Flower Mart Cook Book published by Women’s Civic League, Baltimore, Maryland 1966
The Baltimore Flower Mart is said to be Baltimore’s oldest festival, dating back to 1911. There have been 11 times the festival was not held for various reasons but it continues to this day. The signature item at the event (besides flowers!) is the lemon stick which is a halved lemon with an old-fashioned peppermint stuck inside. You are to suck the lemon juice through the stick. It’s very popular and they even have to-go kits of lemons and peppermint sticks to bring back to people who did not make it to the market. The festival was run by the Women’s Civic League until 2000 when they gave it up a group that is solely for the running of the Flower Mart was formed.
There are some illustrations on the section dividers but none in the body of the book. I was disappointed that none were of a lemon stick! There are references to them in 1911 and beyond so I am sure they were a part of the market in 1966.
Some of the recipes are on the lavish–Mrs. John McC. Mowbray’s Cavier Continental–and some (not contributed by a named person) recipes almost read like someone who never cooks’ snack but have overly elabrotate instructions like Waffle Cinnamon Toast (cinnamon toast squished in a waffle maker) and Tangerine Toast (sugared, buttered bread with tangerine slices, baked).
One recipe for Pressed Wild Duck (Mr. Thomas Deford, Jr.) calls for a duck press but assures the reader a small cider press would “do just fine”.
There are not a lot of regional recipes in the book but there are the usual crab dishes (including steamed hard crabs which surprisingly isn’t in as many cookbook as you’d think) and a few hint at the heavy German influence Baltimore had for many years with recipes like Mrs. Robert Dyer’s Braunschweiger Spread and Mrs. Harry L. von Hohenleiten’s Wiener Himbeer Schnitten (Vienna Raspberry Squares). Hot Milk Cake is present as it is in a lot of mid-Atlantic cookbooks, here has Hot Milk Sponge Cake by Mrs. J. Preston Short.
Some of the recipes had a more international bent than I would have expected from a cookbook from a regional festival–we have a nod to Gelati, Dulce de Leche, Cuban Bread, a Portuguese Chicken Soup with Avocados (which must have been quite fancy at the time because we didn’t regularly see avocados in supermarkets here in Baltimore until well into the 1990s) and a Portuguese Almond Soup.
