A Taste of the Past

Helen Dornblaser of Wyomissing writes a cookbook that shines as a treasury of cultural history, an illustrated record of one family and, of course, good food.

It wasn’t the tantalizing smell of onion and garlic sputtering and sizzling in a frying pan that compelled Helen A. (Snyder) Dornblaser, 84, of Wyomissing to write a cook book for her family.

For Helen, the book idea started cooking the day she cleared out a messy, overflowing recipe box.

One by one, Helen sifted through old and new recipes. As she worked she thought about the importance of food customs, of relatives and of how times and things in her life have changed.

She thought about her grandfather, the late J. Herbert Snyder of Mohrsville, a conductor on the Pennsylvania and Reading Railroad, who married Amelia “Milly” Gehret, the canal boat captain’s daughter, in the late 1800s.

She asked herself, “What if the grandchildren and great-grandchildren might want to read about their ancestors?”

This is what inspired Helen to write a cookbook filled with copies of colored photographs, favorite recipes and tidbits of family history.

These three main ingredients make her cookbook, “Family Cook-Book and Stories: 1897 to 2004,” distinctive.

DUTCHY RECIPES

Many of the 34 recipes featured in the book are Pennsylvania Dutch foods cooked in the past by Helen’s mother, Edna May Dunkleberger, and Helen’s mother-in-law, Laura Sarah Heil Dornblaser.

Helen worked on the book for six months in 2004. She has no idea how many hours she worked on it, she said, but she does remember tackling it in bits and pieces.

“I never did it a whole day,” said Helen, who used a 1980 word processor to type the book.

She took the finished pages, 35 in all, to a local office supply store and came home with 525 copies. She made only 15 books and gave all of them away.

“This is all I have,” she said. “No more copies of the book will be available.”

With no table of contents or index to refer to, the book is simply organized by first listing main courses including potato filling, salmon stew, a prize-winning clam chowder, chicken and dumpling recipes, and last by listing pies, cakes, cookies and pudding recipes.

Intermingling with recipes are short stories either about a traditional family meal or how a food had been prepared and stored back in the day when she was a young girl.

For instance, there are helpful butchering tips.

One page, in particular, provides instructions on how to prepare a live turkey for Christmas dinner.

“The turkey was dressed, a quaint word meaning killed, de-feathered and eviscerated,” she writes. “Then it was hung by its feet from the rafters in our attic for two days. It was a cold, clean storage place before the days of household refrigerators.”

For a chicken and dumplings recipe, Helen provides three different ways to kill a chicken for cooks who want the freshest chicken meat possible.

CHICKEN STORY

Here’s how the late Truman Snyder, Helen’s father, killed chickens in the 1920s and ’30s:

“Have a large chopping block in the back yard,” she writes. “Hold the fowl by its legs and lay its head on the chopping block. Take a sharp hatchet and with one swift swing, cut off the head. Put the chicken on the ground and stand back. It will run around for a bit without a head, with blood squirting from the neck, and then fall over.”

The story amused Helen’s two great-granddaughters in law.

“They told me that it was really good to know because if they ever have to kill a chicken or a turkey, they’ll know how to do it,” said Helen, whose purpose in writing the information was to let her family know that back in her time, chickens had to be caught and killed before eaten.

There’s a pumpkin pie recipe, on page 31, that had belonged to Arthur’s mother, and a lemon sponge pie recipe, on page 22, that Helen’s mother used to make.

These pies are still prepared from scratch today by Helen for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day dinner gatherings at son-in-law Roger and daughter Sylvia J. (Dornblaser) Baker’s home.

Sylvia and her three sons each received a book.

“My two daughters-in-law got them,” said Sylvia, in an interview from her home in Malvern, Chester County. “My third son still has his because he isn’t married yet.”

Sylvia said she takes the book with her every year when she and her husband go down to Florida for the winter.

“My mother has always enjoyed telling stories about her earlier days,” Sylvia said. “She enjoys reading and writing and is interested in getting the family history down.”

AUTHOR'S HISTORY

Helen and her husband, Arthur F. “Art” Dornblaser, 85, graduated together from Perry High School and have been married for 66 years.

Helen had worked as a teacher’s aid for 11 years at Berks County Intermediate Unit, retiring in 1984. Before that she had worked as a food server at the former Penn Supreme along Lancaster Avenue, Shillington.

Arthur worked as a foreman in forging at Carpenter Steel for 33 years and is now retired.

Ironically, Helen does not even consider herself a good cook.

“I cook the old-fashioned way,” she said. “Meat and potatoes, Arthur grew up on that.”

“She was always a good cook,” Arthur said. “She doesn’t do that much (cooking) anymore.”

