Charles Reemlin the most famous and well written of the Chin Curtain beard wearers.
I have to take a pause from pure food writing to talk about my side gig in Germanic Tracht Etymology. It’s the study of clothing and hair or beard styles that indicate what region of Germany people are from. This helps the genealogist who has old family pictures of immigrant ancestors, but no where to start with where they were from. I wrote about this a bit in a blog where I tied a woman’s bridal headdress to her family’s ancestral home in the Germanic Kingdom of Hanover and the origin of Stehlin Meat’s goetta recipe. I found evidence in Cincinnati immigrant photos of Baden immigrant woman wearing the traditional knitted black Badische hood.
But I’d like to mention a beard style common amongst the early Baden winemaking immigrants to the West Side and East Side of Cincinnati from the 1820s to the 1860s. It’s called generally the Chin Curtain. But it also became known as the Shenandoah Beard, because one of the most famous men to don it was Abraham Lincoln. It’s also known as the Amish bear, which the Amish men still wear today. All Amish and Anabaptist religious came from this same region of southwest Germany, the kingdom of Baden – because the largely Catholic government discriminated against them. So it could be called more accurately the Baden Beard.
The style is a neatly trimmed beard that meats the sideburns, but sports no moustache, and rarely the bottom lip connection to the beard.
Today we see a lot of brewers sporting the long ZZ Top style beards, along with man buns. These can be seen as the modern equivalent of the Chin Curtain beard of 1830s winemakers. And I know what you’re thinking, the Chin Curtain is the mullet of the roaring 1830s, but that wouldn’t be true.
We have many examples of Cincinnati Baden winemaking immigrants sporting the Chin Curtain. First and foremost is Charles Reemelin, from Heilbronn, who named the town of Dent and wrote THE go to wine manual called the Vinedressers Manual. His is perfectly kept at about a 2 inch length. Some wearers let the beard grow a bit longer, such as Herr Ziegel, a winemaker from the West Side. That would certainly have gotten in the way of him eating a good turtle soup at any of the many antebellum wine houses in Cincinnati.
Herr Ziegel and his wife were early vineyard tenants of NIcholas Longworth.Frank Frondorf,
Charles Reemelin’s buddy and founding member of St. Al Gonzaga parish, Frank Frondorf sported a neat Chin Curtain.
One of the most unusual sporters of the Chin Curtain – a sort of ZZ Top and Chin Curtain mashup – was Johann Meyers – early candy maker and winemaker on the corner of Madison Ave and Observatory in what would become Hyde Park. He catered the Cincinnati banquet to honor the Marquis de Lafayette, the Revolutionary aide to General Washington on his rock and roll farewell tour of America.
Johann Meyers
Sylvester Oehler’s son in law Jacob Wolfer, husband of Barbara Ottillia Oehler sported a nice one into his old age.
Jacob Wolfer and his wife Barbara Otillia Oehler
And Herr Reininger, an East Side vineyard tenant of Nicholas Longworth sported one.
I myself sported one for a short time in my thirties and I have to say they are one of the most hygienic and least itchy types of beards. The style is popular today and there are many online resources describing how to trim one.
A book group I’ve been a part of this year just read one of the best books I’ve read in probably the last 5 years. It’s called The Last Chinese Chef, written by Nicole Mones, the same author as Lost in Translation. It’s about a female food writer who must go to China to settle her dead husband’s affairs, and also has an assignment to cover a food competition that a Chinese-American chef is entering in China. The Chef’s father had fled China during the Communist takeover because he made imperial dishes he learned from his father, who was one of the most famous imperial chefs. Anything Imperial was considered anti-communist and former imperial chefs were being jailed.
The food writer goes on a journey of exploration of Chinese cuisine, learning how different it is from American Chinese cuisine, and how important the communal and symbolic aspect of dishes are to the Chinese people. No food in China is plated, it is served as we say Family Style. There are many layers to Chinese cuisine. Flavor has several aspects – xian is sweet natural flavor, like butter, fresh fish, or clear chicken broth. Xiang is the fragrant flavor, like frying onions. Nong is the concentration of flavor from meat stews or dark sauces or fermented things. You er bu ni, is the taste of fat without the oiliness. Then there’s the aspect of texture, which we are not focused on in Western cooking as much. Cui is crispy texture. Nen is when you take something fibrous like shark fin and make it smooth and yielding. Ruan is perfect softness like boiled chicken or a soft boiled egg.
Sea Cucumber exhibits the texture of Nun in China.
I was part of a banquet my company threw for a group of visiting Chinese customers. It was over eight courses, served communal style. One of the last dishes served was stewed sea cucumber, which I now know was meant to exhibit Nen. To this day I can’t get over the slimy, chewy texture of that dish, which is considered an expensive delicacy in China.
I learned that despite our wrangling of Chinese cuisine, there is one Chinese-American dish that is somewhat authentic if made right, and that is wonton soup. It comes from the regional cuisine of Shandong, near Beijing, which focuses on light, clear flavors, with subtle accents such as scallion.
The Dowager Empress Ci Xi of China
In the book, there is also focus on a favorite peasant dish – xiao wo tou –of Dowager Empress Ci Xi, of the last Quing Dynasty. They were originally little thimble shaped steamed corn buns that were sold in roadside food stands. The dowager empress ate this as a young woman when they were fleeing the Forbidden City during the Boxer Rebellion. But after she returned to the palace, the imperial chef amped them up and made them with more upscale ingredients – dates, chestnut flour and osmanthus, which is a fragrant flower similar to the chrysanthemum. It became a symbol of Imperial Cuisine and of an empress similar to Marie Antoinette who had no concern for her people, only social climbing from concubine to empress and her lavish imperial lifestyle. The main character’s father was forced to leave China because he was the national expert on making this dish, considered anti-Communist.
