Excerpts from The Block Island Cookbook, 1962

I found this book in my house. It was compiled by the First Baptist Church on Block Island in 1962. The pastor at the time was fondly referred to as “Pastor Lou”, and the first page of the book helpfully informs the reader that Sunday morning worship is at 10:45 a.m. The book is chock-full of interest. There are a couple of major families out here (and have been here for generations, from the very beginning, actually, in the 1600s.) I went to the graveyard here, and the names dominate: Dodge. Littlefield. Ball. Mott. Other prominent names (well-known to southern Rhode Islanders, because they are still everywhere): Champlin. Northup. Sprague.

The preface begins:

The ladies of the Island have long been known for their good cooking. A distinguished daughter, Miss Catherine Ray, later to become the wife of Rhode Island’s governor William Greene, sent her life-long friend, one Benjamin Franklin, a gift of Block Island cheeses which he and his friends pronounced excellent, and also a gift of Sugar Plums, “every one sweetn’d as you used to like.”

That’s the opening paragraph of this small dog-eared book. After that I of course had to read it cover to cover, and don’t even think I am not going to try to make their pickled artichokes.

The introduction continues:

The Indians gave us the “No Cake”, and very probably the hulled corn and the hasty pudding. The early settlers, being of necessity almost completely self-sufficient, relied heavily on corn and cornmeal.

We have returned in nostalgia, to the time, not really so many years ago, when every family had a pickle barrel in the cellar, complete with the delectable, quite indigestible, Jerusalem artichoke (“hardchoke” to our fathers). Tempus fugit – was it only yesterday when johnny cake – thick or thin, scalded or unscalded according to family tradition – appeared on Island tables at least twice and sometimes three times a day, when hot biscuits appeared at least once and tea was the preferred beverage? Was it only yesterday that a fish could be had just for the asking? Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis!

The cookbook is broken up into your basic sections: Meat, Vegetables, Desserts, Fish (an extensive section, naturally). Each section starts with a Bible verse appropriate to the section. For example, the Fish section has this on its title page:

“Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets.” Luke 5:4b

There are also home remedies in the back to cure “the itch of poison ivy” or provide “relief from arthritis”.

The recipes were submitted by Islanders, and sometimes it’s something that has been passed down, from generation to generation. Sometimes, delightfully, the recipe has a little personal story attached to it.

Some examples:

CREAM OF TARTAR BISCUITS
Mrs. Rose Champlin Starr
“This was the recipe of my mother, Mrs. Annie J. Champlin, wife of the Island’s only native-born resident physician, Dr. John A. Champlin.”

SOUTH COUNTY BANNOCK
Miss Hope Brown Madison
“The original recipe was a Madison family favorite served by the cook Hannah for many years at the H.G. Russell farm ‘The Oaks’, now Goddard Park. I have adapted it to modern cooking.”

DOUGHNUTS
Mrs. Rose Champlin Starr, submitted by her daughter Mrs. Charlotte Murphy
“As anyone who has ever had one can verify, my Mother’s recipe for doughnuts is an especially good one. My Uncle Frank (Payne) was especially fond of them and my son Jack said to be sure and send this recipe even if it were the only one I sent. Mom had a black cast iron kettle that was a couple or more generations old that she cooked the doughnuts in – the kind they used to suspend from a crane when cooking was done in fireplaces.”

JOHNNY CAKES
Emma Mitchell Gooley
” ‘Uncle Jerry’ taught me to make these ‘Johnny Cakes’ when I was only 13 years old.”

BREAD
Bertrand M. Ball
“With bread at 50 cents a loaf, we use this recipe for the daily bread of our family of six.”

Sometimes, you can feel the personality of the person writing. These are my favorite recipes. The FISH section starts off with a “Dissertation on Fried Fish”, written by Emma Littlefield Lee, and you can feel herself whipping herself up into a frenzy as she writes. She sounds, frankly, unbalanced, and yet she also admits that openly. She loves fish and she is passionate about it.

Our family has eaten fish, literally by the ton, for generations, and to this day we will happily settle for fried fish five times a week if we can get it. Nothing on this earth is better than a succulent piece of properly fried fish, but by the same token there is no worse fare than fish, poorly cooked. Feeling so strongly on this matter I could not content myself with submitting only one fish recipe for the book; it has become necessary to my mental well-being to expound at length on the frying of that splendid creature; the Fish.

I appreciate her honesty. She sounds cracked, and I think I would like her very much.

Emma goes on, with characteristic fervor. Her “dissertation” goes on for four pages, where she cajoles, scolds, wags her finger, and expounds to her heart’s content.

Fish in all the categories MUST be fresh. It’s fine eaten the same day as caught, but ideally it should be eaten the day after being caught, having been on ice overnight. Fish that has been thoroughly chilled in this way is easier to fry as it doesn’t curl up in the pan.

