Emma's Pennsylvania Kitchen

For several years of her life, during the Great Depression and later during the Second World War, my Great Grandmother Emma Patterson was a professional cook at the hotel in Spangler, Pennsylvania. She wrote down the recipes that she used at the hotel, as well as those she cooked for her family. When she passed away, she left behind six handwritten recipe notebooks. Now, this collection of old fashioned recipes has been made into a book.

Emma must have found work using the best of her talents, because everyone in my family always remembered her as “a very good cook.” She was famous for her dessert recipes, especially, and the tradition was that if it was your birthday, she would make anything you wanted. You can imagine how that worked out with kids in the family!

My Aunt Jan inherited the recipe books and began to transcribe the recipes into her computer, but Jan passed away soon after she began this work. A few years later, my Uncle asked me if I would continue the work that Aunt Jan had started. That is how I began this project.

I hope you enjoy rediscovering these old family recipes, many of which may not have been used for over half a century. I call it kitchen archaeology.

-Laura Perkins, May 2011