What makes this book so great for a foodie reader is that it goes into great depth in the history of Chinese food and its particular dishes, which are completely different than American Chinese food we know like General Tsao Chicken or Sweet and Sour Pork. It goes into the behind the scenes in the Imperial kitchens of the turn of the last century – a Chinese version of the popular Netflix series The Bear – and how many of the best imperial cooks were sold into slavery, some of them castrated as eunuchs, by their poor parents into these kitchens.
During our group discussion I asked the group if there was a dish that someone could serve you at a dinner party that would offend you. Nothing really came to mind. And I couldn’t think of anything either. There’s something very intimate and special about eating in someone’s home something that they have made themselves. And even the simplest foods made with love are special.
Tuna Noodle Casserole holds a lot of nostalgia for our book group
That lead us to the next discussion about one of THE simplest foods – tuna noodle casserole, which everyone in the group grew up on. I said my mother’s version had buttered saltines on top. The more common topping was potato chips. One member said his family used Ritz crackers on top. Several also said their family’s casserole had the addition of peas, which my mother’s version did not have. But everyone in the group, even the guy who doesn’t like seafood and shellfish, loved tuna noodle casserole. It represented a comforting memory of our simpler childhoods.
I also asked the group if there was a dish or cooking implement that anyone had that is a family legacy or belonged to your parents or grandparents. There were items like their grandmother’s apron, wooden spoon, jello molds, and pieces of their family formal dining set. For me, my legacy items are both grandmothers’ recipes and my maternal grandparents’ cookie cutters and cake toppers from their bakery.
This book reminded me how much I loved watching my Grandma cook while sitting at her baby blue Formica tear drop shaped kitchen table – how we shared freshly bought macerated strawberries over her homemade baking powder biscuits. I long to be back there and wish I had watched more intently and asked her more questions about her cooking and where she got all her recipes. I remember my paternal Grandma whipping up homemade coleslaw to go with my lunchmeat sandwich she served after I cut her grass. I found out that recipe symbolized her family’s resilience to the Flood of 1937 and their survival through its aftereffects. I remember how perfectly my own mother fried City Chicken for us and her other simple dish, which I still make – salmon cakes and canned spaghetti.
This book is the epitome of the aspect of food evolution like how our local immigrant foods goetta and Cincinnati chili have arisen and been cemented into our local food culture.
While in the U.S. we have definitely moved full bore into Pumpkin Spice Season, in Germany, particularly northern Germany around Hamburg, it’s currently Elderberry Season until the end of the month. This is a season long awaited every year, by those in the know, who make delicious elderberry jam, wine, and infused spirits. There’s also even a soup recipe that sounds amazing, if you like having a purple stained mouth for about 24 hours. The Germans say the soup ‘injects some color into the gray season.”
Don’t confuse it with elderflower season, which is in mid June, and which is a more subtle flavor than the berry. In Germany they make a elderflower syrup which they mix with sparkling wine and in sparkling water to make what they call a ‘schorle.’ In New Orleans two weekends ago I had the first tasting of a new dessert by Chef at historic Brennan’s– a deconstructed peach cheese galette with elderflower syrup that was simply delicious.
Elderberries can be tart, tangy, or bitter. American varieties tend to be the sweetest. They’re described as having a very aromatic or earthly fresh flavor with a bit of tartness. The berry clumps look a lot like pokeweed, which is highly toxic, so better to go picking at a recognized farm or go foraging with someone who knows their stuff.
A friend of mine in Germany infuses a local wheat brandy with Elderberries, and he’s promised me a bottle of this year’s vintage, which makes me super-excited. He and his wife also make elderberry jam.
Many people, even locally make an elderberry wine, which has been entered in the Harvest Home fruit wine category several years. A bottle of such elderberry wine made by the Witterstaetter flower family is in the collection of the Delhi Historical Society Museum.
The German word for Elderberry is Fliederbeeren or also (in other regions of Germany) Holunderbeeren. A favorite use of the berry juice is Elderberry Soup, which is from the North of Germany, in the northernmost state of Schleswig-Holstein, north of the port city of Hamburg. It’s also part of the eastern states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and in Pommeranian cuisine, as well as Saxony and the Vogtland. Fruit soups are somewhat common in the north. Fliederbeerensuppe is in the lines of another popular fruit soup – sour cherry soup.
The soup contains elderberry juice with cooked apple bits and the local semolina or wheat dumpling, with warm spices like cloves and cinnamon – sort of a North German take on the Appalachian apple dumpling. Some thicken the juice with corn starch or a flour roux.
Elderberry soup is packed with a lot of vitamins and for many Germans holds lots of memories of their chilidhood. It’s sort of one of those recipes your Oma or grandmother cooked in the early fall and gave everyone a purple mouth after eating it. It gave kids something to laugh about showing each other their dyed tongues and lips.
So, save Pumpkin Spice for October and November, and this month, go all in with the elderberry.
As we transition from Summer Festival season to Oktoberfest season in Cincinnati, it’s time we ponder one point. Was it beer or wine that funded the early German Catholic Mother churches in the suburbs of Cincinnati’s large archdiocese? Yes, there are now awesome local craft brews to chose from while you’re spinning the wheel of cheer, or playing bingo at a church festival. Yes you can usually have an amazeballs grilled brat with spicy German mustard. But I ask you, where is the Baden bibelskas or smear cheese? Where is the Catawba wine booth? And where in the H-&$! Is the zwetschenwasser/plum brandy? Well no where – but it should be.
