Emily Dickinson’s Gingerbread Recipe
Posted in Emily Dickinson, Holiday Train Show on January 6th, 2010 by Plant Talk – 4 CommentsCelebrating the Season and Looking Ahead to Our Spring Exhibition
Carol Capobianco is Editorial Content Manager at The New York Botanical Garden.
Garden staff members have been busy learning all they can about Emily Dickinson and her poetry in advance of the Botanical Garden’s spring exhibition, Emily Dickinson’s Garden: The Poetry of Flowers, May 1–June 13, 2010. We take note wherever and whenever we see her name.
So when we saw in a datebook, by chance, a gingerbread recipe by Emily Dickinson, we decided to blog about it, since the Garden currently is presenting Gingerbread Adventures in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden as part of the Holiday Train Show.
With a little digging around I learned that Dickinson had a bit of a reputation as a baker in her hometown of Amherst, Massachusetts. In fact, she was particularly known for her gingerbread (and Rye and Indian bread), and would lower a basket of it to children below (photo by Lewis S. Mudge, courtesy of his estate), according to Emily Dickinson: Profile of the Poet as Cook, with Selected Recipes, by Nancy Harris Brose, Juliana McGovern Dupre, Wendy Tocher Kohler, and Jean McClure Mudge, and published in 1976. We have a copy of this 28-page booklet in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library, where in spring 60 objects that tell the story of Dickinson’s life will be on view in the Rondina and LoFaro Gallery. (Complementing this will be a re-creation of her garden in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory and a poetry walk throughout the Garden’s grounds.)
My intention was simply to post the recipe here, with permission from Jean Mudge, and let you try it out for yourself. However, I got caught up in the “everything Emily” mood, and to celebrate her 179th birthday (December 10), I decided to try making the recipe myself to share with co-workers.
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