Category: History

In November 1964 LBJ had just defeated Goldwater, the Sardine Law was front page news,  and famed chef and food writer James Beard visited Portland to lead a 4-day series of cooking demonstrations organized by the Portland Symphony Orchestra as a fundraising activity for their 1964-65 season.

Reporter Hazel Loveitt from the Press Herald along with “more than 200 women and two men” (Brunswick chef Pete Doyon and home cook Harry Dunbar) were on site for the first day of classes. Loveitt reported,

Beard’s heroic proportions belied his agility as he did a culinary ballet between the stove, oven and food preparation. When he added “about a half teaspoon” of vanilla to the filling he was making for apple flan the master chef dispensed the flavoring directly from the bottle to the cooking pan with the flair of a showman.

While using the slim handleless French rolling pin to roll the tart flan Beard explained that the pin was easier to guide than the more common rolling pin.

An earlier version of the article was certainly a product of the times. President Kennedy has delivered his famous challenge for a moon landing 2 years earlier, and the article referred to the rolling pin as a “slim space-aged model”.

The town was still in the afterglow of Beard’s visit several day later when the paper published a follow-on piece which concluded “All calories aside, we’ve been living in a gastronomical Shangri-La.”

Beard was assisted with the classes by Ruth Norman and they were held at the State Street Church. Their entire series of 5 classes went for $12 per person. Accounting for inflation that would be $91 in today’s dollars—a bargain in any decade.

A half century later few people in town remember Beard’s visit, but as luck would have it one of few artifacts of that week, a booklet from Beard’s classes (shown above), came into the possession of Rabelais Books, and owner Don Lindgren brought it to my attention. It contains 34 pages of recipes from the classes. They’re an interesting mix of French, Italian, American and Asian cooking such as Salad Nicoise, Shish Kebab, Rummed Crab Spread, Cannelloni, Crepes Duxelles, Barbecued Spareribs and Fried Rice.

Many thanks to PSO historian Hank Schmidtt and to the Symphony for their assistance in researching this article.

 

 

Cross West Bayside on Oxford Street and you’re likely to spot this old sign for the former Amergian Brothers neighborhood market at the intersection with Chestnut Street. It was founded by George Amergian in 1928 in what was then the Armenian neighborhood in Portland. The market remained in business until the beginning of the 21st century and was for many year’s run by his nephew Edward Mardigan.

Here’s an artifact from Portland’s culinary past, a banquet menu for an 1888 dinner of the local association of drugstore owners. 8 courses which included oysters, beef tenderloin, baked pike, lobster and saddle of venison.

The menu is from the collections at Rabelais Books in Biddeford.

The Portland Maine History Facebook page has posted a history of Valle’s steak house that was founded in Portland and its peak had locations all throughout New England.

Valle’s Steak House began as a 12 seat café in Portland, Maine in 1933, owned by Donald Valle who was born in Lettomanopello, Italy in 1908 and immigrated to the United States in 1912 at the age of four; he married Sue Crone and they had two children Richard and Judith. Before Woodford’s Corner, Valle’s was at 551 Congress Street, but not sure if that was the original location…

The October issue of Portland Magazine includes a feature article on the history of the rum industry in Maine.

The rough and rowdy history of Maine rum turned violent in the 1850s, as under the growing temperance movement spearheaded by mayor Neal Dow, ‘the Napoleon of Temperance,’ alcohol production and sale of liquor was prohibited. However, it was discovered four years after the passage of the law that Dow himself was keeping large stocks of brandy set aside for ‘medicinal’ purposes–necessary to maintain the temperaments of solid, respectable citizens, of course. But for the working population of the city, alcohol was often their only escape, and many of the rioters decried Dow’s attack on what they viewed as their culture.

Ned Wight from New England Distilling in Portland was interviewed for the article.

Ned Wight, whose Eight Bells Rum hit shelves in September, agrees that it’s not all about the sea. Much of the rum produced in Maine was likely produced in stills in the back of public houses, produced not for bottling and off-site consumption but to be drunk on the premises by the patrons. “To me, that’s the real essence of Maine’s connection to rum, less than sailing or piracy.