1850s Catawba Wine label from West side winemaker John Mottier, whose vineyard is now Dunham Recreation Center
Before lager beer came to Cincinnati with the Swabians and Bavarians in the 1850s and later, Cincinnati was drinking really crappy ‘fermented beers’ and ales. But, we were drinking really good sparkling Catawba wines, and good Norton, Ives, Delaware and Isabella wines. And we were eating bibelskas/smear cheese, good Baden pastries and sweet breads, and of course, the Kaiser of them all – liverwurst. More liver please!!
Baked goods and smear cheese (bibeleskase) from Baden wine country.
That’s because our early wave of Germanic immigrants came from southwest Germany in an area called the Rhine Rhombus. It’s an area on the Rhine in wine country bounded in the west by Marlensheim, Alsace Lorraine; the north by Baden-Baden; the east by Stuttgart, and in the south by Freiburg. Starting in 1817 – the “Year Without a Summer”, and in succeeding famine years in that region, thousands of immigrants flooded to Cincinnati. These early immigrants from the Rhine Rhombus weren’t beer drinkers, only Rhine wines and good fruit brandies. They also didn’t wear green alpen hats, nor alpen boots and lederhosen and dirndls. They wore woven straw shoes – strahschuhe – and cotton knickers, and the women wore black knitted hoods to work the vineyards.
Vineyard crucifixes are all over the vineyards of Baden, indicating how the winemaking industry is infused with Catholicism.
I contest that the first German mother church outside of downtown Cincinnati, Our Lady of Victory – Maria zum Siege, in German – in Delhi township, should have been named Our Lady of the Catawba Grapes – Maria zum Catawba Trauben, in German. That’s because the land on which the first church was built, was donated by John Gerteisen, an immigrant wine maker from the town of Merdingen, Baden. His uncle, my fifth great grandfather, John Barmann, was also a founding members in 1842. He had a ½ acre Catawba vineyard on Rapid Run at St. Lawrence and later at the head of what is now Palisades drive.
Children of Johann Barmann who came as children to Cincinnati and probably were the free helping hands in the vineyard
The cool thing about Our Lady of Victory’s early members is that we have a list running the first decade of her tithing members. And we have a report of Cincinnati vineyardists that the Cincinnati Horticultural Society made in 1847, three years after OLV’s founding, which gives details of the vineyards of these early parishioners. Johann Amman, Nicholas Longworth’s very first tenant on his Boldface Creek first vineyard in Delhi (now Embschoff Woods Park) was an early member. He came from Sasbach am Kaisterstuhl in Baden. Sebastian Rentz, cultivator of one of only two native grapes from Cincinnati, the Rentz Seedling, and remaining record holder of largest producer per acre of Catawba grapes (1300 gallons per acre). Other winemaking founding families were: Theodor Gregor Lipps, from Schutterwald, Baden, Proteus Heckinger, from the Amoltern, near Freiburg; Jacob Story from near Heilbronn, Baden; George Herbstreit, who had 1 acre of vineyards decimated by the 1847 frost; Ignatz Witterstaetter, from Achern, Baden; Stephan Tuchfarber, from Rimfinger, Konigreich Baden, Ignatz Benz from Weisbock, Baden; Anthony Kahney, from Adelhausen, Baden; Phillip Jergens from Hitdorf, Baden; and Phillip Feist, from Schutterwald.
Stephen Tuchfarber’s grandson, Frank Tuchfarber, co-founder of the Cincinnati symphony orchestra would actually claim he was of Belgian ancestry, not German to avoid the anti-German sentiment in Cincinnati around World War I. Their former conductor was deported during World War I, for his refusal to stop playing German music. This was a pretty common thing for Cincinnatians to do if you had business with the non Germanic community. My own grandfather, an insurance man, claimed we were of Alsatian heritage, which could be no further from the truth.
Michael German was an interesting founding member. He had five acres and 3 ¼ acres in bearing in 1847, making a respectable 600 gallons of wine. He came to the US in 1832, after running the Hirsch Inn in Walterweier near Schutterwald. In Cincinnati his wine fed into his hotel, the Green Tree, on the Ohio Riverfront, which he passed on to his son Jean Baptiste German. JB’s daughter Rosina German married into another Schutterwald OLV family, marrying Simon Lipp, who ran the Canal Hotel in the 1840s in Cincinnati. The Lipp family in Delhi to this day continues to make wine for themselves and their friends and family, although of Concord, not Catawba grapes.
Peter Strasser, an early OLV parishioner from Walsbronn, Alsace Lorraine, had a farm and hosted the Martini wine making family, the Kaisers and Bachstedters.
These wine families would intermarry for several generations. John Barmann’s granddaugthers married into other winemaking families: Clara married Sebastian Rentz Jr, and Louise married Frank Stetter, the George Remus of Altar wine, or the sole distributor of altar wines to the archdiocese of Cincinnati. John Gerteisen’s daughter, Agatha Gerteisen Engler, married a man from Niederrimsingen, a village near her family’s. She gave the statue of the Sorrowful Mother to the original church, modeled after the same statue in their ancestral St. Remigius church in Merdingen. Clearly there was no lack of sources for altar wine for the masses. Rentz’ daughter would marry the son of Nicholas Longworth’s most successful vineyardist in the Garden of Eden, Friedrick Schnicke.
Fr. Engelbert Stehle, a Swiss immigrant from Basel who benefitted from being the minister to the winemaking families of OLV, St. John Dry Ridge, and St. Al Gonzaga.
