Salsify Soup and Life-Everlasting: A Kentucky Cookbook
The handwritten cookbook that led me to a 19th-century crime
Hi all! I hope you’re well, and, at least in the US, starting to wind down (or gear up?) for the Thanksgiving break later this week.
I’m personally feeling extremely over the internet at the moment. While it’s been fun to watch Elon Musk step on more rakes than Sideshow Bob, it’s also a deeply disheartening reminder that the planet’s global social infrastructure is nothing but a series of playthings in the hands of private individuals.
This internet malaise means I really don’t feel like spending a million hours doing online research right now. Instead, I’m going to try something different with this edition of the paid newsletter and tell you all about an amazing thing I actually OWN. It’s not jewelry, so I can only ask for your patience and hope you’ll be as enthralled with this thing as I am.1
Ten years ago, I was rooting around an antiques show in Elverson, PA when I came across an old, unmarked hardback notebook filled with page after page of recipes, all handwritten in exquisite 19th-century copperplate script. I asked the dealer about the book, and she said she’d found it at an estate sale, but no one there had known anything about it and she herself hadn’t had time to do any research on it — but if I was interested, she said she would give it to me for $50.
SOLD!
I got it home and dove in. Each page features one or more handwritten recipes, and each one is titled and attributed to a woman. The first page has a more recent pencil inscription stating that the book was received as a gift in 2005, and provides a little more info: “The Recipes of Mrs. J.H. Rhorer (née Julia Comly) and other ladies of Pewee Valley, Ky. Copied by Mr. and Mrs. Rhorer.”
A few minutes on the website of the Pewee Valley Historical Society told me that the lady who transcribed the book, Julia Ann Comly Rhorer, was born in 1822. In the 1840s she married Jonas Huber Rhorer (1814-1896), a prominent and well-liked banker in Louisville, Ky and the couple had two children, Louisa and Melvin. The family lived in an estate in Kentucky’s Pewee Valley called “The Locust,” which later became famous in 1895 when Annie Fellows Johnston used it as the setting of her The Little Colonel series of children’s books.
It sounds like life was pretty good for the Rhorers over the years — Julia kept house and Jonas held down various positions at the Savings Bank of Louisville while also dabbling in real estate and local philanthropic enterprises.
*ominous background music builds*
BUT THEN:
It seems Jonas had spent 1871-1880 systematically embezzling vast amounts of money from the bank! The recap above is from the front page of the January 16, 1880 edition of the New York Times, and according to the Pewee Valley Historical Society, the final tally of stolen funds totaled $118,000 — the equivalent of $3.4 million today. Much of it, they say, went into post-Civil War real estate speculation, and Rhorer actually mortgaged The Locust twice in the 1870s — once to one of his fellow officers at the bank, which maybe should have set off an alarm bell? Apparently not. Jonas was so trusted that no one would even DREAM of double-checking the numbers he was entering into the bank’s ledgers.
His confession — a note on his desk that stated “I am a defaulter, and a large defaulter, probably to the extent of the entire capital stock of this bank. I have gone to jail and shall give myself up” — was followed by a trial, and he was sentenced to one year in prison.
The jury also recommended clemency, however, and Jonas was so well-liked and respected that people from all over the state — including the directors of the bank he had literally just ruined — wrote to the governor of Kentucky, begging him to pardon Rhorer. The Pewee Valley Historical Society website features a transcribed petition signed by 80 percent of the adult population of the Valley, stating that they knew Jonas had committed a crime, but they were convinced he had always intended to restore the funds and had just hit a patch of bad luck.
His wife Julia — who keeps being referred to as “aged,” even though I think she was around 58 at the time — put up her own inheritance to help repay the bank’s customers, and that also went a long way towards earning people’s goodwill and sympathy. The governor did pardon Jonas, but the two still lost everything and all of the Rhorer properties — including The Locust — were sold in 1884. I don’t know exactly what happened to the couple after that, but I suspect they went to live with their daughter Louisa. Her husband was a Presbyterian minister who practiced in various locations including Wytheville, VA, where Julia and Jonas were both buried following their deaths in the late 1890s.
So that’s the background. BACK TO THE COOKBOOK!
It obviously predates 1880, because that’s when everything came crashing down. And if there ever was any question that this cookbook belonged to the Rhorer’s of Pewee Valley, it would be answered by this 1879 map of the Pewee Valley landowners on the Historical Society website. Many of the names that appear as contributors to the cookbook — Muir, Armstrong, Monks, Allen, etc. — coincide with the names of the Rohrer’s neighbors. This project was a community effort.
