployment since the Great Depression. I seriously doubt if Nancy Reagan ever saw the inside of an oven in her life—more the pity—and this homespun recipe most likely was fabricated by a giggly public relations intern. Mrs. Reagan, like her husband, had no interest in the public weal.
Cream 2 sticks softened butter with two egg yolks and a half cup sugar. Add 2 ½ cups flour to make a soft dough, and pat out to about a half inch on a buttered cookie sheet or baking pan. Bake at 350 until lightly browned. Remove from oven, cool, and top with a 10-oz jar of raspberry jelly or apricot preserves and a cup of semi-sweet chocolate bits. Top with a meringue made with 4 egg whites. Bake for another 20 minutes or until lightly browned.
Some people use flaky canned biscuits, some use pizza dough. I prefer the biscuits because you don’t have to roll them into balls like the pizza dough, just cut each biscuit into half. You can make this in a (glass) casserole, but a tube pan makes it prettier.
Preheat your oven; this is crucial. Separate and cut (or roll) your dough, toss with melted butter and seasonings (granulated garlic, “Italian seasonings”, salt and pepper), then roll the pieces of dough in grated cheese (Parmesan, cheddar, mozzarella, what have you), sesame or poppy seeds, shredded, shaved ham , or bacon bits. Arrange dough in a well-greased tube pan. Bake until the loaf is golden and sounds hollow when you thump it. Turn out on a sturdy plate, and serve with red gravy for dipping.
This typically fussy vintage recipe for Country Captain comes from Winifred Green Cheney’s wonderful Southern Hospitality Cookbook (1976).
Winifred informs us that she copied it from Mildred Williams, food columnist for a Virginia newspaper, but the original recipe came from Mrs. W. L. Bullard of Warms Springs, Georgia, who often served her famous dish to Franklin D. Roosevelt.
“And once, when there wasn’t time for General George Patton to stay for dinner, he is said to have wired Mrs. Bullard to have the Country Captain waiting for him in a tin bucket at the train.”
2 frying-size chickens 2/3 cup all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon black pepper 1 teaspoon paprika 1 clove garlic, chopped 1⁄2 cup olive oil 1 cup finely chopped onion 1 bell pepper, sliced 4 3/4 cups canned tomatoes 2 teaspoons chopped parsley 1 teaspoon curry powder 1 teaspoon powdered thyme 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper 1⁄2 cup water 1 cup seedless raisins 2 1⁄2 cup toasted almonds Melted butter 2 cups hot cooked rice Fresh parsley (optional)
Cut chicken into frying-size pieces; split the breast, separate leg and thigh, and use the wings. Save bony pieces for stew. Flour chicken by shaking in a paper bag containing flour, salt, black pepper, and paprika. Make garlic oil by adding chopped garlic to olive oil and letting it stand until flavor is absorbed from garlic. Use 1⁄2 cup of hot garlic oil to brown chicken on both sides in a large skillet over high heat, turning pieces often so that it is golden but not dark.
Remove chicken to roaster and cover. Add onion and bell pepper to drippings in skillet; cook over medium heat until they are limp but not brown, stirring constantly. Add tomatoes, parsley, curry, thyme, and cayenne pepper; cook slowly about 5 minutes until blended. Pour over chicken, rinsing out skillet with water.
Cover and bake chicken in a preheated 325° oven for 45 minutes or until chicken is tender. Add raisins the last 15 minutes of cooking. Split blanched almonds in halves; brown lightly in a little melted butter. Arrange chicken in center of a large heated platter, pour sauce over it and pile cooked rice around edges. Sprinkle toasted almonds on top and garnish with fresh parsley, if desired. Yield: 8 to 10 servings.
For many years I walked from my home on Poplar Avenue in Jackson, Mississippi down North Street to the Welty Library.
North Street is broad and level, making for an easy, leisurely walk. Long ago, the way was lined with splendid homes, but in my last year in Jackson, the only private residence on the street, a modest, sturdy, two-story cottage built in 1923, belonged to the Horrells. When last I passed by a “For Sale” sign was planted in the front yard, where long before, Mrs. Horrell had planted masses of narcissus.
Warmed by a broad western sun, her paperwhites were among the earliest in the city to bloom, coaxed out of the ground by the toddling sun of mid-winter. She also had clumps of old daffodils, a of beautiful swath of blue-and-violet bearded irises, and a row of gnarled, ancient rosemarys that filled the air with scent and the eye with points of cloudy blue in the warming winds. Mrs. Horrell once told me the narcissus lining front walk came from her grandmother.
The area has been zoned commercial, so once the property is sold, the house might be razed, and the in-place plantings will most likely be lost. Developers’ architects view landscaping as ancillary or incidental, and plantings in-place are expendable. New developments in old neighborhoods obliterate yards that helped define the character and delineate the history a neighborhood.
You can still find old plantings struggling beneath mats of Asian jasmine throughout the city, and one November, many years ago, we freed an old street corner of choking vines, weeds, and rotting wood. In March, clumps of the old daffodil, ‘Butter and Eggs,’ came barreling out of the Yazoo clay.
Scripture cakes are nothing less than culinary evangelism, yet they evoke the charming scenario of a little girl helping make a cake and looking up verses at her mother’s side.
This recipe is typical. Those with anything less than an encyclopedic knowledge of the written Word are advised to get the Book out before the bowls.
1 1/2 cups Judges 5:25 2 cups Jeremiah 6:20 2 cups 1 Samuel 30:12 2 cups Nahum 3:12 1 cup Numbers 17:8 2 tsp. 1 Samuel 14:25 4 1/2 cups 1 Kings 4:22 6 of Jeremiah 17:11 1 1/2 cup Judges 4:19 2 tsp. Amos 4:5 a pinch of Leviticus 2:13 season to taste with: 2 Chronicles 9:9
Follow Solomon’s prescription for unruly boys in Proverbs 23:14. Bake at 350 until springy and toothpick-dry.
This recipe comes from the Harvest Café in Oxford. We always served it with a dollop of sour cream, sides of (brown) rice, and a dense crusty bread we got from some stoner in Abbeville.
It was a substantial dish. The tomatoes were optional depending who was cooking and how hungover, but were always added after the beans were cooked. This is crucial: if you add tomatoes or salt to dried beans, they will toughen and sour.
1 lb. black beans 2 medium white onions finely chopped 5 cloves garlic, minced 1 4 oz. can chopped green chilies 4 poblanos diced 1 can diced tomatoes, drained (optional) 2 tablespoons ground cumin 2 tablespoons paprika 2 tablespoons chili powder 1 teaspoon black pepper corn oil Salt
Sort and rinse beans, place in a heavy metal pot with six cups water (or vegetable stock), and bring to a rolling boil for fifteen minutes. Reduce heat, add onions, garlic and chilies. Simmer covered until beans are soft, adding liquid as needed.
Add mixed seasonings and keep on low heat. This is when you should add tomatoes. Blend in a slash of corn oil for consistency. Salt to taste. When serving, provide pico de gallo or a pepper sauce, and toppings such as diced avocado, chopped cilantro, minced onion and peppers.
