Baked Rock
Striped Bass, or Rockfish, Maryland's state fish from "Life in the Chesapeake Bay" from Miller Library.
In the Maryland Special Collection, within the pages of an ordinary-looking spiral-bound church cookbook is a most unusual recipe: Baked Rock with Curry Stuffing. A perusal of the ingredient list fails to clear up any confusion, as the first ingredient listed, plain as day, is 鈥�1 large rock, cleaned.鈥� The only indication that the main ingredient is not actually a rock is the instruction 鈥渟tuff fish.鈥�
Spiral-bound church cookbooks are products of their time and place and can provide a lot of insight into the community and people who contributed to them. The author of the 鈥渂aked rock鈥� recipe, for example, thought it was so obvious that they were referring to Maryland鈥檚 state fish that they did not even feel the need to list 鈥渞ockfish鈥� in the ingredients. Hopefully, the contemporaneous readers of the cookbook also found it so obvious!
This cookbook, Emmanuel Recipes, was produced by the congregation of the Emmanuel
Episcopal Church in Chestertown. Unfortunately, the book contains no information about
the writers of the recipes; the only credit provided is the illustrator, Doris T.
Joyce. There is also no information regarding the creation date, publication, or history
of the church. Despite the lack of contextual information, remains a testament to the community that created it, and 鈥淏aked Rock with Curry
Stuffing鈥� is a great example of why you should read a recipe thoroughly before you
begin cooking.
