Delicious history
These were special books. Carol Bordeaux could tell before she’d even opened one. She snapped up the cookbooks stuffed with yellowing newspaper clippings and tattered notes without thinking twice, just as she’d done during many years of collecting books she found at yard sales and church rummage sales.
The Medical Lake woman has so many cookbooks in her basement she doesn’t even remember exactly where she found the handwritten collection she’s come to cherish. But when Bordeaux did begin to page though the recipes she knew she’d found an unusual treasure.
“I love to find the old ones,” Bordeaux said. “They are fascinating. I read them like novels.”
Page after page of handwritten recipes in the two books were spattered with ingredients. Notes about substitutions and suggestions are scattered throughout and even rewritten where they faded. The author made notes on her favorites in a looping, beautiful hand: “good,” “real good,” “really delicious” and “never fails.”
It was like inheriting the recipe collection from any mother or grandmother in some ways; the favorite recipes passed down from generation to generation and filled with the wisdom that only comes with years of cooking. As Bordeaux measured, mixed and baked from the books, she began to wonder about the woman who wrote down the recipes inside. By the time some of the dishes had become favorites for her own family, Bordeaux began searching.
“Who was Alice Van Tuyl?” she wrote in a letter, asking for help with the mystery. “Who did she cook for? Does she have family left in the Spokane area? I treasure these books as two of the best in a collection of over a thousand. I would love to know more about her and her history as a cook.”
She worried that a family somewhere was missing the books, and considered returning them if she could find someone in the Van Tuyl family who wanted them.
“I just wonder because of the age of the book and the work that went into it why her family would have let it go? I would have kept it as a memento even it I didn’t cook,” Bordeaux said.
There were few clues in the pages of the collection.
Van Tuyl inscribed the books with her name and the date, 1948. In one book, she wrote Alice Van Tuyl. In the other she wrote: Alice Fay Van Tuyl.
There are notes on some pages about the people who passed along the recipes and how they were used. On a page of Dorothy Dean recipes clipped from The Spokesman-Review, the note says, “Dolores’ wedding cake (very good)” and below it a second remark says, “Merna’s wedding cake, too. Ten years later.”
And Van Tuyl was cooking for a crowd. Many of the recipes included notes where she multiplied the amounts of a small dish to make more. One recipe makes nine pies. Another chili recipe calls for 10 pounds of beans and 50 pounds of hamburger.
Bordeaux guessed that Van Tuyl might have cooked at Sacred Heart or another local hospital. But when she called Sacred Heart, they told her personnel records weren’t kept long enough to help. She turned up nothing at a quick search at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture. A few calls to the Van Tuyls in the local phone book were fruitless.
So she sent her letter to The Spokesman-Review. “I hope you will find an interest in this project,” she said, after a brief explanation.
There was no mention of Alice Van Tuyl in the newspaper’s archives. I gambled with Google and got nowhere. But I thought I’d try calling some local Van Tuyl’s again, just in case. After a few calls there was recognition on the other end of the phone. You should call my aunt, the man said, she can tell you about Alice Van Tuyl.
He was right. His aunt is Alice’s youngest daughter, Glenice.
“Mother died more than 20 years ago,” Glenice Van Tuyl said on a recent Sunday afternoon. “If she were living now she would be close to 90. She was an excellent cook, and she could make something good from almost anything. I never knew anyone who didn’t love her food.”
Glenice is the youngest of the six Van Tuyl children, including Orval, Wanda, Shirley, Dolores and Audrey. She is 10 years younger than her next oldest sibling. Two older sisters have passed away. Alice Van Tuyl raised her children on a farm in Colville through the Great Depression with some of the recipes in those books.
“She baked the best homemade bread you’ve ever seen, with the brown crisp crust on the outside and fluffy on the inside,” Glenice recalled. “We all miss her bread and rolls.”
Fay was Van Tuyl’s maiden name, originally O’Fahy when her father James emigrated from Ireland. She married Charles Van Tuyl after meeting him while she was doing some work for his mother, a talented dressmaker and milliner.
