This post began life as Of Research and Rabbit Holes – Outdoor Edition. In order to celebrate the completion of the second (really HARD) draft of Dazzlepaint, George and I had gone to explore a mountain on the other side of Woodstock: Ticetoneyck. Or Tycetonik. Most popularly, Ticetonyk. However you want to spell it (or pronounce it), it’s Dutch, not Native American. The internet’s best guess is it cites an Eyck family, deriving from the old Dutch patronymic “ten” and its scion, Tyce. Whatever the nomenclature, it’s a deceptively hard mountain, approximate 1200 of elevation gain in under a mile. Light class 3. Unless you’re a superman, you will need your hands. And yes, there are hornets. Did I mention there are hornets?
So what was I doing there? Well, research, of course, more or less. Dazzlepaint takes place mostly on the opposite side of Woodstock, its scenes spread out among the Mountain House, the Overlook Hotel, and the various arts colonies. But the history of the mountains on the opposite side of town are fascinating as well, as Lawrence J. Caldwell explains in his blog post. So I went to take a look for myself. But what is research without a rabbit hole?
Ticetonyk was also the home of the great estate of one of New York’s most prominent self-made millionaires: Richard Hellmann – of yes, that Hellmann fame. The venture currently known as the Onteora Mountain House was once the summer retreat of an immigrant who parlayed his marriage to the daughter of a New York City delicatessen owner into a condiment empire that sold his ready-made mayonnaise at first in bulk to other stores, and then to consumers, in clear glass jars that could be reused for home canning at the cost of a 1 cent rubber ring. So successful was the venture that Hellmann was the author of not one, but two, invaluable handbooks. Yes, the second one does appear to be the shape of a jar of mayonnaise. And no, that appalling white smear beneath the chef’s nose seems to be nothing but a bit of cover that peeled away.
Full disclosure. I LOATHE mayonnaise. Can’t explain it, any more than I can my equally intense dislike of milk – and ice cream. Yeah, really. So while I admire Richard Hellmann’s story, I read the recipes in these books with what can only be described as appalled fascination.
Anyone else find the exhortation “Try this and see if you don’t like its unusual flavor” as ominous as I do?
Of course, there are Tomato Baskets, which, as the cookbook promises, allow the hostess a wide choice and delightful variety! Not exactly the words I might use to describe “Sweetbreads, boiled, chilled, cut in cubes mixed with chopped walnuts and Richard Hellmann’s Blue Ribbon Mayonnaise.” Or “Anchovies, boiled ham (minced), chopped hard-boiled egg, and a small allowance of green pepper” mixed with mayonnaise thinned with cream to which you may “add a few pearl onions if desired.” Who would not desire to add pearl onions to such a delicacy?
But let us not leave Byrdcliffe out of such culinary excesses. Jane Whitehead offered the following contribution to The Woodstock Cook Book, in 1938.
Frankly, you had me at split pea soup. I LIKE split pea soup, me! But then I saw the quart of milk. And “a little raw bacon,” presumably to be boiled in the milk. Add the cut-up hot dogs as garni, and I for one, cannot escape the horrid memories of a childhood spent at Lutheran Church Basement Suppers. (And before you ask, I’ve got a thing about pot roast, too. Oh yeah, I really do have a thing about pot roast.)
But hold on a minute! These recipes give us an important insight into cuisine in a world before refrigeration. As a Yankee bride in the 1980s, I quivered before my Southern mother-in-law’s tomato aspic. (Or as my appalled Brit brother-in-law described it, “They make a Jell-O mold out of Bloody Mary Mix, and put mayonnaise on top of it.”) And this was as recently as the 1980s. But like the canned asparagus served with the aspic, these recipes are a reminder of nutrition in a time before strawberries and mandarin oranges were available year-round in your supermarket aisles. Jean E. White, in her memoir Sarah of Overlook Mountain, describes the lengths farm families would go to meet the twin challenges of keeping produce and meat from spoiling in the summer heat, as well as edible over the winter.
One of her stories involves Sarah’s grandmother, Betsy Booth MacDaniel, who, having picked a crop of summer huckleberries, “packed them into a brown stoneware jug, put a cork in it and tied the lid on. She dug a deep hole in the gravel corner, carefully turned the jug upside down, and buried it… At Christmas time for a special treat, she served the huckleberries.”
Another story involved Sarah’s father, who “dug a big hole in the middle of the garden where he buried a wooden barrel. He then took cabbages… and packed them down into the barrel until it was full. He’d put the cover on and pack lots of soil on the top. Lastly, he taken a wooden stake and drive it into the ground over it,” so that the family could find the cache after the snows.
One of the grim jokes of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – one of my all-time favorite childhood books – is that the Bucket family is so poor they ate only cabbages, while they spent their days huddled together for warmth beneath the meager blankets of their bed. But that is not as far off the mark when it comes to turn of the century rural life – that was a situation that the Home Bureaus sought to remedy. Currently, celebrating its 100th anniversary, the New York State Federation of Home Bureaus was founded in 1919 in Ithaca, NY, by women leaders of various organizations whose common belief was that “there was a great need to the homemakers in promoting all interests pertaining to home and community life. Home Bureau leaders, as well as Farm Bureau, were instrumental in obtaining funds for the Extension service programs from the federal, state and local governments… [to] attract trained leaders in the counties to bring knowledge pertaining to homemaking and other interests to the homemaker.”
The movement was spearheaded by the remarkable Ruby Green Smith, who, according to the NY Federation of Home Bureau’s official website, “received her B.A. at Stanford University in 1902. She continued her studies and became a research instructor in Entomology and Bionomics, completing her M.A. in 1904. In 1908, Smith co-authored Inheritance in Silkworms with the famous Stanford biologist Vernon Kellogg, who studied evolution in insects. She then came to Ithaca, received her Ph.D. from Cornell in 1914, and promptly began a long and laudable career in extension. From 1919 to 1923, she moved from assistant to associate state leader of home demonstration agents, and finally became the state leader, as well as a professor in extension. She was at one time the assistant director of the Conservation Division of the New York State Food Commission and worked with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Smith worked in extension until her retirement in 1944. In addition to writing a history of extension, she also started the Cayuga Bird Club, Ithaca Housewives’ League, and Farmers’ Market.”
But she was perhaps most famous for authoring the Home Bureau’s Creed:
Or as the organization’s commemorative mousepad would put it, an organization of women working together as “a sisterhood of friends.”
References:
Blue Ribbon Mayonnaise The Chef’s Standby. The Alan and Shirley Brocker Sliker Collection, MSS 314, Special Collections, Michigan State University Libraries. Available at http://www.lib.msu.edu/exhibits/sliker/detail.jsp?id=1459
New York State Federation of Home Bureaus, Inc. Official website. http://www.nysfederationofhomebureaus.com/
Richard Hellmann’s Blue Ribbon Mayonnaise. The Alan and Shirley Brocker Sliker Collection, MSS 314, Special Collections, Michigan State University Libraries. Available at http://www.lib.msu.edu/exhibits/sliker/detail.jsp?id=1460
The Woodstock Cookbook, sponsored by the Woodstock Home Bureau Unit, 1938. Courtesy of the Archives of the Historical Society of Woodstock.
White, Jean E. Sarah of Overlook Mountain. Historical Society of Woodstock, Woodstock, N.Y., 2016.
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