Recipe: Spider Cornbread

I found an old recipe for "Spider Cornbread" when I was looking for vintage recipes for the blog.  No the recipe doesn't call for mashed spiders or cobwebs, instead spider was an old fashioned name for a skillet/frying pan, usually made of cast iron.  Ok so it's skillet cornbread is what we're getting at.  This recipe comes from a 1920 book for teaching young girls how to be proper homemakers. 

Update 9/15/23 - I know sugar in cornbread is a divisive thing in the south as is flour.  Flour was used in the original recipe to help combat Pellagra a Niacin deficiency, I have included an option using only fine grind cornmeal and omitting the flour.  You can choose to omit the sugar but it helps balance out the flavor and its nowhere near the sugar content of the sweet cake like cornbread you find in stores.  

The Baltimore Harley's Sandwich Shop Burger

      I won't go through the history of the Harley's Sandwich Shop chain as I have it all laid out in the tuna salad article, just suffice it to say that Harley's was THE fast food chain in Baltimore long before Gino's and McDonald's.  Harley's restaurants were open all night and so were a favorite of the night shift crowd and police officers.  These burgers were always simmering in Harley's secret sauce ready to be served to hungry customers.

Southern Cucumber Salad Relish

In the vintage era a relish was any kind of side item with a sour or sour sweet taste.  This term usually applied to pickles, chutney, piccalilli, etc.  We have changed the meaning in the modern era to mean chopped pickles added to hot dogs or various salads.  It was not uncommon to have a dill pickle with dinner as such practices were thought to aid in digestion which has some foundation in fact if the pickles are lacto fermented.  In this case I am sharing a family recipe for Cucumber Salad, a dish most often served with pork but I eat it with just about anything (ok not ice cream).  It's simple to make and tastes better the day after it's made so the flavors can meld together.  The last time I made it I stuck with organic cucumbers and it just tasted divine.  You don't need to use any special vinegar with it, just plain white vinegar will do fine.

Edited 04/17/2024: I revisited making this recipe after a long time and found some tweaks were needed so here is the updated recipe.

1950's "Church" Banana Bread

I admit I always hated banana bread with a passion.  The dense, door stop quality, pudding consistency breads of my youth were just over the top with banana flavor and nothing else.  Coupled with an evil tendency to flare up my heartburn I soon shied away from banana bread for good.  You can imagine my discomfiture the other day when my wife said "Let's make banana bread".  "Yeah sure, I'll make it but you can eat it, I hate the stuff."  So as with anything else my wife suggests to eat I immediately spring into action with a search for a vintage recipe.  The only problem is there is no vintage recipe for banana bread.

The Only Bread Recipe You'll Ever Need

Back in the old days, home cooks didn't trouble themselves trying to make artisan breads.  Sure you can spend a fortune on pans, rising baskets, flours, enhancers, etc trying to bake loaves like the professional bakeries put out but I have to ask why?  Most artisan breads are entirely unsuited to the one thing we will most be doing with them, making sandwiches.  I have many vintage cookbooks in my collection now and while here and there you encounter a recipe for French bread, noticeably absent are the ciabatta breads, sourdoughs, challah  breads and other loaves that are outside of the purvue of most home bakers.  Instead is a more practical approach meant to be frugal not topple you off the fiscal cliff in a unforgiving quest for the proper crumb size.

Little Tavern Sliders Recipe

     There are many places that sell sliders, or little burgers usually steamed on a griddle and sold in multiples.  White Castle, Crystal and even Burger King with their burger shots but in Baltimore you had 2 locations that advertised for you to "Buy them by the sackful," Little Tavern and White Tower.  Both of these chains were found in the Baltimore - Washington area and their flavor was quite different from the Northeast's White Castle chain.  Opened in 1927 in Louisville, Ky, Little Tavern eventually made their way over to Baltimore opening 13 locations.  Their menu was simple, sliders, drinks and a tasty coffee served in a heavy mug.

The Best Ham Glaze I Ever Invented

     I have to apologize from the start, I didn't even get a good picture of the ham after I was done cooking it with the glaze, I run a cooking blog, I should really know better but sometimes I just get caught in the moment.

Baltimore Coddies Recipe

     The coddie is a purely Baltimore tradition. Go outside of the city and talk about coddies and you'll get sideways looks from people who ask if you mean cod cakes.  Nope, cod cakes are a different animal entirely.  Coddies were once to be found everywhere in Baltimore and it's environs and although the customer base has shrunk over the years, they are still to be found at places like Faidley's Seafood, Pappas Crab House and other venerable Baltimore eateries.

1925 Bread Pudding

     I was looking in my vintage cookbooks the other day and one that I haven't spent much time with is "A Calendar of Dinners" a Crisco sponsored cookbook from 1925.  It has dinner menu plans for an entire year with recipes to go along with most of the items on the various menus.  As I was paging through I found this recipe, now I've always been a fan of bread pudding but I rarely make it as a loaf of bread doesn't last in my house.  This one intrigued me though for 2 reasons, first, I had all the ingredients on hand.  It's a rare day that I find a recipe where I don't have to hunt for some ingredient.