And Bordeaux had guessed right; Alice Van Tuyl didn’t just cook for a big family. When her youngest daughter was in grade school, the family moved to Spokane and Alice went to work as a cook for Shriners Hospital. She worked there for six or eight years and later cooked for some nursing homes as well, Glenice Van Tuyl said.
“She had quite a cookbook collection, and she took her cooking very seriously. For the quantity recipes she put together cookbooks of her own, they’re just handwritten with her own recipes,” Glenice said.
When her daughters were married, Alice Van Tuyl made their wedding cakes. She also made cakes for her niece, Merna, according to her notes on the recipe she clipped from the newspaper, and probably others, too, Glenice said. “She was just the typical good mom. She was there for her family, and that is basically what her life was about.”
The books that landed in Bordeaux’s hands weren’t the only handwritten books left behind by Alice Van Tuyl. Family members split the books among themselves, each taking the ones that meant the most to them. Each child got at least one of the books their mother had compiled. But when Alice’s daughters died the books were handed down to the next generation and beyond, until they found their way to Bordeaux.
Bordeaux was fascinated to hear about the author of her treasured books – and surprised by some of the parallels in her own life. Bordeaux began helping with the cooking duties at her parent’s nursing home in St. Maries when she was just 10 years old. It was the beginning of her lifelong passion for cooking and recipes. Every fall, her family depends on her to bake huge amounts of cookies in time for Christmas. She’s about the same age as Van Tuyl’s youngest daughter and she was raised on the simple home cooking that fills the pages of Van Tuyl’s recipe book.
Though they’re not in Van Tuyl’s family anymore, the books have come home in a way. And Alice’s recipes are still doing what they were designed to do: feed a family and fill them with love.
“I’d like to meet her daughter and talk to her sometime,” Bordeaux said.
As for returning the books, Glenice Van Tuyl said Bordeaux should keep them.
“We took books that we really wanted to have and I have one of her handwritten books. I don’t know. It would be nice to see them, but if she’s enjoying them that’s good. I think my mom would like that.”
Baked Apples with Raisin Sauce
From Alice Van Tuyl
Prick peel with fork. Fill apples with seedless raisins. Dust with cinnamon. Line bake pan with mixture for each cup of sugar: 1 tablespoon flour, 1 1/2 tablespoons butter, 1/2 cup water.
Bake 375 degrees about 45 minutes.
Great Grandma’s Sheep Wagon Carrot Cake
From Alice Van Tuyl
This recipe is over a hundred years old. It originated when a great grandmother used to ride where they herded sheep across four states and needed a recipe with simple ingredients that could be made when convenient.
In a middle-size saucepan put:
1 1/3 cups sugar
1 1/3 cups water
1 cup raisins (or candied fruit)
1 tablespoon butter
2 large finely grated carrots (Approximately 3 cups. They disappear.)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon cloves
1 teaspoon nutmeg
Simmer for 5 minutes then set away for 12 hours. Less time means loss of flavor.
Then add:
2 1/2 cups flour
Sifted with:
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
Bake in two well-oiled loaf pans or one tube pan at 275 degrees for 2 hours.
Simple Fruit Cake
From Alice Van Tuyl
Cream 1 cup sugar, 1/2 cup shortening. Add 1/2 cup molasses, then add 1 cup boiling water with 1 teaspoon soda.
Sift together: 3 cups flour, 1 teaspoon nutmeg, 1/2 teaspoon maple flavoring. Add 1 cup raisins, 1 cup walnuts 1/2 package candied fruit, 1 cup chopped dates and 1 cup coconut if desired.
Bake 350 degrees approximately 1 hour.
Favorite Meat Loaf
2 pounds ground beef
Add:
2 eggs, lightly beaten
And add:
2 cups bread crumbs
3/4 cup onion
1/4 cup chopped green pepper
2 tablespoons bottled horseradish
1 tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1/4 cup ketchup
1/4 cup milk
Shape into loaf and pour 1/2 cup ketchup over top.
Bake about 350 to 400 degree oven. Good. Slices nice.