Culinary history
Edna Staebler’s book made you feel ‘like you were part of her huge family,’ says fan Susan Chatterson, a Waterloo resident
Edna Staebler’s ‘Food That Really Schmecks’ turns 50
Schnippled bean salad with delectable sour-cream dressing. Sticky, roasted pigs’ tails. Schmierkase (creamy soft cheese) spread on bread with apple butter. Sweet, moist shoofly pie.
These dishes form part of Waterloo Region’s unique culinary heritage, with its distinct German history, famous farmers’ market, and enduring Mennonite presence.
Fifty years ago, writer Edna Staebler opened a window on that heritage, with a book called “Food That Really Schmecks.”
“Schmecks” means “tastes” in German. Using a comfortable storytelling style that reads more like a letter from a friend than a formal cookbook, Staebler shared recipes from her mother’s little black handwritten notebook, friends, and from an Old Order Mennonite family who welcomed her as a guest in their farmhouse by the Conestogo River.
Staebler died in 2006 at the age of 100. By then, she’d written a couple of sequels to the original cookbook. But even though chefs and home cooks are less likely nowadays to serve head cheese, or make cookies with chicken fat, they still love her books with a passion.
“I love how she wrote the Schmeck books, like you were part of her huge family,” said Susan Chatterson of Waterloo. “And she was passing down all these recipes along with the stories that came with them.”
In her note to this reporter, Chatterson included a photo of one of her favourite Staebler recipes. “Salome’s Monster Cookies” was described as being
a sensation in the Old Order community. Mixed in a dishpan, it calls for a dozen eggs and a pound of Smarties. It makes between 300 and 600 cookies, Next to the recipe, the cookbook owner has written: “Good.”
Chef Nick Benninger, who owns four restaurants in Waterloo, admires Staebler so much, he named his company, Fat Sparrow, after one of her recipes.
“Fat Sparrows,” or fetschpatze, are sour-cream mini doughnuts fried in hot lard or shortening and dunked in maple syrup while still warm. They are named after the birds because of the shape they take after frying.
“She should be an Instagram celebrity,” said Benninger.
And her book “should be one of 10 books someone reads when they come here.”
For breakfast he likes to make one of her recipes called Pahnhaas,
which Staebler describes as a “popular old-timer.”
Made of head cheese (jellied pieces of meat from a hog’s head), liverwurst, or chopped meat mixed with oats or cornmeal, it is packed into a loaf shape, chilled and fried until crisp and brown on both sides. The dish is a cousin to scrapple, a delicacy from Pennsylvania.
Staebler says her mother enjoyed the dish with maple syrup, while her Old Order Mennonite friend, Bevvy Martin, served it with relish or a salad.
Yet, the recipe calls only for “a piece of liverwurst” of unspecified size.
“Mother buys liver sausage, eats what she wants of it and uses the rest for Pahnhaas — at least two inches of sausage with 2 cups of cornmeal,” Staebler advises in the recipe.
Benninger loves that the book assumes you know your way around a kitchen, which would have been true of readers 50 years ago. Today’s recipes on the internet are extremely clear because many cooks don’t have that knowledge base. Families make fewer meals at home, and cooking is no longer taught in schools.
“I love the whimsy,” he said of Staebler’s writing. “I love the loosely explained recipes.”
But despite the old-fashioned character of this cookbook — or perhaps because of it — Benninger uses it to introduce a whole new generation to this style of food.
He recently hosted a “hipster beer pop-up” event at one of his restaurants, Nick and Nat’s Uptown 21 in Waterloo, at which “naturally fermented” beer and wine were served, along with Staebler’s Butter Fried Chicken — except that Benninger used rabbit instead of chicken for a more modern twist. In her recipe, Staebler described her mother’s technique, which is to cook the chicken in salted water first, then fry it in butter. The cooking liquid has turned into stock by then, and becomes the basis for a milky gravy.
Benninger’s family once decided to have a “Food That Really Schmecks”- themed dinner at Christmas.
“It was amazing,” he said. remembering how it included the rabbit dish, a green-bean salad with sour-cream dressing and shoofly pie.
Staebler was a journalist and author who wrote 21 books and travelled across Canada writing articles on everything from swordfishing to life in Hutterite colonies, She wrote for Maclean’s, Canadian Living and Saturday Night magazines. She was friends with authors Wayson Choy, Margaret Laurence, and Pierre Berton.
But she was always best known for those cookbooks, despite protesting that she wasn’t really an accomplished cook, just an amateur who had experimented with and collected some simple recipes.
For many people, though, those recipes are like a loyal friend who will never let you down.
Susan Quarry of Kitchener swears by Speedy Pat-In Pastry and Pear Streusel Pie from the second book, “More Food That Really Schmecks.”
She started reading Staebler’s books as a child in Grade 5 and 6, growing up in St. Catharines.
“I got her book out of our school library,” she said. “It was just magical. It was the stories.”
Quarry had a rare chance to befriend the author of those stories, in the last years of Staebler’s life.
She met Staebler through mutual friend Kevin Thomason. Quarry drove her around downtown Kitchener where Staebler grew up. Staebler told wonderful stories about being such a voracious reader as a child that the public library would only let her take out a limited number of books per day.
“She was so down-to-earth,” Quarry said.
Angus Sheach, owner of DeliWorks Cafe in Kitchener, was visiting family in Scotland at Christmas a couple of years ago and wanted to help out with the dinner for 18.
So, he made rolls from Staebler’s recipe for Neil’s Harbour White Bread.
“The family loved it,” he said, showing a photograph of the shiny, golden-brown-topped buns.
Staebler’s recipe “was the first bread I ever baked,” he said.
It reminds him of the bread he grew up with, made by a bakery in Durham, the small town where Sheach was raised.
One of Sheach’s other favourites is cream-and-crumb schnitz pie, made with apples, which he remembers turning out in bulk year after year for a fundraising dinner for 350 people at his church. His secret twist: He adds a touch of maple syrup to the liquid.
“Waterloo County cooking is unique and that’s Waterloo County cooking,” he said of her recipes. “Real food. Homestyle cooking.”
Great food writing is never just about the food, Benninger says.
It’s also about the satisfaction, togetherness and memories the food brings. About the fact that most of those ’’fat sparrow’’ doughnuts will never make it to the table, because of children hovering around, waiting for a taste as soon as it comes out of the fryer.
“Toronto, St. Catharines, do not have an Edna Staebler in their region,” said Benninger.
“She’s talking about something much bigger than just food.”
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