I love how it is basically assumed that people will be catching their own fish. It is also assumed that people will be picking their own vegetables (“Pick the tomatoes”), etc. So there are times when the recipes take on a truly grisly tone.

Here is Thelma Murphy on BOILED LOBSTER:

Lobster should be alive when boiled. Most Islanders prefer to boil their lobsters in sea water – to eat them hot with plenty of mettled butter and a touch of vinegar. In fact, the Islanders eschew all manner of fancy cookery where seafood is concerned, preferring not to mask the taste of these delectable gifts of God in any manner, other than to cook them quickly and well with a minimum of ostentation.

Thelma, I appreciate your words, and my mouth is watering, but while your cooking may not be ostentatious, I certainly cannot say the same for your writing. Simplify, simplify.

Thelma appears to take my advice from the future in her next recipe, for BROILED LOBSTER, which starts off bluntly:

Kill the lobster by inserting sharp knife into joint where tail and body-shell come together, thus cutting the spinal cord.

Awesome.

E.B.D. (no name) has this to say about SCALLOPS AND OYSTERS:

Oysters are found so rarely in the Great Salt Pond now as to be considered non-existent, but scallops may be used instead of oysters in almost any oyster recipe. Scallops may be the small sweet scallop dredged up from close to shore, or more commonly, the large deep sea scallops which are often available in the market.

Captain Mel Rose (Rose is another big name out there) gets a little bit defensive and angry in his recipe for fish chowder, shouting at the innocent reader in all caps repeatedly:

Skin, simmer (not boil) until flakes come off bones to separate easily; remove fish from water but SAVE water; break in fair sized pieces … Drain but do NOT use this water … also heat to same temperature BEFORE mixing 1 quart of milk and 1 can of evaporated milk.

Please stop shouting at me Captain Rose.

I loved this sentence in “E.L.L.”‘s recipe for DAB CHOWDER:

Don’t let anybody see you adding the milk; they always think you’re doing something sneaky.

Al and Norma Starr seem like a lovely couple. They submitted a recipe for STEAMED MUSSELS that contains the following sentence:

We take a kettle with us to the beach and have the mussels right there. They make a marvelous beach picnic.

Thomas Littlefield submitted a recipe for FRIED COD FISH HEADS that reads like an Edgar Allan Poe poem:

Skull, clean and skin heads.
Boil for 20 minutes or until fish leaves bones.
Drain and pick out bones.
Place the fish in bread pan and press.
Chill in the refrigerator.

Louise Mitchell confuses me. She has written an essay called HOW TO COOK A DUCK and she starts with this sentence:

Forget the story about “cooking a duck on a plank and throwing the duck away”.

Uhm, Louise? I don’t think I ever knew that story in the first place.

Louise says later in her essay:

If blood does not follow the fork, call the duck done. If you are cooking tame duck, do not skin him. But make sure he has not been around salt water.

And how would one know that, Louise? By asking the duck?

I do think, though, that “blood does not follow the fork, call the duck done” is quite a nice sentence.

Frank Tinker cuts to the chase in his recipe for MUD TURTLE. Here is how it starts. I am picturing myself doing all of this in my kitchen in my apartment at home.

Catch mud turtle. When catching, be sure to put a gaff hook i nhis mouth so he’ll bite hard on it (he won’t let go). Lay turtle on chopping block, haul head out of shell with gaff hook and chop off with hatchet. After turtle stops moving (about 1 hour) cut off toes as they are apt to hook you.

Jesus Christ.

William P. Lewis sounds like a fun guy in his recipe for what he calls RICE JAZZ.

Serves four hungry people, six not so hungry.

He explains:

Call it rice jazz because it amounts to nothing more than jazzing up what was left over in the icebox after weekend guests.

Arthur Ryerson submitted a recipe for BOILED MILKWEED. He starts off with:

This is a delicious green in the spring when the plants are new and tender. Milkweed is to be found in many of the fields here on the Island. Pick the tender tops of the plant, wash, drain and boil as you would any other green.

Arthur L. Ford only submitted one recipe, but his “resume” is listed as well: Chairman of the Council, Shoreham-by-the-Sea-Sussex-England. In a later recipe, someone mentions that she made the dish for a “reception” for Chairman Arthur Ford, so he was obviously an Islander who had traveled far. His recipe is called MY OWN FAVOURITE (note the British spelling, and also the rank egotism of the title – what dish is it, Arthur? Fish? Cake? Macaroni? Nope. Just ‘MY OWN FAVOURITE’). However, Mr. Ford has a bit of the poet in him. The recipe turns out to be for poached eggs and contains the following two sentences, which show that he has a bit of a writer in him:

Stir fast until a whirlpool has been formed.
The white should be wrapped around the yoke like a transparent veil.

