Historical Recipes

November 24, 2021

According to research, the average time families talk face to face in a week is less than five hours. We spend more time doing versus being in the moment. For this reason, I love Thanksgiving. It's carved out time to enjoy the moment. Despite the problematic historical background of Thanksgiving, my family and I still gather around this time of year. We use this time to enjoy each other, create new memories, and EAT!

My family involves food with any and every celebration. It’s what I look forward to the most. I am responsible for making the Mac and cheese every year. But I may switch it up one year and cook something smothered in flavor and history. I did a little digging and came across some historical recipes.

Let’s dive in,

Rosa Parks Pancakes

A house in Detroit believed to be one of Ms. Parks’s first stops after fleeing the South held a collection of personal papers, photographs, and memorabilia. A New York auction house called Guernsey’s was selected to represent the archive and find the collection a permanent home. Among her papers, a recipe was found, scribbled on the back of an envelope, for “Featherlite Pancakes.” We can’t be 100% sure that Rosa used this recipe. However, it seems probable that she did, given that it was found within her items and written in her handwriting.

Here is the recipe as it appears on the envelope:

Sift together

1 cup flour

2 tablespoons baking powder

½ teaspoon table salt

2 tablespoons sugar

Mix

1 egg

1 1/4 cup milk

1/3 cup peanut butter

1 tablespoon shortening, melted, or oil

Combine with dry ingredients

Cook at 275 degrees F on griddle

Joe Froggers Cookies

Tavern-keepers Joseph and Lucretia Thomas Brown are known for a gingerbread-like cookie with a hint of rum. “Lucretia Thomas was born in 1772 in Marblehead, Massachusetts, a rough-and-tumble seaport just south of Salem. She was most likely born free, but Continental Navy Captain Samuel Tucker had previously enslaved her parents.

When Lucretia was a young woman, she met Joseph Brown, who’d been born into slavery as the son of an African-American mother and a Wampanoag Nation father. Brown had fought in the Marblehead militia as part of the Revolutionary army, which likely led to his emancipation from slavery and his reputation, according to one local memorial, as a “respected citizen” of the seaside town. Together, the couple operated a tavern from the small saltbox-style house they purchased in 1795, perched near a frog pond on Marblehead’s Gingerbread Hill.

As the story goes, Lucretia Thomas Brown invented Joe Froggers as tavern fare for the hungry neighbors that frequented the couple’s establishment. She allegedly named the cookie after her husband and the nearby pond’s lily pads that the wide, flat rounds resembled.”