Favorite Recipes Of Family & Friends—

Ellen’s Secret

By Mary Mitchell

When I was growing up my favorite room in our house was the kitchen, the domain of Ellen Benson, our cook from 1919 to her death in 1928. A Swedish immigrant about 40 years old who could speak hardly any English when she came, she was fat, round, and jolly, and loved children.

From the day she entered the large, dingy, cream-colored kitchen, it took on radiance and warmth. She had white, lace-edged curtains hung at each of the five south-facing windows. On the windowsills she kept blue and white china saucers filled with a little water and sprouting tops of carrots, beets, or turnips. She never pulled a shade, and the sun poured in, throwing big bright rectangles onto the blue linoleum floor, mocking the bitter Minnesota weather outside.

Old-fashioned as was the kitchen equipment, Ellen liked it that way, “Yust like in the Old Country,” she’d say when by mother wanted to replace the black stove 15 years old. It had two ovens, one over the other, and a shelf with salt and pepper shakers and other spices and over all a hood to hold the heat and protect the ceiling.

To light it she put a lighted match over a little hole while turning a switch. Sometimes the match blew out with a blast. Scared to death of it, I wondered why Ellen, who had asked for a big chrome table on wheels for the center of the kitchen, and gotten it, didn’t ask for a new stove. But she just said no, she wouldn’t know how to cook on it.

Passing through the kitchen every morning out the back door to walk down to school, I smelled the aroma of coffee brewing in the big blue enamel kettle where eggshells floated and bobbled on the top. Ellen said they clarified the brew.

Then afternoons, coming home, I would enter from the cold into the warm aromatic kitchen to find doughnuts sizzling in a large black rectangular pan of boiling grease. Others lay on crinkly brown paper, toasty brown and glistening. At other times there would be small round pasties with a dab of raspberry jelly in the center, or a triangular shape and browned, all made for the daily coffee hour the Scandinavian help looked forward to all day long. I was allowed one single doughnut, no more, or one pasty, and another later if any were left. (She always made sure several were left for Fred, Bill, and me.)

The kitchen pantry was equally inviting. If Ellen had made an angel food cake with a simple powdered sugar icing and we sneaked in there at night to nibble, after she had gone to bed, she never fussed But if we left the top cover off, she would say: “No more cake tomorrow. De cake vill dry out. You kids gotta learn.”

There was one misdeed however, that she would not tolerate, and if it happened she would tell my mother. This was replacing the milk bottles in the wrong shelf in the icebox or on the far end of the shelf. The varnished wooden icebox was composed of several cage-like sections, each with its own incubated door and handle. In the center was the large vertical bin into which Einar the iceman put a 50-pound block of ice every Friday morning. If it came with straw or wood chips impregnated in the ice, Ellen would give him a tongue-lashing. “You tink ve eat straw?” “Bring me up anudder.”

Then the poor fellow would have to tote the hunk of ice, carried on his right shoulder on a black rubber mat, down 15 stone steps, clean or brush off the offensive debris, and haul it up again for Ellen’s inspection. If it was clean, he would then open the outside door, heave it into the opening, close the door with a clonk, and skip down the steps, two at a time, afraid she’d call him back.

Inside the icebox all milk, cream and butter, plus the crock for butterballs, jellied aspics, and cold meats, had to stand in the cage nearest the ice-block, with leftover vegetables, desserts, and fruit in the outer sections. And we children couldn’t just stand at the box, door open, peering in to see what we wanted for a snack.

“Close that door, Mary. Don’t you have any horse-sense, letting dat hot air in dere?”

Each weekday morning Ellen would come up to see my mother to plan the day’s meals. But on Saturdays, Ellen did not come upstairs. Lunch was always the same: creamed chipped beef on toast, a vegetable, and then Ellen’s cottage pudding with a special sauce. Mother begged for the recipe. Ellen never revealed it. Then when my daughters, Dottie and Charlotte, were growing up, I tried one winter to emulate it. At length I succeeded.

The key ingredient was brandy. At that time and until 1934 when it was repealed, the Volstead Act prohibited the use and sale of alcoholic beverages. My father never allowed spirits in the kitchen or elsewhere but Ellen just made this sauce up to suit herself, and my father never asked. We simply enjoyed.

Here is the recipe I worked up:(See above).

Times spent in the kitchen dining room where we ate when our parents were out are among my happiest memories. A shabby room facing north, and therefore drafty, its walls were discolored and faded green. On the walls hung a calendar, and faded yellow pictures of a cottage with hollyhocks and a child or two playing with a kitten or a romantic mountain landscape with a girl and boy picking daisies. Several straight chairs stood around a long table covered with blue-and-white checked cotton cloth. Nearby was a wobbly rocker we fought over.

Here we felt uninhibited, released from supervision. We could slouch in our chairs, pick up fried chicken with our fingers and gnaw a drumstick, or read a book while eating. When radios were invented in the mid 1920s, we listened to WCCO, and Amos ‘n Andy. My brothers and I often quarreled and poked at each other. But in this room, all was tranquil, and we soaked up the warmth of these devoted people caring for us.

Ellen’s personal secret was the contents of her room. Curious about all rooms in our house that were either locked or off limits, I managed by wheedling to see those belonging to Nora the maid and Florence the nurse. But for nine years, Ellen’s room remained inviolate.

Then in my junior year at high school she died, and at last we could enter. While the room itself was ordinary, with its single bed, chest of drawers, night table, an upholstered chair, and a single standing lamp, the closet held the surprise. Not only did we find the brandy bottle, but empty cereal boxes, each one offering a premium of china or silverware, platters and bowls. The top shelf was crammed with them.

“What did she keep all this stuff for?” I asked my mother, who was standing with me looking at the garish confusion and sniffing the staleness of old empty food boxes.

“I think we’re looking at Ellen’s hope chest,” said my mother.

I felt like a trespasser. What had these immigrant women far from the old country expected to find here after the wrenching departure from the people and surroundings familiar since birth? Had they found anything here in our house to compensate? They had no place to entertain a friend. They had to live intimately with different types of women and alien nationalities.

Yet to us children they radiated kindness. Without their daily interaction and affection, life in our big house would never have been so cozy or secure.

Now it’s your turn. If you have a recipe and there is a reason it is special to you, those are the stories we are looking for. “Favorite Recipes of Friends & Family” will appear once or twice a month, depending on the number of submissions received and the interest it generates.

Send your recipes, stories and photos (if available) to Shannon Hicks, The Newtown Bee, 5 Church Hill Road, Newtown, CT 06470. If you want to send everything by email, it can go to shannon@thebee.com. If you want to fax your recipe and story and send the photo separately (faxed photos will not work), the number is 426-5169.

Your photos will be taken care of while they are loaned to us, and they will be safely returned to you as soon as we are finished with them.

Hope to see you in the kitchen soon.