At the time Fr. Engelbert Stehle was the pastor at Our Lady of Victory. He was from Basel, Switzerland, at the border of Baden, which spoke the same Allemanic German dialect and shares many of the same customs, including a fascination with Fasnet or Mardi Gras parades and celebrations. Fr. Stehle helped to form the St. John the Baptist Church in Dry Ridge/Bevis. Melchior Betscher, an immigrant from Ringsheim Baden donated land for the building of the Church. Ringsheim is in the heart of the Rhine Rhombus and is a winemaking town. Today there are five wineries around the town. He came with his parents Michael and Maria Anna Vennis Betscher in 1848 to avoid military conscription for he and his five other brothers. Michael Betscher and his father Franz were makers of earthen ware in Germany, which would have included corkable crocks for storing wine. Before the prevalence of glassworks, earthen ware was the way wine was stored. The name of the church in Ringsheim is St. John the Baptist, so that indicates that Heinrich Kleine, who gave the name to St. John Dry Ridge might have also been from Ringsheim.
But what is super fascinating about the early Germanic parishioners of St. John Dry Ridge, is that it is one of the first parishes where there are intermarriages with families of Wine Country (southwest Baden’s Rhine Rhombus) and Goetta Country (Northwest Germany’s Goetta Parallelogram). Early churches usually were started by members of the same region who chain migrated together. Henry Kleine and Mary Espel, Bernadina Burwinkel (from Riest near NeuKirchen-Vorden) and Friedrick Kleine,. The marriage of Simon Hilpolsteiner (from Burggriesbach, Franconia, next to Bavaria) and Mary Kleine would be an intermarriage of a beer family (Rotbier or red beer from nearby Nuremburg) and Mary Kleine a winemaking family. Their families would have spoken different dialects of German and had different traditional clothing, foods, and customs.
German-Cincinnati second generation Catholic weddings. Baden-Baden family Feist and Lipps, Henry Kleine (Baden) and Marie Espel (Hanover) and Joseph Hilposlster (Francoia) and Maria Kleine (Baden)
This little sidebar is what makes my role as a food etymologist fascinating. It’s this intermarriage of couples from opposite side of Germany – wine country and beer country – wine country and goetta country – that causes the fusion of our “german” foods in Cincinnati in particular (as a large urban city at the time) and the rest of the U.S. Our Cincinnati brat, which is actually a Bavarian weisswurst in Cincinnati is grilled like a Nuremburger bratwurst for that snap upon a bite. But the white sausage of Bavaria is delicately boiled, and valued for its tender cooked meat that can be “zuzelned” or sucked out of its casing, and NEVER served topped with sauerkraut!
Frank Frondorf, winemaking founding parishioner and major funder of St. Aloysisus Gonzaga Church in Bridgetown
One of the prime funders of St. Aloysius Gonzaga Church in Bridgetown in 1867 was farmer and vineyardist Frank Frondorf who had a 200 acre farm extending on much of Bridgetown Road and who helped other vineyardists like Charles Reemelin plant their vines. He apparently provided the bricks for the 1867 Church and even hosted the archbishop and dignitaries at the ground breaking ceremony with a dinner at his farm to help gain more funding for the church. Fr. Engelbert Stehle was the first pastor at St. Al’s. He must have enjoyed the homemade wine of his parishioners. And surely, he consecrated local Catawba wine at the Eucharist.
Barbara Ottilia Oehler, Silvester Oehler’s daugther and her husband Jakob Wolfer, married at St. James White Oak, the parish her father founded
St. James (originally St. Jackobs) in White Oak was founded by Sylvester Oehler in 1843, an immigrant winemaker from the village of Schutterwald in Baden.
Sylvester Oehler’s brother, Simon (and his wife Emerentia) were founders in 1834 of Cincinnati’s first German Catholic Church in downtown, known as Holy Trinity/Heilige Dreifaltigheit in German. They would then move into the West End and become members of St. Joseph, another German offshoot parish.
Assumption Parish in Mt Healthy (Maria Himmelfahrt in German), was founded in 1854 by Joseph Heckinger, the winemaking father of Proteus, who was a founder of Our Lady of Victory. From the 1847 Cincinnati Horticultural society report, we learn that Joseph had 4 acres of vineyard in 1847, 1 and ¾ acres bearing fruit. He made 1000 gallons of wine that year and sold 400 gallons of pressed juice from his press for $400. So he had a fairly large sized winemaking operation.
Even in the East Side, the two German Mother parishes were founded by German immigrant winemakers. St. Francis de Sales was built in 1849 on land donated by early parishioner Heinrich Wesjohann, who had a small Catawba vineyard in Woodburn and was later a dealer in wine and liquor.
St. Stephens on Eastern Avenue was built in 1867 in view of Longworth’s Bald Face Hill Vineyards (now Alms Park) on land he owned, and at the time was leased through his son Joseph Longworth. Six of the founding members were former vineyard tenants of Nick Longworth – Isador Brandstetter, Jacob Feck, August Scholl, John Dumbacker, Frank Noschang and Felix Schutt. Isador Brandstetter’s original house is still standing on Tusculum (having been moved from its original site on Longworth’s vineyard.
St. Stephens original church on Eastern Avenue with Longworth’s Bald Hill Columbia Tusculum vineyards in back and founding winemaker Isador Brandstetter driving the wagon
So, maybe these parishes should have a booth serving Catawba wine at next year’s summer festivals. And please, have some liverwurst and smear kase with good rye bread. Oh yeah, and a shot station with plum brandy, too!!
I just returned from another fantastic trip to New Orleans and southern Louisiana. This will be about the seventh time I’ve visited, and each trip has been a different type of trip. I always come home with a whole new set of food inspirations and things to try. The Crescent City is a food city and you don’t need to talk to a chef to find great food tips. In fact, it’s probably better to talk to your Uber driver, the museum director, or the woman at the cash register.