Amish Style Apple Sausage Stuffing

     I'm from Maryland originally, just outside of west Baltimore to be more exact and the traditional recipes for a holiday table are as varied as the many different cultures that make up the citizenry.  The 1940's saw a surge in interest in Amish style cooking, probably because it was frugal and filling, 2 things that were necessary on a wartime rationing diet.

Scalloped Apples & Sweet Potatoes

     In the realm of sweet potato recipes lives the Southern style marshmallow baked sweet potatoes that seem to occupy space on every holiday table in America... right next to the green bean casserole.  I have fought with this denizen of overindulgence for many a year as I cannot abide this sticky sweet concoction yet I love sweet potatoes and yearned to be able to set them free from a syrupy, gooey, marshmallow laden fate.  At first I tried mashed sweet potatoes with a praline topping, better but equally as sweet and almost akin to an uncrusted sweet potato pie.  Luckily this year, thanks to the Gutenberg Project, I was able to find this recipe.

On Top of Old Meatball, All Covered With Cheese...

     Sub shops were everywhere when I was growing up in Baltimore.  Serving everything from cheesesteaks to pizza subs, cold cuts and meatball subs it was good food at great prices.  While never touted as health food it was what it's loyal customers wanted, a quick filling lunch or something to settle the stomach after a night of drinking.  I have firsthand experience with this, queasy stomach from too much alcohol?  Nothing settles things down like greasy food which makes no sense but who am I to question alchemy?

Hashed Leftovers

     Many times after the holidays we're left with mounds of leftovers from an overindulgent feast of Brobdingnagian proportions and we're completely flummoxed as to what to do with them.  I didn't even cook this much for Christmas but I did have a rather large turkey and now I'm left to decide what to do with the leftovers.  Part of it is getting mixed up into turkey salad using the Chicken Salad Recipe but with the rest I'm left to get creative.

Chesapeake Bay Seasoning For Seafood

     For Marylanders there is nothing like seafood, especially crabs, that much we can all agree on.  What we can't agree on is what seafood seasoning is the best to use with those steamed crabs... or crab cakes, fish, tuna salad, french fries, potato chips, ice cream... you get my drift, we put seafood seasoning on everything. Ask anyone what their favorite seasoning is and I hope you've got time on your hands for the answer.  Of course Old Bay is the overwhelming favorite but you'll also hear J.O. and Wye River mentioned along with a few like me who make their own.

White Coffee Pot Maryland Fried Chicken

     Like the Harley's Sandwich Shops I've written about before, White Coffee Pot was a restaurant chain that was purely Baltimore.  Unlike Harley's and Little Tavern, White Coffee Pot dished up real home cooking with a smile in a diner atmosphere complete with jukeboxes at the tables.  Unfortunately time and circumstance caught up with this venerable brand and put and end to the best cup of coffee in Baltimore.

A Chicken Salad Recipe to Rule Them All

     When I set out to create a chicken salad recipe it was for an idea I've been tossing around for some time, a sandwich/sub shop modeled after the ones that used to be in every neighborhood of Baltimore when I grew up.  This is not high end food, this is not hipster food, this is not $100 hamburgers.  What this is is just good old fashioned working man's food eaten for lunch or after a good time at the local bar.

Oven Roasted Pork Shoulder

     Roasted pork has been around ever since we started killing wild boars in the forest in the dim beginnings of humanity so in that sense this is a "vintage" recipe but for our purposes here this recipe is all my own.  It is based on a Filipino recipe called Lechon sa Hurno which translates into "roasted in the oven".  It's a home based version of the popular party centerpiece Lechon Baboy or roasted pig where a whole pig is gutted and roasted for hours on a spit over an open fire.

Harley's Sandwich Shop Tuna Salad & a Double TT Diner Club

     Harley's Sandwich Shops were a landmark in Baltimore from the 1940's to the 1980's when they were bought up by Shane's.  I was really young when this happened, maybe 8 or 10 years old but I do remember the couple times I went with my grandparents to Harley's.  He was well known for his subs and his burgers simmered in a secret sauce, a recipe I'll get to another time, but it was his jazz show on local Baltimore radio that really made him famous.

1924 Fish Florentine Recipe

     This recipe comes from a 1924 edition of "Recipes For Everyday", a publication that was available though Crisco.  As you can imagine, Crisco is an ingredient in all of the recipes.  Now I don't have anything against Crisco, I use it when baking cakes because there really isn't a substitute but I don't want to eat it in everything everyday.

Chicken Soup Recipe, Depression Era

     I've tried many ways of making chicken soup over the years and while they were all good they weren't fantastic I was always looking for something else.  This started as a research project into Depression Era cooking.  One of things that Herbert Hoover promised as president was "A chicken in every pot" and there's a reason for this, chicken was expensive, especially young chickens.  Chickens were kept for laying eggs and after 5 years when they stopped laying that's when they ended up as dinner.