Tradition Revived in a Community Cookbook
At a time when many of us are wannabe chefs, when the TV is as apt to be turned to the Food Network as to ESPN, one woman in Springs has revived a veritable tradition: She has gathered recipes from family and friends and created a modest community cookbook.
Her name is Ethel Henn and she has put her academic and organizational talents as a former vice principal of Washington Irving High School in Manhattan to good effect on the “Seasons in the Springs Cookbook” as a fund-raiser for the Springs Library. Pamphlets on local topics have been produced for sale at the library in the past, but this time, Ms. Henn not only gathered the content but wrote seasonal introductions and did all the printing and collating.
Seated with her husband, Bob, in their King’s Point Road, Springs, dining room after showing two visitors around, Ms. Henn said her family has had a passion for cooking that goes back at least as far as her great-grandmother Mary Carter. Great-grandma contributed a recipe for Christmas plum pudding that was brought over from England. The version in the book has been updated somewhat, with butter as an ingredient rather than suet. As for Mr. Henn, he was clear that he doesn’t cook but enjoys the fruits of his wife’s labor.
Other members of Ms. Henn’s family are well represented in the book, with recipes from her mother, son, a nephew, an aunt, and a cousin. She inherited the house in Springs from her parents, who bought it in 1965. It still has the warm and cozy style of that decade, although the kitchen is dramatic in red, white, and black. Everywhere you look you see chickens, in paintings, and on fabrics and ceramics. Ms. Henn explained the collection with a tolerant smile, saying, “Our name is Henn, after all.”
Ms. Henn included a few recipes — coconut cake is one — that her mother, Justine Rothwell, used to make, but she left out her mother’s renowned coleslaw because she never liked it. On the other hand, a few of Ms. Henn’s own recipes call for Miracle Whip as a substitute for mayonnaise, because her mother used it. Her nephew’s recipe is for barbecue sauce, and her son, who loves to cook and gave her a smoker as a recent birthday present, contributed a few that are the most elaborate in the book.
She was not as able to get as many recipes from library volunteers as she would have liked, Ms. Henn said, although local residents are indeed represented. She compensated, not only with family recipes, but with some from old cookbooks in the library’s archives, where she spends time as a volunteer. Jean Stafford’s broccoli salad is an example of a recipe found in the archives. Ms. Henn also culled recipes from “Bonac Bites,” a local series done by Mary Ann Siegfried, and from a very old encyclopedia of cooking.
The result is more than 60 recipes, which run the gamut from that old-time Christmas pudding to beer Margarita and from clam pie to spicy sausage and shrimp sauce for pasta, with anchovies optional.
Ms. Henn said quiche Lorraine was her most popular recipe in the book, while her chicken and blueberry salad is arguably the most inventive.
The Springs Library is in a preserved, old Anderson house across the street from Ashawagh Hall. Owned by the Town of East Hampton and operated by the Springs Historical Society, its hours are from 10 a.m. to noon Monday through Friday and from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday. Copies of “Seasons in the Springs Cookbook,” available there, are $5.