Here’s the first recipe. Salsify — “a root vegetable that has an oyster-like flavour when cooked” — must have made for a delicious soup, because this is one of the messiest pages in the book.
Measurements such as a “tea-cup,” “coffee-cup” and “a piece of butter the size of a walnut” are used throughout the book, and “buttered writing paper” is mentioned as a non-stick surface for baking. Most of the instructions are straightforward, but some of the contributors are more descriptive than others.
**ATTENTION: SCROLL PAST THIS NEXT RECIPE IF YOU ARE SQUEAMISH**
Speaking of descriptive, Julia provides a particularly graphic recipe for calf’s head stew that reminds me just how glad I am to live in the 21st century.
Of course, I very much doubt Mrs. Julia Rhorer was anywhere near the vicinity when the above instructions were carried out. As the researcher and food historian Stephen Schmidt noted in his 2015 essay “What Manuscript Cookbooks Can Tell Us that Printed Cookbooks Do Not,” cookbooks like Julia’s might have been handwritten, but they were still created for and used by the elite. Food was expensive — especially in the quantities required by some of these recipes — and the time and attention needed to devote to a recipe was a luxury rarely available to lower-class women.
Many women of the recipe-using classes personally “made,” with their own hands, few of the recipes in the printed cookbooks they owned and in the receipt books they wrote. They gave—or read—the recipes to their cooks, who may have dispatched them with the aid of still other hired help.
If you find any of this cookbook history interesting, the essay above is part of the incredible Manuscript Cookbook Survey website, and I wholeheartedly encourage you to explore it further, because it is an absolute GOLD. MINE.
Back to the Rhorer cookbook. The handwriting is uniform and exquisite throughout, and I was particularly charmed by the two recipes above, in which the word “meringue” clearly baffled Julia (or her husband) enough to initially leave it blank, and then go back and fill it in later, misspelled, in a different-colored ink.
When I have some time, I’ll see if I can unearth when and how “Golden Slices” became “French Toast.”
Life in the 1800s didn’t include a CVS on every block, so food isn’t the only focus of the cookbook. This recipe for Superior Cough Syrup features an ingredient called “life-everlasting,” a plant common to the Carolinas that has been used for generations as a natural remedy for sore throats, colds, asthma and other ailments. This article from the Hilton Head Island and Bluffton LocalLife website provides a great background on the plant and its medicinal history. Originally known by Native Americans as “rabbit tobacco,” it can be smoked, imbibed as a tea or even used in aromatic little stuffed pillows. The plant gets its unusually optimistic name because it can be dried and stored for a long period of time.
The final page of the notebook is dedicated to two recipes for “invalids,” and it was clearly referenced many times, judging by the heavy staining and (very old) repairs to the paper.
The mulled wine doesn’t sound half bad, and I think the last line that is partially obscured by the repair says: “This is a mild and delightful stimulant used in convalescence from low forms of disease.” Baby, I AM a low form of disease.
(I also looked up “drachm,” and it is apparently the British spelling of “dram,” an apothecaries’ measurement that can be liquid or dry, equaling 60 grains or one eighth of a fluid ounce.)
I must stop here due to length, but if you would like to see more, please let me know and maybe I’ll add more pages to the online version or something.
Huge thanks to the Pewee Valley Historical Society for most of the information here — and thanks to historical societies everywhere, who do so much invaluable and often unappreciated work so idiots like me can stumble upon it and act like we know something.
Even after 10 years, it still blows my mind that this unassuming little notebook was able to open such a fascinating window into the life of a Kentucky landowner of the 1800s. It’s a wonderful object, but it also stands as proof that there’s a story behind everything — you just need to seek it out.
I also think I’m going to contact the Pewee Valley Historical Society and the Manuscript Cookbook Survey people to see if I can donate the book and/or have it digitized for the website. It’s too interesting to keep to myself.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this edition of the newsletter, and thank you, as always, for all your support. Happy Thanksgiving, and enjoy the rest of your week!
M xxx
If you really would prefer I not stray from the jewelry theme, that’s totally fine, too. Shoot me an email and let me know. I really won’t mind — I want to give you guys what you want!
I love to cook so I collect cookbooks. But I had too many. When we moved (2 months ago) I gave away almost 300 books because I couldn't take them with me. :-( But I packed all my jewelry-making/ reference books!
What a great story! The ride home with that book on the seat next to you must've been torture. maybe they'll make you an honorary PeWee if you donate the book!