Florence Ball Madison has this gorgeous introduction to her recipe for THIN MOLASSES COOKIES, which gives a great feel for the sense of history on the Island, not to mention Rhode Island, and New England in general, where you can’t take one step without bumping up against a founding father of one kind or another:

This recipe was given to me by a Westfield Mass. roommate at East Greenwich Academy, class 1897. Have made bushels of them for my father, Martin VanBuren Ball (born in 1838) whose chief request was “make them big”. The cookie cutter may be seen in the Block Island Historical Society Museum.

Recipes are called “third generation recipes”. There are recipes for “AUNT MOLLIE’S SUGAR COOKIES” or “GRANDMOTHER’S SQUASH PIE”. One woman submits her recipes under this name: “By Evelyn Lee (John Lee’s Mother)”.

I love how Beatrice Ball Dodge (much intermarrying between these huge families, of course) starts off her recipe for IRISH MOSS BLANC MANGE:

Gather fresh moss on the beach. Rinse well in cold water and spread in the sun to dry.

There is also a section for BEVERAGES in the cookbook, and they are usually recipes that are enormous and can feed a crowd. Johnny Dodge submitted a recipe for something he called SUNSHINE SPARKLE, and the recipe yields “about 35 glasses”. There is a recipe that is called COFFEE FOR FORTY. Any gathering on the Island would obviously involve pretty much every resident, so it is essential that one knows how to cook in bulk. COFFEE FOR FORTY. It kills me.

Eleanor K. Dodge submits a recipe for the beautifully named “BLOCK ISLAND, RHODE ISLAND BEACH PLUM JELLY”, and it’s poetry:

Wash plums. Use firm not-too-ripe plums. Boil in as little water as possible, until plums are real soft. Drain juice in a heavy cloth bag. Do not squeeze bag! Let drip until juice is extracted, then add cup for cup of sugar. Let juice boil to 224 degrees on jelly thermometer or until jelly stage (when two drops form on edge of spoon and run into one).

I love that last image. Also, I promise I will not squeeze the bag! (Unless it asks nicely.)

Mrs. Robert Schofield sends in this home remedy called ELDERBERRY BLOSSOM SALVE:

I make this every year. It is good for insect bites, chapped lips, minor abrasions, and so forth …

Check out Mrs. Jeanne Wilde Riel’s homemade recipe for COUGH SYRUP. Yeah, you might cure your cough, but your teeth will rot in the course of one weekend. But still: Yum!!

Take one large beet and hollow out the inside. Take rock candy and fill hollow, then bake in oven at 375 degrees until candy in melted. Put in jar.

Wow.

Nellie Littlefield informs us of a little local background in her recipe for SAUSAGES:

Sausage recipes were closely guarded secrets, each family having its own method … handing it down for generations. This was particularly true of the farm families who sold meat products, each of these families having a following … It would have been easier to get a pint of blood from a man in those days than to get his sausage recipe which he probably kept in a box with the family deeds and other papers.

Mrs. Margaret Husted Lauer (telephone call for Matt Lauer, your ancestor is calling) gives a nice little essay called TWO WAYS OF MAKING HULLED CORN:

This is a very old dish which we probably received from the Indians. In the early days it was a staple article of diet and there are still people living who remember the hulled corn man peddling the cooked corn from a large can suspended from a rope around his neck and dipped out with a dipper. It was eaten warm with milk and molasses.

I love that image of the ‘hulled corn man”!

Mrs. Ruth Rose Barrell talks about the famous “No Cake”

According to the legends I’ve heard from the Islanders from the time I was a child, the recipe for No Cake was handed down to the Block Islanders from the Indians who lived on the Island. My father, Ambrose Rose, always said that No Cake must be made on a clear day when the wind was from the North-west.

Okay, so that one small anecdote tells me that Mr. Ambrose Rose was a romantic. A man in touch with history and tradition, and wanted to instill in his children a sense of romance and poetry. He may not have been the most practical of gentleman, he might have been a bit too dreamy, but he was well-loved, and I love him. I have no idea what I’m talking about. But that’s the best thing about the cookbook. It’s full of voices, clambering, chattering, gossiping. I love making stuff up.

Here is another recipe for NO CAKE, submitted by Mrs. Cemantha Mitchell White:

My dad, Frank Mitchell, used to parch sweet corn in a heavy iron fryer into which a layer of coarse sand had been poured (fine sand will stick to the corn). He kept stirring it until hot and then he would put the corn in and cook it slowly until dark brown but not burns. Then he’d sift the sand out and when the corn was cool he would grind it in a coffee grinder and we’d eat it with milk and sugar. It was like a powder but it was mighty good to me.

And I will end with perhaps my favorite sentence in this beautiful little book. It is the first sentence of the recipe for PETER MURPHY’S WILD ROSE SYRUP, submitted by Mrs. Robert E. Schofield:

Pick rose petals in the early day.

Yes, ma’am. I’d be delighted to.