I never met Cora Chacey, but I know two things about her: She liked to make sweet things, and she gave credit where it was due.
The evidence comes from the titles and attribution in her recipe box.
Date Nut Roll Candy (Mother's). Lemon Supreme Cake Sandwich Cookies -- Eliz. Guthridge. Virginia's Pecan Pie. Mother's Orange-Raisin Cake. Uncooked Fruit Cake -- Annie Mae Griffin. Fruit Bars -- Gene Smith. Jane's Favorite Apple Crisp.
There are also vegetable dishes (Spinach Casserole and Crooked Neck Squash Casserole, both attributed to Jane Keeney) and a single entree (Stir Fry Chicken -- Ella Mae). But the majority of these recipes -- whether in her printed handwriting on a "Here's what's cookin'" recipe card; typed on a manual typewriter; cut from a magazine or newspaper; or, in the case of Jan's Fresh Apple Cake, typed on the back of a workplace's Absentee Report form -- are for desserts and candies, things you'd make for holidays, or when company's coming, or to take to a potluck.
I came by Cora's recipe box while looking in a thrift store for a cast iron skillet. There were no such skillets on the shelves of pots and pans, but there sat the green metal index card box, incongruously, probably the closest place the Savers workers could find for it when they sorted the donated items.
At Savers, price tags have colored strips, and each day, items tagged a certain color are half price. It was yellow tag day, and on the bottom of Cora's recipe box was a yellow price tag for $2.99. For $1.50 plus tax, the box was mine.
I might have bought the box simply because I felt sorry for it, sitting there trying to blend in among the cast-off kitchen tools. I might also have been drawn to
it because of two items on the display shelf above my kitchen sink: my mother's recipe for Brownie Cupcakes from scratch, and her mother's Spice Cake recipe, both written out in their distinctive handwriting, both spotted with the very ingredients they listed, both found in the backs of cookbooks years after they'd been gone.
Neither my mother nor my grandmother had recipe boxes. Mostly they cooked from memory or from cookbooks. Mom's old copy of Betty Crocker's Cooky Book is a recipe box once removed, with stains and floury residue marking the pages she turned to most.
This time of year, Mom was a cookie-baking machine. Date-Nut Pinwheels, Candy Canes, Filled Mincemeat Cookies, Spritz Cookies, Hermits, Peanut Butter Fingers. Tray after tray came out of the oven; row after row cooled on newspaper spread out across the kitchen table. Some were packed as gifts, but most were stored in tins and Tupperware as the family's stockpile to carry us through the holidays and into the new year.
The recipes they did write down were like these relics, on loose sheets of paper, or written on the blank space inside the back cover of a cookbook. Seeing them is almost like hearing their voices again, remembering their warm kitchens, my mother's above my grandmother's on the southeast corner of the house we all lived in, well lighted from the windows on the eastern and southern walls.
That's one reason we hang onto such scraps of paper. I've never made those brownie cupcakes or the spice cake (and making the latter would involve some guessing or detective work, because Nan Naw only listed the ingredients; she left out the directions). But they remind me of the cooks I come from, and all the ways -- not just with food -- that they fed me.
I did, however, make Cora's recipe for Corn Bread, even though its directions were missing too.
It came out dense and not very tasty. I don't recommend it (I think cornbread with a mixture of flour and cornmeal is better), but I don't regret making it. Our failures can be instructive, and the kitchen is probably one of the most frequent locations of that lesson.
I offer it here because maybe someone can tell me what I did wrong.
Corn Bread
2 cups corn meal
1 egg
pinch soda & salt
milk -- thin batter
(Here's where the directions would go if there were any.)
I looked up Cora Chacey's obituary in the newspaper archives. If she were alive now, she would have turned 94 in October. But she died in 1999, at the age of 78. She was a member of Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock, where she sang in the choir. She had been a purchasing director for Myers Bakery. She had no survivors.
I contacted a church member I knew who was familiar with some of the church's oldest members. She was happy to get on the trail. But she didn't learn much more: Cora's maiden name was Austin, she married later in life, she moved away for some time. No one still living and lucid seemed to remember her. Ella Mae of the chicken recipe lived in a nursing home, with memory loss.
I can only wonder who had possession of her little file box for all these years, and why it was finally given up. The price tag's 8/10/11 means it hadn't been at Savers very long when I bought it.
There's something else about the box that suggests it might not have been in use in someone's kitchen, that it might have been stored away with other things of Cora's. It has the fragrant, powdery smell of a grandma's closet.
Here's another reason I decided to bring the little file box home. The second recipe I saw said "Puffed Pancake -- Judy."
I've had puffed pancakes before. Some recipes call it Dutch Baby.
A cookbook I no longer own calls it a German Pancake and says to gather people at the moment it comes out of the oven, so they can ooh and ahh over it. It's not the kind of dish you make when cooking for one. But it is the kind you might want to test-drive before you serve it to guests. So I made one, decreasing the ingredients by one-quarter for my smaller cast iron skillet. It puffed miraculously, just as it was supposed to. And with no one here to ooh and ahh, I did what we do. I posted a picture on Facebook.
Within minutes, the ooh and ahh came down from a friend in Canada: "What is that?! That looks good, whatever it is!"
When an old friend was in town, I had her over for brunch and made it.
Puffed Pancake -- Judy
4 eggs
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 tablespoons butter or margarine
2 tablespoons sifted powdered sugar (optional)
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon (optional)
Combine first 6 ingredients in a large mixing bowl; beat until smooth at medium speed of an electric mixer. Place the batter in freezer while skillet is heating.
Place butter in a 10-inch ovenproof skillet (cast iron works best). Place in a 450-degree oven for 4 minutes or until butter sizzles and skillet is hot.
Pour batter immediately into skillet. Bake 27 or 30 minutes or until puffed and golden (do not open before 25 minutes).
Combine powdered sugar and cinnamon; sift over hot pancake, if desired. Serve immediately.
Yield: 6 servings.
Last fall, when I had too many apples and needed to do something with them quickly, I made this apple cake and took it to work.
Jan's Fresh Apple Cake
3/4 cup Wesson oil
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 cups flour
2 cups raw apples (chopped)
raisins
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon soda
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup nuts
Core apples and chop up (with peelings) -- any kind of apple, peelings & all.
Cream together the oil and sugar. Add the rest of the ingredients. Mix together.
Bake in an ungreased baking dish (oblong) pan at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.
A version of this article originally appeared in Art House America (arthouseamerica.com/blog).
Food on 12/17/2014