Menu, The Crescent Club Banquet

Maryland Historical Society

By the early nineteenth century, Maryland’s culinary traditions reflected two centuries of economic change and ethnic diversity. For example, culinary influences from English, Native American, and African-American cultures converged to create a distinct Maryland cuisine. However, additional immigrants to Maryland added new multicultural ethnic vistas to the state’s culinary landscape, dotted with pockets of isolated culinary traditions.   

Blending of Traditions
Plantation gentry in the Tidewater region of Maryland (i.e., Eastern Shore and Southern Maryland) originally ate an English diet.  As a result, traditional meats such as beef, veal, poultry, lamb, mutton, poultry, fish, and wild game were served alongside dishes made with heads, feet, knuckles, hearts, and sweet breads, just to name a few.1 Wild game, such as venison, goose, turkey, and duck were brought to table in elegant displays and considered status symbols because they were expensive to procure in the Tidewater region once wild game moved to less populated areas. 

Gradually, however, the diet of the Tidewater region was transformed into one that blended English culinary traditions with other cultures in Maryland to create a truly distinct cuisine that was consumed by all, including the upper classes.  For example, Maryland’s cuisine was enhanced by the acceptance of Native American beans, pumpkins, and, especially, Indian corn,2 (often in the form of hominy or corncakes), an important cereal grain previously not readily consumed by the upper classes because it lacked distinction. Other native foods, such as terrapin, turtle, eel, oyster, and crab also were eaten.  Because tobacco plantations used enslaved laborers, African garden-produce such as okra, collard greens, black-eyed peas, and hot peppers, made their way into the nineteenth-century Maryland diet.3  For example, even the well-respected Barnum Hotel in Baltimore served Gumbo Soup on its 1883 menu.4

By the early nineteenth-century, Baltimore had developed into a prosperous port; as a result, foreign foods entered Baltimore and its environs more frequently and in larger quantities than in the eighteenth century.  This easy access to new products added new dimensions to Maryland cuisine. Examples of these imports include spices (nutmeg, mace, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, and ginger); fortified wines (Madeira, Port, Claret. Sherry, and Rum); dried fruits (raisins, Zante currants, Sultanas, and prunes); and citrus fruits, pineapples, and sugar (brown Muscovado, refined white loaf, and molasses). Other imports include herring, licorice, chocolate, olives, olive oil, almonds, Cheshire cheese, vermicelli, macaroni, champagne, coffee, and tea.5

Immigrant Influences
By the middle of the nineteenth century, Pennsylvania Germans (or Dutch) in the Frederick and Hagerstown areas constituted one of Maryland’s largest ethnic immigrant groups.6  Their presence made a lasting impact on the food culture of their region. While many of the foods are not necessarily unique to the Pennsylvania Dutch, they are often associated with particular food traditions, such as Ponhaus (scrapple); Souse (pickled pig’s parts); hasenpfeffer (sour stewed rabbit); Schnitz & Knepp (Apples & Dumplings); and Fastnachts (donuts for Shrove Tuesday). Other traditional foods include Shoofly Pie, dandelion greens salads, dandelion wine, boiled pot pie, horseradish, watercress, deviled eggs, kale, and apple butter.7 

By the 1870s and 1880s, other immigrant groups had moved to Maryland, many of them settling in Baltimore.  As a result, Maryland’s culinary history was enhanced by Italian and Greek influences as well as by German, Russian, or Polish culinary traditions, particularly Jewish. These ethnic groups were poised to provide Baltimore with varied culinary delights that became quite popular by the twentieth century.  

Cheers!  Drinks in Maryland
While not particular to Maryland, Madeira, Sherry, Port, and Claret were popular fortified wines.  In addition, milk punch, syllabub, and apple toddy, were also popular drinks.  Beer was also a common drink, initially produced by home-brewers, but by the beginning of the nineteenth century, often the product of commercial brewers in Baltimore and elsewhere.8  Additionally, Maryland’s numerous fruit orchards yielded cider or cordials.  Finally, Maryland Rye, a rye-based whiskey, was quite popular because of its high-quality; it even inspired distillers in other states to label their own whiskey as Maryland Rye.

Maryland Food Icons 
Turtle soup, a favorite dish among nineteenth-century Marylanders, was usually made from the native diamondback terrapin, which is actually a land tortoise found in salt marshes, not a marine turtle.  Numerous eating establishments in Baltimore advertised “Real Green Turtle or Pectoral Soup,” and terrapin was available at restaurants such as the Marine Coffee House at 57 Water Street.9  Interestingly, turtle meat, which was then very inexpensive, was also given to slaves to supplement their rations.10

While Maryland had a reputation for its smoked sausages and sugar-cured hams (often served with classic flour-dipped fried chicken), the tradition of the Maryland stuffed ham outranks all other Maryland ham preparations.  Slits are made in a corned (brine-soaked) ham, and it is stuffed with a mixture of kale, cabbage, or other greens, and red pepper. It is then wrapped in a cloth and boiled. 

The Maryland beaten biscuit is a product of the days before chemical leavenings were widely available. Maryland bakers pounded or beat the biscuit dough to introduce air into it and disintegrate the dough’s protein; this produced a tender puffy biscuit. The earliest published recipe for a beaten biscuit is from Mary Randolph’s The Virginia Housewife in 1824.11   

In conclusion, these examples are representative of just a few of Maryland’s well-known food traditions. Maryland’s natural features, such as the teeming waters of the Chesapeake Bay and rich farmland, allowed a variety of ethnicities to produce a varied, flavorful, and nutritious cuisine.