I started going to New Orleans in college when we’d go down during Mardi Gras to stay with our friend Matteo who was co-oping in nearby Baton Rouge at BP. We learned about the ubiquitous King Cake and the touristy red Hurricane drink from Patty O’Bryans.
Two trips ago I went to the large sugar cane plantation museums on I-10 an hour west of New Orleans. I learned about the Satsuma orange and satsuma orange liqueurs and fried boudin balls (like our Cincinnati goetta balls). The trip before that I learned about the Mirliton – an eggplant like vegetable that New Orlenians like to bake and stuff like a squash with seafood or sausage dressing. I had it at a Korean restaurant in the Garden District where it was sauteed in gochujang and served as one of the complimentary banchans with the entree. That same trip I fell in love with Chee-Wees, the New Orleanian puffed cheese snacks that predated Cheetos.
The crispiest juiciest fried chicken in New Orleans is from a food mart.
This time I had all the required eats – Brothers Fried Chicken, fresh raw oysters, oysters Rockefeller at its origin – Antoine’s, and Oysters Bienville, crawfish etouffee, Cajun gumbo, which starts with a dark brown roux, not tomato sauce. I also had turtle soup for the first time, and had the first of a new dessert from chef at Brennans – thin sliced poached pears over roquefort cheese with cornmeal madelaines and an elderflower sauce. I had a small taste of beignets from Café Du Monde and their iced café latte. At the Tabasco Fan Experience at Avery Island, I tasted the new Raspberry Chipotle Tabasco sauce and two flavors of Tabasco ice cream.’
Frozen cafe latte at Cafe DuMond
One thing I saw everywhere but didn’t investigate was the Spicy Cajun Pickled Quail Eggs. Maybe I’ll do a tasting next trip. I also didn’t get to taste a Hubig’s Coconut Pie. A group is working to startup a new plant to replace the one destroyed by fire ten years ago. Simon Hubig got his start in Cincinnati in Price Hill before moving to Texas and New Orleans, where the deep fried hand pie became a New Orleans icon. I still have not had a Lucky Dog from one of the many available on the street in the French Quarter. I saw but didn’t taste a new favorite Anacronym Jam – the G.A.T.O.R jam made by Southern Sisters Gourment. I It stands for Ginger Apple Tangerine Orange and Raspberry. I bet it’d be good on a southern biscuit.
A lucky dog vendor on Canal Street in the French Quarter
This trip was all about old New Orleans and I dove deeply into Cajun and creole cooking. I came back with four new dishes to try. From my Uber driver Octavia who took us home after a late night of partying, I learned her hack to her great grandmother’s creole stuffed pepper recipe – cream of shrimp soup. She says her husband loves them, but she won’t tell him, a New Orleans chef, her secret ingredient! She uses the trinity – onion, celery, and bell pepper, shrimp, finely diced andouille sausage, a bit of Louisiana hot sauce and the secret cream of shrimp soup. Instead of rice she uses bread crumbs. This one is definitely going to my test kitchen for some development!
At breakfast at my hotel, I learned from my waiter that he hates Louisiana style hot sauce like Tabasco and Crystal, because of the high amount of vinegar, but loves his grandmothers’ family Seychel island hot sauce, or more accurately a vinaigrette. The Seychelles are islands east of Kenya, Africa. Seychelles apparently love the heat! The islands are known for their fiery chilies and you will find this Creole chili sauce in almost every home in the Seychelles. It contains Bird’s Eye red chili, onion, tomato, garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and black pepper, and a local fruit called Bilimbi or tree cucumber, which is in the same family as star fruit. Nothing is cooked or fermented, but finely diced, mixed together and refrigerated.
The woman working the cash register at the Tabasco Sauce Country Store talked about her mother’s wild duck gumbo, which is the only type that she used gumbo file as the thickener. A local woman chimed in that there used to be a few restaurants that would make wild duck gumbo during its hunting season, which was coming up.
macque choux a southern Cajun dish
Finally, in the depths of Acadiana in New Iberia, about two hours due west of New Orleans I learned from a tasting with Alex, the husband of the executive director of a local museum, about a Native American dish passed along from the Chitimachas to the Acadians called macque choux. It’s like a spicy-sweet version of creamed corn without the cream. It has the trinity, and the blessing (cayenne pepper, black and white pepper). It’s tasty and could be served alongside any Cajun protein like blackened redfish or grilled whitefish in place of grits. I’d even serve broiled shrimp on it like shrimp and grits. Alex also served us some of his homemade boudin, which has higher amount of liver than most, and was simply fresh and phenomenal.
So talk to everyone you meet in New Orleans. Chances are they have a unique recipe hack to the local cuisine.
The next chapter of Kleiner family brewing needs to be made into an HBO mini series a la The Gilded Age. It’s probably more interesting than the first chapter. It involves social climbing, family squabbling, American princesses and deceit. And, it involves the two daughters of Meinrad Kleiner, Josephine and Emma.
Unlike Fridolin’s estate, which took 45 years to settle to the heirs of his four children – Joseph, Bertha Weber, Frieda Bodeman, Mathilde Schott, and Joseph; Meinrad’s estate was split without contest between the two daughters Emma and Josephine. Thankfully, both daughters had married into wealthy New York brewing families and were living there, otherwise, they would have shaken up the Cincinnati brewing scene as they did in New York and caused major devastation in our beloved industry.
In 1870 Josephine Kleiner had married August Schmid son of one of wealthiest brewers of New York City who co-owned Bernheimer and Schmid Brewery. The lavish ceremony took place at St. Francis de Sales Church on Liberty Street in Over-the-Rhine and the couple moved to New York City.
