by Sheila Connolly
My father's
parents both came from Ireland (they met in New York), along with many of their
siblings. They all arrived in New York
in the late 1890s or early 1900s, and the women found work, without exception, as
domestic servants. My grandfather, so
I'm told, drove a horse-drawn milk truck, and he met my grandmother at the
kitchen door at the house where she was working.
 |
The Lawless Sisters: my grandmother
is on the left, Ka on the right |
Several of
these women never married but stayed "in service" until they retired
or could no longer work. My grandmother
was one of the exceptions: she worked
for several years, and then when she and my grandfather married, they moved to
Syracuse where she had a sister who had married a local contractor. She had her
first child—my father—when she was 39.
When my
grandmother arrived in this country, she brought along her youngest sister
Katherine, known as Ka. Poor Ka was only
a year old when her mother died, so she was raised by an aunt in Ireland. She spent most of her adult life working for
a family in Darien, then New Canaan, Connecticut. (There's a family mystery
there: apparently she married a man named Ryan, but it didn't work out and
nobody ever mentioned him again, although she kept the name Ryan and a divorce
was unlikely.)
A decade or
more ago I discovered that my father had somehow held on to the sum and total
of what Ka had left: a small suitcase
with a few family pictures, and a spiral bound booklet—with recipes. It's not
really long enough to be considered a cookbook.
If this were fiction, I'd tell you that it was filled with either
treasured family recipes from Ireland or wonderful concoctions with which she
wowed her employers for a couple of decades.
Not
so. What I'm guessing is that it's a
record of her employer's favorites (this was Charlotte Heyl of Wahackme Road in
New Canaan): vegetable soup (with two tablespoons of sugar?), "Spanish
rice" (with a half cup of sugar??), cheeze (sic) balls, made with "1
roll snappy cheeze (sic)," French dressing (with "4 heaping
teaspoons sugar (perhaps more)…Shake like everything!", scrambled eggs,
macaroni and cheeze (sic), chocolate pudding, and so on. At best it's a snapshot of conservative foods
from the nicer suburbs. At worst…they're awful recipes.
It was a
challenge to decide which of these recipes to prepare, but in the end I settled
for what are called
CHOCOLATE
MACAROONS
 |
| ??? |
Butter size
of an egg (half a stick?)
2 squares
Baker's chocolate (I assume that back then it was all unsweetened)
Melt
together over hot water.
Add one cup
sugar and mix thoroughly.
Add 2
unbeaten eggs
Sift
together 1 cup flour, 1 tsp baking powder, and 1/4 tsp salt and beat in. Add 1 tsp vanilla
 |
| Is this a handful? |
Add 3
handfulls chopped nuts (I used walnuts) and 1/2 pound pecans. (A lot of nuts!)
 |
| All the nuts, chopped |
Bake in a 325 oven for 10-12 minutes.
Okay, as
you can see there are a few issues with this recipe. Like, what size egg? (I'll admit I always wanted to use a recipe
with that measurement, though.) And
"handfuls" of nuts? You may
also note that there is no description of how to form these so-called macaroons. On a greased baking sheet? Large or small dollops?
I opted for
using a Silpat, and making each cookie about one tablespoon of dough. The
baking temperature and time worked. I let them cool briefly before I put them
on a rack. This recipe made 2 1/2 dozen
cookies. Basically they taste like very
nutty brownies, but they're good.
P.S. nobody ever said my relatives were good
cooks!
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