Yesterday’s leg of the train trip, on this blog in my posting “Tex-Mex cheese enchiladas”:
[On] cheese enchiladas with Tex-Mex chili gravy, as celebrated by Nelson Minar in “Tex Mex Gravy” on his weblog Some Bits yesterday. A stunning sociocultural contrast to my food posting on this blog yesterday, “Vienne en Isère 3: La Marjolaine”, about Fernand Point’s dacquoise cake La Marjolaine, both elegant and extravagant.
Then in this comment on that posting, NM sets us off on the next leg (which you can think of as Vienne en Isère 4 (there will be a Vienne en Isère 5):
You are right that Tex-Mex enchiladas are a world away from your dacquoises. I can’t think of anything in Tex-Mex cuisine to match those. But Helen Corbitt might have had something. She was Texas’ answer to Julia Child and wrote a lot of fine food books that were popular in my mother’s generation. I am sure one of her cookbooks has a pleasant cake, perhaps alternating layers of angelfood cake and Cool Whip with some tinned fruit to gussy it up. Not quite French patisserie but pretty fancy for Dallas.
Community recipe books. “Layers of angelfood cake and Cool Whip with some tinned fruit to gussy it up” sounds like a recipe from one of those women’s club — or Junior League or some similar local group — recipe books that Steven Levine (another soc.motss veteran) and I are so fond of; I am heartbroken to have given up River Road Recipes, by the Junior League of Baton Rouge LA. Community enterprises in which women submitted their favorite recipes, to share with the others, and then to have the collection published for a larger audience.
Part of their charm is the extraordinary range of the recipes. Some come from women passing on family recipes for homey plain cooking. Or favorite recipes clipped from magazines or cook books. Some from women thoroughly versed in particular cuisines and serious about their cooking. Many from women hoping to show off their ingenuity, especially in creating easy-to-do versions of more challenging recipes (that brings us angel food cake and Cool Whip) or in making use of everyday ingredients (Rice Krispies, cottage cheese, cake mixes, hot dogs, Jell-O, taco chips, nut butters, Cheez Whiz, candy bars, whatever) in striking or really “cute” new ways; this brings us hilarious or just goofy dishes, the fellows of the “Lime Jello Marshmallow Cottage Cheese Surprise” of William Bolcomb’s satirical song.
What makes the volumes so enjoyable is that they’re arranged by type of food preparation, so that these wildly different stances towards the food are jumbled together pretty much randomly. You can go from a carefully simplified Beef Wellington recipe to frankfurter Christmas trees, cheek by jowl in the meats category.
This is really good cheap entertainment, plus every so often you come across something that’s clearly worth trying.
But Helen Corbitt, what of her? Here I think Nelson Minar is being unfair to Helen Corbitt, who would have — and maybe did — come up with an approximation to a dacquoise. An on-line search netted nothing (though I don’t think the texts of her books are available on-line), but did unearth a pretty respectable simplified hazelnut dacquoise recipe from a 1996 Good Housekeeping (which is still a hell of a lot of trouble, stretched over days). More on that below; first, some information about HC.
From Wikipedia:
Helen Corbitt (1906–1978) was an American chef and cookbook author. Corbitt was born in rural Saint Lawrence County New York but spent nearly 40 years in Texas promoting gourmet cuisine with new and unusual flavor combinations and serving temperatures. She traveled widely searching for new culinary inspiration. She was an early advocate of using the finest, freshest ingredients.
She was Director of Food Services at the luxury retailer Neiman Marcus (with headquarters in Dallas TX) from 1955 to 1975. I know, I know, just the mention of Dallas calls up — earworm alert — the swaggering exuberance of “Big D”, Frank Loesser’s song from the 1956 musical The Most Happy Fella. (And for me, it evokes a family story, from about 60 years ago, with the climactic line, “Jews! Jews! Why, we got the best goddam Jews in the whole wide world right here in Dallas!”) Still, I think HC was a cut above angel food cake and Cool Whip. And I’m pretty sure she could tell a dacquoise from a turquoise and even from a genoise.
Flora and Essie. Now to Flora’s Recipe Hideout site, on which Flora — who conceals her identity — collects recipes from all over the place. Sort of a one-woman community recipe book.
On her site we find a hazelnut dacquoise recipe from Good Housekeeping magazine in June 1996, submitted by “Essie”, Ethel R. Snyder <essie49@juno.com>. My summary (which magisterially omits the really tedious bits:
make hazelnut meringue circles and let them dry out; after some days, make a chocolate cream and an espresso cream; assemble the cake by alternating a meringue layer, a chocolate cream layer, a meringue layer, a coffee cream layer, and repeating that; refrigerate it overnight before serving
And now I rest for lunch (a salmon poke bowl) before assembling Vienne en Isère 5, in which the food train goes from Texas to Colorado and Montana.
October 26, 2025 at 1:15 pm |
Is there any chance we can get the rest of that family story?
October 26, 2025 at 3:23 pm |
To do the story justice, I would have to explain the social world in which its main character (Harry B. Miller Jr.), the addressee of the exclamation I quoted, lived and something of his character.
Ok, I’ll do some of this: he was a good and generous man and a champion of humane causes, but also a major power broker in Democratic politics in Kentucky and in the worlds of thoroughbred racing and harness racing in central Kentucky; he got seriously rich as the principal partner in the Lexington law firm of Miller, Griffin & Marks; he was also my wife’s first cousin, the only one she knew, and he took me into the family; he was also the son of a Jewish father (and my wife Ann’s aunt Ann, for whom she was named), proud of his heritage and the victim of innumerable slights because of it, though (to fit with his Gentile wife, Pat Griffin) he converted to Christianity.