August Schmid had come to the United States at the age of twelve from his native St. Gallin, Switzerland. Having learned the fundamentals of the brewery business from his father, August had traveled to Munich to study the science of beer. Upon his return to New York he was made a foreman in the Lion Brewery of which his father was a partner.
In 1879 August was a full partner and ten years later had amassed a fortune and established his family in a fine residence at 16 East 80th Street, just off Fifth Avenue. In the summer of 1889 August took rooms at the Hotel Royal while his wife and two daughters were in Europe and, after a three day illness, died there of pneumonia.
Emma married Anton Schwartz in Manhattan in 1876, having met him through his association with her brother-in-law August Schmid, owner of the Lion Brewery. Schwartz graduated from New York City College and in 1870, he was engaged by August Schmid and his Lion Brewery in Manhattan. By 1875 he became its Superintendent. At the time the brewery was co-owned by four partners Max E and Simon Bernheimer, August Schmid and Anton Schwartz.
August Schmid died in 1889, and his partner Emmanuel Bernheimer in 1890. Both left significant estates. Bernheimer had three sons who had already begun to play important roles in running the Lion Brewery. Schmid had two daughters, but one, Josephine, died as a young woman. For the Schmid family, his wife Josephine took over the management role. Having grown up with a father who owned the Jackson Brewery in Cincinnati, she had developed a shrewd business sense, was cunning and greedy. Soon, she and the Bernheimer sons were arguing over operations, and, in 1901, they went to court. The business relationship with her partners had become so argumentative and unworkable that she bought them out for $1.4 million, leaving the Bernheimer brothers and Schwartz without a brewery. Mrs. Schmid became the sole owner of the Lion Brewery in 1903.
Because of Josephine’s contention against the partners, she and her sister squabbled against each other. Their aging, widowed mother Maria Magdalena Kleiner shuttled between their two mansions in New York City. Their feud caused her such great anguish that she committed suicide in 1900 by inhaling gas from her bedroom heater by removing the tubing and placing it in her mouth. She was found by her maid Hannah in the morning
By 1903, after gaining a national reputation as a brewmaster and the squabbles with Josephine Schmid, Anton Schwartz and the Bernheimer brothers purchased the John F. Betz Manhattan Brewery for $850,000, forming the Bernheimer & Schwartz Pilsener Brewing Company located at Amsterdam Avenue and West 128th Street in Manhattan. After their deaths, he became sole owner of the brewery. Max Bernheimer told the press “We have no such intention (to compete with Lion Brewery ). According to the agreement with Mrs. Schmid there is no clause prohibiting us from going into the brewery business again. We do not intend to fight the Lion Brewery or any other brewery.”
Josephine Schmid was intelligent, resourceful and she liked money. Her inheritance from August was a whopping $1 million in 1889. But she intended to have more. Schmid’s will gave Josephine power to manage, sell or dispose of the estate as she felt best; however one third would go to each of the daughters upon their reaching legal age.
In February 1893, the eldest daughter, who was named after her mother, unexpectedly died not long after turning 21 years old,. A large crowd attended her funeral mass at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral followed by her burial in Greenlawn Cemetery.
The Lion Brewery was a sprawling group of buildings between 107th and 109th Streets and Amsterdam Avenue to Central Park West, employed 230 men and not a single woman. When Josephine Schmid incorporated the brewery, she made herself president and treasurer and showed up at the plant every day. She also ran the fifty saloons her husband had accumulated over the years, though her work was exclusively on the executive side. She “never attempted to brew beer in person,” she later explained, and the “mending of beer pumps was always relegated to employees.” During this time she also expanded August’s real estate holdings.
Josephine remained actively involved in the brewery while shrewdly buying up valuable parcels of land along upper Fifth Avenue and other developing areas of the city. The two flagship brands were Lion Pilsner, which they claimed to be the first Pilsner in America, and a darker malty Lion Wuerzburger, probably a nod to her father Meinrad Kleiner’s Wuertemburg family roots.
On June 26 of 1894, her second daughter Pauline reached 21 years of age. Josephine convinced the young woman to sign a document allowing Josephine to purchase Pauline’s portion of the estate for $342,732. The document further stipulated that the money would remain in the possession of Josephine for 20 years as long as she paid her daughter 5 percent as income from the fund.
By 1897 Josephine’s fortune was increasing steadily. In September she spent $92,599 on the plot of land at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 62nd Street, in Manhattan’s most fashionable and exclusive residential area. A year later her new home was rising. The brewer’s wife had set her sights on becoming socially-accepted, like the character Bertha Russell on HBO’s Gilded Age.
Six years after her husband’s death, in a social climbing act similar to Alva Vanderbilt, Josephine built a grand Loire Valley chateaux with an impressive conical tower at the corner on fashionable fifth avenue. A series of tall, narrow chimneys lined up around the roofline and spiky Gothic tracery capped the windows and crowned the roof. Many of the architectural features were similar to the Isaac Fletcher mansion completed the same year 17 blocks north on 5th Avenue. To the rear was a walled garden. While the grand entrance was centered on the 62nd Street façade, Josephine retained the more impressive 807 Fifth Avenue address.
Inside, Josephine filled the mansion with all the trappings expected in the home of a Fifth Avenue socialite. The most expensive furniture, antiques and artwork, carved mantelpieces and imported woodwork were there – everything to help society forget she was not only nouveau riche, but a brewer’s wife.
Josephine had increased the size of her husband’s estate to over $5 million and was paying herself an annual salary of $500,000 a year; not including the sizable income from her real estate dealings.
