LE ROY PENNYSAVER & NEWS - MARCH 19, 2023 by Lynne Belluscio During the next couple of weeks, there are some interesting LeRoy food traditions on the calendar. In fact, folks are already lining up on Fridays for a fish fry. And the internet is swamped with “Where is the best fish fry in LeRoy?” You can buy a fish fry not only at the local restaurants, but also at the Catholic Church, the Masonic Lodge, and the LeRoy Moose. Whether folks are Catholic, Methodist, Baptist or Presbyterian, Friday is the night for a fish fry. A bit of history about the Friday fish fry - Apparently, its origins can be traced to Wisconsin. Thousands of Roman Catholic families emigrating from Europe to Wisconsin in the 1800s discovered that Lake Michigan was a cheap source of fresh caught perch. During Prohibition, it wasn’t uncommon for bars to offer a free fish fry with a beer. Although this explains one historical source of the Friday fish fry, it doesn’t explain the history of the halibut fish fry that is predominant in Western New York and LeRoy. That will take a bit more research. Of course, coming up this week is St. Patrick’s Day with corned beef and cabbage, Irish soda bread, and maybe a little green beer. While the Irish celebrated St. Patrick’s day on March 17, the Italian families were getting ready to celebrate St. Joseph’s day two days later on March 19. In LeRoy, St. Joseph’s Day is celebrated each year with delicious St. Joseph’s Day bread. (And everyone has a favorite recipe.) At one time, many Italian families throughout the community set Joseph’s Day tables which included St. Joseph’s Day bread fashioned into a variety of symbolic shapes. Another interesting food associated with St. Joseph’s Day is cardoons. According to one source, it is only in western New York that they are made from burdock stalks. I have never prepared them. I know they take a lot of time to prepare and I find them delicious. As Easter arrives, the Presbyterian Church this year will offer the “Cromwell Dinner Rolls.” The rolls are named for Mary Frances Cromwell, who was a member of the Presbyterian Church and lived on Bradnell Avenue. She was born in Peoria, New York in 1896 and graduated from LeRoy High School in 1915. She graduated from Geneseo Normal School in 1919 and attended Columbia University and received her BA in 1927 and an MA in 1930. She did graduate work at the University of Virginia, the University of Chicago and Duke University. Frances was a kindergarten teacher in Buffalo, and was the director of the Nursery School in Iowa State University from 1930 to 1932. Her career included the State Supervisor of the WPA Nursery Schools and Family Life for the State of Virginia and a Field Representative and Child Care Consultant for Federal Works Agency in Washington D.C. She was an Associate Professor at Radford College in Radford Virginia and Associate Professor at Longwood College, in Farmwood Virginia and Elementary Supervisor of the Danville Public Schools, in Danville, Virginia, from 1954 to 1969. She taught at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia for 7 years and taught summer school for teachers in Nova Scotia in Halifax, Nova Scotia for 8 years. She was a substitute teacher for the New York State School for the Blind in Batavia. Yet in LeRoy, she is remembered for her recipe for dinner rolls. Sandy Brady sent me the story of Frances Cromwell, and toldme that when she – Sandy - first attended the Presbyterian Church, she was recruited to join the team that makes the famous dinner rolls. This year, they will be made at the St. Mark’s Church kitchen. (To order the rolls you can call the church office 768-8700.) LeRoy has many other food traditions. Mrs. LeRoy copied down recipes from her husband’s family in a small little book. The recipes include mock turtle soup and lemon pie and lemon pudding. Several of the recipes are Dutch and reflect the Dutch origins of her husband’s family. One of the best recipes came from Naomi Wadsworth of Geneseo. It is a fine recipe for “Mrs. Wadsworth’s Lemon Liquor.” In 1889, the LeRoy Library Association assembled local recipes and they were published by the LeRoy Times. The copy that I have belonged to Jennie Modisette Mathews. She was a graduate of Ingham University, and her husband owned a large milling company in Buffalo. Her portrait hangs in the front parlor of LeRoy House. I couldn’t find a recipe for fried fish, but I did find a recipe for corned beef. Probably the most interesting recipe is written in a poem. There are also “Rhymes For The Kitchen” which ends “But one might rhyme for weeks this way, And still have lots of things to say. And so I’ll close, for, reader mine, This is about the hour I dine.” N.B. – Correction from last weeks article. Missy Woodruff in 2012 was the first woman elected to the LeRoy Sports Hall of Fame. The Cromwell Rolls, St. Joseph’s Day Bread and Friday Fish Fry
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