Marguerite and Clementine

January 16, 2000

Marguerite and Clementine

Our town occupies a space two blocks long between the Delaware river and a small but steep mountain. There are 8 places to eat in those two blocks, from pizza to fine seafood, but no McDonald's. Breakfast regulars go to Ma-Dee's, open 365 days from 6 AM to 1 PM. I was there this morning to pick up the Sunday paper, late, and by good chance my close friend N_ was late picking up hers. We started out commiserating about frozen pipes and leaking pipes in our respective ancient houses. We moved on to computers. She's still using an Apple IIe and Apple Works for business, and can't find any new 5 ¼ disks. By chance I had not yet thrown out the last fifty or so and promised to bring them to to-morrow's Scrabble© game. She didn't have a new IBM clone mouse to offer me in exchange, only sympathy for my dead one. Then we got around to food. I complimented her again on the great meals her son produced for Christmas day. I had tossed some Clementines into my house-gift bag, and he used them immediately in a salad that I have added to my favorites. I'll name it Clementine Salad so I can recognize it. Then she remembered to ask me for my meringue cookie recipe, so she could use up the 24 egg whites left from New Year's eggnog. We ended the morning's collaboration by agreeing that Molly O'Neill's Sunday recipes use more ingredients than we can cope with. She went home to thaw pipes. I went off to buy a new mouse and then home to look for the recipe she wanted.

It's called Forgotten Cookies. I battled with paper linings on cookie sheets, and parchment, and nothing worked until I found this recipe. This has become my standard solution to every request to "bring something." When I first tried these I was reminded of a childhood treat called Marguerites. For once, something tasted the way I remembered it. I found the recipe in mother's copy of Fannie Farmer, 1914 edition, but it was omitted in later editions. Fanny Farmer, properly called The Boston Cooking School Cookbook, was mother's textbook for DomEcon class (Domestic Economy) at Cornell when Miss Farmer had just begun to persuade people to measure ingredients. (She had not however begun to be specific about things she assumed every girl knew, like how long to boil a potato.) DomEcon was no doubt one of the forerunners of the great Cornell Hotel Management School. Mother actually used a chafing dish when she entertained classmates in Sage Hall. They really did make cheese rarebit in it. I still have the beautifully written card she sent to a friend , "Miss Powell requests the pleasure of your company for tea at 2 o'clock on Tuesday." No cell phone handy The chafing dish sat on our dining room buffet on long s-curved copper legs, but I don't remember that it ever got used again.