From Our Test Kitchen: Mayonnaise and Meat Balls - Food from 'The Rock'

Sourdough bread, fortune cookies, and Irish coffee are all delectable delights that became famous in San Francisco. On Thursday, May 22, the San Francisco History Center is happy to present author Erica J. Peters speaking about her book San Francisco: A Food Biography.

Climate, geography and cultural history have all influenced the City's culinary tastes, and San Francisco: A Food Biography delves into each of these aspects. It also highlights San Francisco's famous dishes, restaurants, and cookbooks.

For this Test Kitchen, we selected recipes from the Alcatraz Women's Club Cook Book, one of the cookbooks mentioned in Erica Peters' book. "From the title," she writes, "one imagines female prisoners cooking up moonshine in their cells or concocting favorite treats out of institutional ingredients. In fact, the Alcatraz Women's Club was formed by the wives of Alcatraz's guards. These women often felt isolated after moving with their husbands to the island prison, and they put together a series of community cookbooks as a fundraising project for their social club. This collection reflected the cooking of the 1950s, with its heavy emphasis on mayonnaise, gelatin, and canned produce." With that in mind, we selected the 'Porcupines' submitted by Liv O'Connell and the 'Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake' from Mrs. Fran Gulick.

Alcatraz prison, 1955. Courtesy of the San Francisco Public Library

Both recipes were quick and easy, with ingredients that were already stocked in our larders. The recipe for the 'Porcupines' is as follows:

1 lb. ground beef
1/3 c. uncooked rice
1/2 c. chopped onion
1/2 tsp. salt
Pinch of pepper
1 1/2 tsp. sage
2 Tblspn. chopped parsley

Porcupines

1 egg
1 can condensed tomato soup

Wash the rice and mix it with the ground meat. Then add the seasonings, sage, parsley, and slightly beaten egg. Mix thoroughly. Form into balls and put into a deep baking dish. Heat the can of tomato soup with one can of water and pour over the meat balls, having them well-covered. Place in hot oven in a covered casserole and bake 1 1/4 hours.

 We used half as much ground, rubbed sage and dried parsley, and baked the dish in a 375-degree oven. The results were unanimously positive! Many Testers commented that their mothers had made these (or something like these) when they were growing up, and most felt that 'Porcupines' would make a fine dish to bring to a party.

The idea of Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake had most Testers feeling a bit wary, but after the first taste, one commented that this was by far the "best Test Kitchen ever!" Here is the recipe:

Place in large mixing bowl:

Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake

1 c. dates, chopped
1 c. nut meats, chopped
1 tsp. soda
Pour 1 c. hot water over nuts, dates, and soda mixture

Combine and sift together:
1 c. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
3 Tblspn. cocoa
1 3/4 c. flour, sifted all-purpose

Blend into above mixture, 1 cup of Best Foods Mayonnaise and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Add to first mixture of dates and nuts and stir and blend thoroughly. Bake in 8"x8" cake tins or 8"x8"x2" sheet pan (greased and floured) for 35 minutes in 350-degree oven.

We substituted non-GMO organic canola oil mayonnaise for Best Foods, but otherwise left the mid-century recipe intact.

A Tester's plate

Come see Erica J. Peters talk about San Francisco: A Food Biography on Thursday, May 22, at 6:30 p.m. in the Latino/Hispanic Community Meeting Room at the Main Library. The book is available to read at the San Francisco History Center or to check out from various library branches. You can also read Erica Peters' guest blog post. The Alcatraz Women's Club Cook Book is available to read at the San Francisco History Center, as are these other San Francisco cookbooks mentioned in Erica Peters' book: What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking, Clayton's Quaker Cook-Book, Midnight Feasts: 202 Salads and Chafing-dish Recipes, The Refugees' Cook Book, and Mrs. DeGraf's Cook Book.

Alcatraz island today. (L. Weddle)