Ocean City Museum Society Cookbook

Ocean City Museum Society Cookbook 1982, funds to benefit efforts to preserve the history of Ocean City, Maryland.

Anyone who has been to Ocean City, Maryland in the last 40 or so years knows the funky, kitschy Life Saving Station museum in the inlet. It shares the history of all the major events in Ocean City. It is housed in the building had been the Life-Saving station which dated back to 1891. According to the book’s forward, in 1915 the Life-Saving Serviced merged with the Revenue Cutter Service to form the Coast Guard and the building was going to be demolished when in 1977 they decided to move it to its current location and reopen as a museum.

The book is quite large! It opens with menus from various homes of what seems to be members of the Museum Society including Mr. and Mrs. Gus Anthony’s “At Home for Christmas” menu and Mr. and Mrs. William H Purnell’s Poolside Buffet. The recipes are then scattered within their coordinating sections of the book.

All of the contributors are named with the women’s names largely listed as Mrs. Their Husband with their first names in parathesis after.

There is a whole section of recipes from local restaurants–some still in business in 2023!–which was a lot of fun to see.

Possibly of even more interest to long-time Ocean City fans was a second section of restaurants that were already closed at the time of the early-eighties publication or dishes that were no longer on the menu. I’ve never seen a section like this in a community cookbook before.

Many regional crab and oyster dishes. I’m really tempted by Mrs. Larry Whitlock (Nancy)’s Crab Fingers but the high price of crab meat always holds me back from making dishes that I’m not 100% sure we will love–the tomato juice is giving me pause.

Oysters are expensive too but some recipes only call for a pint which isn’t too bad.

There are two recipes for pumpkin pone which is a dish I have never seen before and cannot find anything similar online. Mrs. Francis J. Townsend, Jr’s version is called “North Carolina Sweat Pone (10 Pounds)” and was apparently sold at the WP Laws store for years” and Mrs. James Thomas (Margaret) contributed a near identical recipe but simply called it “Pumpkin Pone”. It does not look like food I’d want to make or eat but I’d love to know more!

The Snickerdoodle recipe (Mrs. George Vernau, aka Mae) credits the PA Dutch with the recipe which I haven’t seen before and found interesting. As we’ve discussed before the snickerdoodle is a mysterious cookie of unknown but possibly this snippy noodle cake origins.

There was also a recipe for Black Bottoms from Suzanne Bailey Stein (Mrs. Phillip, defying the conventions most other women used) that is similar to the recipe my family makes and which I think is a mid-Atlantic (or straight up Baltimore) specialty but can’t find much (any) real information on.

The recipes were often helpful—some had serving suggestions as a step or a fun fact like this Walnut Cake (Mrs. Hugh Cropper III aka Susan) recipe is over 150 years old and others would call for a package or can of something and then actually say what that meant! Thank you, Mrs. Chuck Evans (Trudy) for including that one “can” of flaked coconut (at least in this case) came in 3 1/2 oz size. That has been a mystery for awhile now!

One woman, Mrs. Rhem Lane (Garland) contributed a number of recipes and since her name was so striking, I looked her up. Unfortunately she died in 2020 at age 92 but she seems like an interesting, fashionable person and owned some Ocean City clothing shops!

I updated and adapted Mrs. John Dale Showell III (Ann)’s recipe for Hot Chicken Salad from this book to make Hot Turkey Salad.