Seven years later the brewery was valued at an estimated $5 million and Josephine owned 35 parcels of valuable real estate as well as other securities; a personal fortune of about $10 million. On January 10, 1908, Pauline (who was now the wife of stockbroker Hugh A. Murray), had had enough. Realizing she had been duped, she sued her mother for her rightful portion of the family fortune including all accumulations with interest that had accrued since she became 21 years old. She further demanded that the papers she had been convinced to sign be declared void and all real estate purchased with her money be declared hers.
The trial, tagged by The New York Times as “a bitter fight between mother and daughter,” went on in court for three days before being halted. Later it was announced that an undisclosed settlement had been reached.
If this had not supplied enough gossip for afternoon teas, Josephine went further the following year when she married Don Giovanni del Drago of Rome in a small ceremony at the Church of the Sacred Heart in Brooklyn. Del Drago came from an old, noble family related to European royalty. Called Prince del Drago by the press, his family fortunes had been seriously depleted. His full name was Giovanni Battista Maria Ladisloa Urbano Ferdinando Filippo del Drago.
Both had something the other needed. Josephine had around $10 million American dollars and del Drago had a long established title. To them it was a perfect match.
The Times reported that the del Drago family felt otherwise and, when they found out about the marriage of the 27-year old Giovanni to the 50-year old Josephine, they were irate. The paper quickly ran a retraction correcting the groom’s age while adding some unflattering facts. “Del Drago is 47, not 27,” it said, “he is divorced, he has a 20-year old son, and he is not a prince. He is the fourth son of his father, the Prince, who still lives.”
Charicature of Giovanni del Dragl
Two days after the wedding the New York Times ran another headline reading “Brewer’s Widow Not a Princess.” The story detailed the del Drago family tree and ended with “…there are nearly a dozen lives between Mrs. Schmid’s husband and a title.” Nonetheless, Josephine insisted on being referred to as the Princess Del Drago from then on.
To New York society she was still “the brewer’s wife.” Sadly no portrait of New York City’s richest businesswoman seems to be in existence.
Josephine and Giovanni closed up No. 807 Fifth Avenue while they toured Europe, then settled in Italy for an extended period. The couple had no more use for their Fifth Avenue mansion and were surely tired of reading the brutal headlines mocking their union. As if to close off the irony of the whole saga, they sold the chateau to the Knickerbocker Club (one of the oldest and most entrenched old-money clubs in New York) in 1912. After only 16 short years at the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 62nd Street, Josephine’s chateau was replaced by what we now know as the headquarters of the Knickerbocker Club at 2 East 62nd Street. The house, which The Times called “an artistic structure” and “one of the finest houses in the upper Fifth Avenue residential section,” was demolished exactly two years later.
As the Princess del Drago was clawing her way to the top of the New York Social world, one of the three matriarchs of New York society, Mrs. Mamie Stuyvesant Fish, threw one of her crazy parties with a guest monkey named Prince Del Drago, as a joke. Mrs. Fish told everyone the monkey was related to the Del Dragos of Rome, a direct dig at “Princess” Josephine Schmid del Drago. This party was immortalized in a scene in the recent Julian Fellows-created HBO Series The Gilded Age.
As if the family squabbles and separation of the Lion Brewery and the Schwartz brewery wasn’t enough for the family, another tragedy befell Emma’s side. Anton Schwartz died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at 7 a.m. in 1910 in the family’s third floor apartment located No. 2 West 86th Street in Manhattan (the Central Park View Apartments). The reason for his suicide was depression over the death of his only son, Adolf, aged 24, who died of spinal meningitis six weeks earlier while he and his wife and daughter were on holiday in Germany. All three learned of his sudden illness and immediately set sail back to New York City, only to arrive less than 24 hours after his death. Adolph was the only son and was being groomed to take over the family brewing business. The death of Adolph threw Schwartz into a depression that manifested in his failure to attend to the brewery’s business and, near the end, reclusiveness.
Emma Schwartz Ruppert
But the Kleiner family brewing legacy didn’t stop with the deaths of Adolph and Anton. Emma and Anton’s daughter Emma Schwartz married brewer George Ruppert. George Ehret Ruppert, had a family legacy like the Kleiners. He was a third generation American brewer, was the son of Jacob & Anna Gillig-Ruppert and the grandson of Franz & Wilhelmina Zindel-Ruppert. He was named after George Ehret, who founded the Hells Gate Brewery, which was the largest brewery in America after the Civil War. His Bavarian-born grandparents established New York’s Turtle Bay Brewery and his father founded the Jacob Ruppert Brewing Co. His famous brother, Congressman Col. Jacob Ruppert Jr., was founder, president & owner of the NY Yankees. George graduated Columbia Law School in 1899 after which he quickly joined his father and brother at the brewery.
While working in the family business Ruppert attended the Wallerstein Brewing Academy. He became brewery secretary in 1910, VP in 1915 and executive secretary & director in 1921. In 1939 he succeeded his brother as president and in 1945 became CEO. George was active in many Catholic charities and once had an audience with Pope Pius XI in 1936. The paradox of George Ruppert’s life was that the more important he became the further he slipped into the media background. As his elder brother, Jacob Jr., devoted more of his time to his NY Yankee baseball team, the burden of directing the Ruppert Brewery became more George’s personal responsibility. Yet George seemed to prefer to labor in obscurity. At his brother’s death in 1939, George could have obtained for himself the headlines that often carried the name of his brother. Yet, he declined the post in favor of Gen. Mgr. Ed Barrow, explaining that he was doing so in the best interests of the Yankees and the brewery. George married twice: Emma Josephine Schwartz (1877-1919) and Pearl B. Jackson (1889-1957)
In a bout of irony, the flagship brand name of near beer that sustained Ruppert Brewery (of which Meinrad Kleiner’s granddaughter Emma’s husband owned) through Prohibition was called Knickerbocker, which was the old money club who bought and demolished Emma Schwartz Ruppert’s aunt, the Princess del Drago’s Gilded manse on Fifth Avenue.