So: Harry had created for himself a very satisfying life in Lexington, but got into the news (and high-end lawyer gossip) often enough that a law firm in Dallas decided that he sounded like just the guy to transform the company, and they courted him with the equivalent of circuses and parades. Despite his reservations — he truly loved Lexington, he fit in there; I mean, he was the lawyer for the *police*, even — he went to Dallas for the equivalent of circuses and parades in situ. Endless swaggering boasting; I wish I had a recording of him mimicking their exulting over the $100,000 Oriental rugs in the firm’s offices. It was so ghastly it was funny.
At some point, he supposed he could turn them off: figuring that their antisemitism would cool their interest, he explained that not only was he a Jew — they surely knew that already — but also that his Judaism was important to him, and Dallas seemed so, um, uncongenial. His hope was that just this much would conjure up threatening visions of kippahs and prayer shawls in the boardroom, stuff like that.
But no. They doubled down on the swagger with “Jews! Jews! Why, we got the best goddam Jews in the whole wide world *right here* in Dallas!”
Eventually, he diplomatically thanked them for the very generous offer they had made him and the warm reception they had given him, but explained that since his family was involved in the decision he needed to go back to Lexington and talk it over with Pat and the kids.
Back home, he told the stories, plus the final flourish “No. Way. In. Hell.” And wrote a diplomatically framed letter of regret.
(I have no doubt embroidered and improved on the story some. Well, I heard the story long ago, and then, in the intervening years, I learned how to embroider narratives from Ann’s father, Keene Daingerfield, who was a master of the art.)
October 27, 2025 at 1:40 am |
That’s a great story, Arnold. Harry Miller’s law firm has a bio page/obituary for him at https://horselaw.com/attorney/harry-b-miller-jr-1924-2013/. Your story adds a lot of color. I like that the law firm managed to grab the horselaw.com domain.
October 27, 2025 at 7:36 am |
I did my own death notice for Harry, but I had somehow managed to forget the horselaw domain.
There are a great many other stories for me to tell, and a great canvas to paint about the social world these characters moved in, only a bit of which I have already posted about. Including many wonderful stories about Harry’s step-father Jack Winn, Ann Walcutt’s second husband.
There was a time when Pat and Harry were out of town and one of their sons got into a teenage scrape with the police. Someone had to go get him out.
Jack and I were convinced to perform this service as family of the miscreant (well, Jack was his grandmother’s husband and I was his father’s cousin’s husband, but we counted as grandfather and uncle), wearing the best clothes we had available. So we appeared in character as Judge John Winn (Jack did his court work in tough coal mining Kentucky, Harlan and Hazard territory, but he was a genuine judge) and Distinguished Professor Arnold Zwicky (the University of Kentucky is in Lexington, and professors get some respect there).
We enjoyed playing our parts, and it all went smoothly, meaning that the kid was released without bail, not thrown in jail. Jack and I were, however, keenly aware that we were pulling rank and also taking advantage of our (and the kid’s) white privilege. (This is a world in which black and white live in close proximity, so race is never not there.)
So much more. Anne Woodford Winn, a sharp-tongued grande dame horsewoman with whom Ann and I sometimes stayed in Lexington (usually we stayed with Pat and Harry).
Sonny Whitney (Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney — yes those Vanderbilts and those Whitneys — who once charmed my young daughter with stories of having produced Gone With the Wind.
And Frank Mitchell, a gay black bartender at social events (and jack of all trades) who forged a friendship with Ann when she was a young woman (they had a long car trip in which he was her driver; he announced earnestly, “Miss Ann, I know you’re a writer, so I’m going to tell you some things you should know about” and gave her a fully detailed account of his sexual life, an eye-opening education in the subterranean world of gay male sex — for which she was in fact grateful, though stunned); when I first met Frank, he got me right away, and we developed a gay buddy relationship that allowed us to evaluate and gossip about the people around us. No malice in him, but he was a keen judge of character.
October 27, 2025 at 7:28 am |
I’m with you loving community recipe books. There’s been a fair amount of scholarship about them. They are an important source for food history, particularly Americana. They are also just delightful and I like how you highlight the diversity of them.
At an industry conference I once hosted a casual icebreaker event where people shared recipes and we made a community cookbook on the spot. The cookbook didn’t turn out great but it was a lovely way for people to share stories and food they love.
And you’re right I was unfair to Helen Corbitt in my snide recipe. She emphasized fresh ingredients and preparing by hand. Technique shortcuts for the home cook, sure, but good ingredients. I flipped through her main cookbook and there’s no Cool Whip, indeed the product wasn’t invented until 9 years after she first published. Plenty of angel food cake and fruit, but almost always fresh fruit. No dacquoises that I could find but plenty of baked alaska, and pecan balls (a favorite of mine), and a remarkable variety of pies.
Growing up in Texas my mother taught me to respect accomplished women. Molly Ivins, Ann Richards, Barbara Jordan. And definitely Helen Corbitt, her thinking played a big role in my mother’s entertaining.
October 27, 2025 at 7:55 am |
On sharing recipes: a surprisingly fine bit of social glue. Why, we once did a recipe exchange on soc.motss that was lots of fun and also brought together posters who were inclined to be wary of each other.