These days the couple enjoy eating at the Olive Garden, Wyomissing, and Bob Evans, Lancaster.

“We take them all in,” Arthur said.

The cookbook that Dornblaser created for her family, entitled  “Family Cook-Book and Stories: 1897-2004,”  features recipes as well as family stories. 

1. DUTCH POTATO FILLING

• 6-8 large potatoes
• 1 large chopped onions
• 2 tablespoons butter
• salt and pepper
• parsley
• 2 eggs beaten
• 1/2 cup mill

Instructions
To mashed potatoes, add milk, butter, salt and pepper, parsley, eggs and onion which have been browned in butter. Place in greased casserole. Top with butter. Bake in 350 degree oven for 20 minutes until top is brown.

Short story
“Served on Christmas and New Year’s Day with turkey and giblet gravy. Fresh fruit salad, dried corn, creamed onions, candied sweet potatoes, mince pie (real old country mince pie with lots of beef and whiskey) and black walnut layer cake were also served every year.

2. HURRY UP (PRIZE WINNING) CLAM CHOWDER

• 1 can cream of potato soup
• 1 can creamed corn
• 1 can minced clams
• 2 slices of bacon
• 1 cup of light cream
• 1 cup of milk
• 4 tablespoons of butter
• 1 /4 teaspoon garlic powder
• paprika

Instructions
Fry bacon. Add soup and corn. Carefully spoon in clams so as not to disturb sand in bottom of can. Add cream and milk and garlic powder. Heat. Add butter and paprika. Serves four. Recipe update: For less fat use low fat milk and only half the butter.

Short story
“This chowder recipe was published in the Reading Eagle in 1973 and other national papers in a cartoon. My picture and interview was included in the local paper and I received $10!” 

3. VICTORY GARDEN KETCHUP

• 1 gallon tomato juice
• 1 pint vinegar
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons salt
• 2 tablespoons dry mustard
• 1 /2 tablespoon black pepper
• 1 /2 teaspoon of paprika
• 1 /2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon allspice

Instructions
Combine tomato juice, vinegar and brown sugar in large pot. Cook until reduced in volume, stirring occasionally. Tie spices in a cloth bag. Add to tomato juice and continue to simmer until thick. Stir frequently toward end of cooking time to prevent burning. Using funnel, pour into bottles and cap with bottle capper. Makes four pints.

Short story
“You know how a husband will want the foods he remembers his own mother used to make. I know because Art wanted home-made ketchup. We had a victory garden in Pennside during World War II. I made ketchup and sauerkraut from the tomatoes and cabbage we grew. When Mount Penn High School needed the land for an athletic filed, I was relieved. Now we could go back to Heinz’s 57 varieties.”

4. PUMPKIN PIE

• 2 cups sieved fresh pumpkin
• 1 /2 cup sugar
• 1 /2 cup milk
• 1 egg
• 1 /4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon
• salt
• cinnamon

Instructions
Buy a neck pumpkin on a trip to the Amish country in the fall. Resist picking out the largest. They are too heavy and beastly to cup up. A medium one will yield about three pies. With a large, sharp knife and a cutting board, cut up the pumpkin in large pieces. Discard the seeds. Place the pumpkin pieces, skin side down, on large lasagna pans. Cover lightly with aluminum foil. Bake in 350 oven for three to four hours until the pulp is soft when pierced with a fork. Spoon lightly cooled pulp into a potato ricer to remove the strings. Throw away the skins and strings.

Assembling the pie
Mix sugar, salt, ginger, nutmeg, well-beaten egg and milk to cooked pumpkin pulp. Pour into pastry-lined, seven-inch pie plate. Sprinkle with cinnamon. Place in 420 degree oven for 12 minutes. Reduce temperature to 350 degrees and bake 30 minutes until it tests done.

Short story
“I’ve made this pie almost every Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s for the dinner at the Bakers. Sylvia and the three Baker boys looked forward to the leftover pie for breakfast the next day they told me.”

5. MOM'S RICE PUDDING

• 1 /3 cup white rice
• 1 /2 to 1 cup sugar to taste
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 quart milk
• 1 /2 cup raisins
• Cinnamon

Instructions
Mix all together in casserole. Sprinkle with cinnamon. Bake in medium oven for an hour or more until rice is soft and top is brown. Stir a few times while baking. Good warm or cold.

Short story
“Mom Dornblaser was an excellent baker. She made all kinds of pies including raisin, grape, gooseberry, corn and, of course, and Yutta Kasha. The gooseberries and the Yutta Kasha grew in her garden and re-seeded themselves. Yutta Kasha is German for Jew cherry and resembles the wild weed the children call Japanese lanterns.

Originally published in The Reading Merchandiser, December 2006.