In this second installment of “Dio Maine Cooks: Recipes and Stories from Vintage Maine Church Cookbooks,” we honor St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Palmyra and the church’s new rector, the Rev. Christopher Warne, who are celebrating their new ministry together today.
The slim, spiral-bound book is supported by ads from local businesses, including a full page from the Eastland Woolen Mill in nearby Corinna, which closed in 1996, and Sharon’s Hair Fashion in Hartland, whose tag line is “I would curl up and dye for you.” Among the recipes for dips, casseroles, and cakes are a couple of contributions to make the reader smile. Rhino Stew calls for “1 extra-large rhino, salt and pepper, brown gravy, and 2 rabbits (optional).” After you’ve followed the recipe’s directions to cut the rhino into bite-sized pieces—”this will take 3 or more months”—and cooking it over a kerosene fire at 460 degrees for five-and-a-half weeks, it will serve 4,500 people. “If more people come, add two rabbits, bite size, to stew,” the recipe reads. “But only do this if necessary because most people don’t like to find hare in their stew.” Ha!
The cookbook doesn’t have a publication date, but Beverly Breau, the current clerk of the vestry and a member of the 176-year-old church for more than eight decades, estimates it was sometime in the early to mid-1980s. “I joined St. Martin’s when I was six years old, and I’m 91 now,” said Beverly. She remembers playing on the church playground with fifth Bishop of Maine Oliver Loring, who served from 1941 to 1968, and said that she brought her parents and her brother to St. Martin’s to be baptized. Over the years, she has served on the Standing Committee and multiple terms on the St. Martin’s vestry, and was the first lay person to chair a regional council in the diocese.
Beverly contributed five recipes to the book, and especially recommended these cookies, which are so good I may add them to my yearly Christmas cookie repertoire (and that’s saying something). They exemplify that famous saying attributed to Aristotle, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” and manage to combine the flavors and crumb of shortbread and macaroon into something distinctive and sublime. I substituted unsalted butter for the original margarine, added a few more details to the bare-bones instructions to make the recipe more accessible to novice bakers. It makes a lot of cookies, but if you can’t bake them off all at once, the dough can be refrigerated, tightly covered, overnight. These are, as we say in Maine, a “keepah.”
The “100” Cookies
By Beverly Breau
Adapted slightly from “Cooking with St. Martin’s Episcopal Church,” Palmyra, ME
Makes eight dozen
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 cup canola oil
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup quick-cooking oats
1 cup flaked coconut (unsweetened if you’d like to cut down on the sugar)
1 cup puffed rice cereal (aka Rice Krispies)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Beat butter and sugars in stand mixer until creamy. Slowly add vegetable oil, followed by egg and vanilla. Mix well.
In a large bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt. Stir in oats, coconut, and rice cereal until thoroughly combined.
Drop by spoonfuls (I used a #50 cookie scoop) about an inch apart—they don’t spread much—on an un-greased baking sheet, and bake for 12 minutes.
Cool cookies on a wire rack and store in a tightly-closed container.
Do you have a Maine Episcopal church cookbook you’d like to donate to the archives? Email us here!