One Thing Leads to the Next

It all started when I headed out to the garden to check on the puny cucumber plant that I had bought late in the season at the Shelbyville Farmer market. Just in the past couple of weeks, it has taken over one corner of my corn patch and is growing prolifically. Lifting up one of its many tendrilled vines, I found not one, but six! ready-to-harvest cukes. 

A bar of Philadelphia Cream Cheese, an onion and one drop of green food coloring later, I had mixed up a batch of Benedictine Cheese.  I could just hear my grandmother telling me that the pale green cucumber spread was developed by Miss Jennie Benedict sometime around the turn of the century. The way Grandmommy would talk about her, it made me think they were friends or at least acquaintances who would meet ocassionally for tea. 

My memory took me back to the many times I would be sitting in Grandmommy's tiny kitchen keeping her company; she would be grating cucumbers and mixing up the cheese, spreading it on white bread and then carefully cutting it with one of her many cookie cutters into stars, or circles or diamonds, before arranging them on a pretty tray – all for my benefit, for no special occasion. It was just how she did things.

The whole making-Benedictine-Cheese-in-my-kitchen thing, thinking of Grandmommy-in-her-kitchen thing, caused me to go up to our loft and search through Grandmommy’s old cookbooks. Sure enough, I found a well-worn version of The Blue Ribbon Cook Book by Jennie C. Benedict.  

I took it to bed that night and spent an hour reading it cover to cover. (Yes, I read cookbooks like other people read bestsellers.) The yellow-tinged, cooking-spotted pages were a blast to read. First of all, the cook book had its own index system, where pages were short cut for one of 15 different sections: Bread, Soups, Fish, Meats, Poultry and Game, etc. 

In the back of the book there was a whole section entitled: Simple Dishes for the Sick, followed by Dainty Menus for Convalescent Patients. The first recipe in this section is called Toast Water. And here it is (exactly as written). 

TOAST WATER

Toast three slices of stale bread to a dark brown,
but do not burn. Put into a pitcher,
pour over them one quart boiling water. Cover closely
and let stand on ice until cold. Strain.
If desired, wine and sugar may be added.

(Note: If you weren’t sick before you drank this, I bet you are now.)

The back section is pages of ads (paid, I suppose) for products that Miss Benedict recommends. They include everything from Calumet Baking Powder to Taylor Trunk Company, to the Fifth Avenue Fish Market. 

Can you read this copy?
I'm wondering how much times have really changed?

Now, here’s the weird part. Nowhere in the book does she provide a recipe for Benedictine Cheese. The copy that I have is actually a 4^th edition one, published in 1922. It wasn’t until the 5^th edition, published just three years ago (2008, University Press of Kentucky), that the recipe was included.

A few days later, I was trolling around on the Internet looking for the actual recipe for Benedictine Cheese and discovered all kinds of interesting things about Jennie Benedict.

One: She was born in Louisville, KY in 1860 and trained with the famous Fannie Farmer at the Boston Cooking School. She returned to Louisville and opened her catering business in 1893, working from a small kitchen in her back yard. Seven years later, she moved to a larger kitchen in downtown Louisville and later opened her own restaurant: Benedict’s. 

Two: She was an accomplished businesswoman, becoming the first woman on the Louisville Board of Trade. She also helped organize the Louisville Businesswoman’s Club in 1897. She is credited with serving the first school lunches in Louisville: chicken salad sandwiches that were sold from a handcart. 

Three: In 1925, she retired to her home “Dream Acre,” on a bluff overlooking the Ohio River and there, she wrote her autobiography: The Road to Dream Acre. The book is out of print, but I’m determined to find a copy. 

I like this woman. I like that she was an astute business woman and a wonderful cook. I like that her work defined early 20^th century middle-class cooking in Kentucky. And I like that 100 years later, I’m still using her recipe for Benedictine Cheese. 

And so from garden, to cooking, to old cookbook reading, to research: that's how one thing leads to the next.

_____________________

Here the version of Benedictine that I use. 

Benedictine spread

8 ounces of cream cheese, softened
Juice from one grated medium cucumber

Juice from one small grated onion

1 teaspoon salt
a few grains of cayenne pepper
1 drop green food coloring

To get the juice, peel and grate a cucumber, then wrap in a clean dish towel and squeeze juice into a dish. Discard pulp. Do the same for the onion. The cucumber juice together with the onion juice should measure 1/3 cup. Blend all ingredients.