Even though Princess Josephine Schmid Del Drago, as she was now known, spent much of her time with her husband in Italy, she retained tight control of the Lion Brewery, to the detriment of the business. After the brewery experienced several years of significant losses, Pauline sued her mother for neglect and mismanagement. Josephine won, and she and her husband, possibly chastened, took charge of day-to-day operations.
When Pauline Schmid agree to her mother buying out her portion of her father’s inheritance for a lump sum of $342,748, she was promised her mother would manage the money and pay her daughter 5 percent of its profits annually. What Josephine didn’t tell her daughter was that her father’s estate was worth about $10 million. Asked later why she agreed to sign away her fortune so easily, Pauline replied, “I signed anything she wanted me to sign,” because she believed any profits “were for both of us” and eventually every- thing would be hers.
Pauline’s attitude had obviously changed by 1908, when she sued to receive her fair share of the estate and to remove her mother from management of the brewery, where most of the profits went to pay Josephine’s $500,000 salary as treasurer. Four days after her wedding to del Drago, Josephine settled the lawsuit, agreeing to step down as treasurer but not as president. Pauline now became a director of the brewery.
After years of further legal wrangling with her mother, Pauline Schmid Murray emerged as the sole shareholder of the Lion Brewery in 1925, and her husband was named president. The brewery survived Prohibition and continued to operate after the Murrays were killed in a car crash in 1931. The wealthiest woman in the American brewing industry, Pauline was worth over $4 million at the time of her death—$3 million attributed to shares in the brewery.
It’s not clear how the corporate ownership of Lion Brewery evolved, but, in 1933 when breweries were re-licensed in New York State, the Lion began to produce beer again. Mrs. Del Drago died in 1937, in Sanremo Italy, leaving a million-dollar estate – down from the $10 million she was said to be worth before Prohibition. Giovanni del Drago, her husband lived at 114 East Fifty second street and died in 1956 in Rome. In true family form, Princess del Drago’s granddaughter, Paula Murray Coudert, who had inherited her mother’s share in Lion after their tragic automobile death, contested her grandmother’s will. Apparently all she had been bequeathed by her blood grandmother was her diamond tiara. The rest of the estate went in trust to her second husband, del Drago, and his son Marcel, by his first wife, a few seemingly former male lovers, and the Archbishop of New York City. Needless to say, Josephine Kleiner Schmid del Drago seems to have been a royal ‘Hündin.“
Baden-Wuertemburg in southwest Germany, is not known to be the mecca of breweries that Bavaria, Swabia and Thuringia are. And almost all of Cincinnati’s Germanic Beer Barons are from that Brewing Triangle of Southeastern Germany. But, oddly enough a beer from Baden Wuertemburg, Rothaus, which made an appearance at Germania Oktoberfest last weekend won the best German Pils for 2021. And, it was the shortest beer line at the festival, probably because of its relative obscurity to most Americans. In a world of fruity sours and pastry stouts, the brand has also achieved popularity in the most sensitive barometer of hipness, Brooklyn, New York. The brand logo is a cute smiling blond German girl in the typical Baden-Black Forest head-hugging black hood. Normally we’re used to seeing breast-forward, braided-haired Bavarian blondes in low cut dirndls with five beer mugs in both hands representing.
Brooklyn and Wuertemburg Pilsners play a large part in this story of Cincinnati Beer Barons who owned and built the success of the Jackson Brewery. That’s why its so weird that two brothers from what is now Baden-Wuertemburg, what was then known as Hohenzollern, Prussia(n Wuertemburg), brought us our largest intact pre prohibition brewery building at McMicken, built by them in 1859. Despite it being in danger of demo as a result of a fire, it is now slated to become a multi-use entertainment space. And the lagering tunnels below are in tact, accessible and part of the Brewery Districts Built on Beer tours.
Meinrad (1823-1873) and Fridolin Kleiner (1829-1869) came to Cincinnati from the town of Veringendorf, Hohenzollern in the middle, eastern portion of the current state of Baden Wuertemburg, as a result of the 1848 Revolution. Their five generation family owned brewery had been seized by the government due to their involvement in the uprising against the German nobility. Their names give away their origin in Baden. Although Meinrad and Fridolin are names weird sounding to us, they are very popular saints in Catholic Baden. St. Meinrad of Switzerland was known as a giver to the poor and is the local patron of hospitality. St. Fridolin of Sackingen is portrayed next to a standing skeleton and his statues are the creepiest in all of Germany. He is the patron of cattle herders and leg ailments.
Both Kleiner brothers attended good elementary and high schools there. While Fridolin stayed at home to learn brewing from his father, Meinrad was slated to become the owner of a hotel and their father sent him to Neufchatel, Switzerland to learn the business. He spent his free time in the free academy of professor Jean-Louis Agassiz, known for his regimen of observational data gathering and analysis. Agassiz would later emigrate to America after the 1848 Revolution and become Harvard’s Professor of Zoology. His influence was probably what made Meinrad such an excellent student of the brewing process. After finishing his hotel schooling Meinrad became a waiter in Baden-Baden.
In 1844 he was caught by the military conscription but bought his way out of it by hiring a substitute. Herr Kleiner then remained a few years at home helping out in his fathers brewery. He read in the techniques of distilling and other chemical processes. His younger brother Fridolin, who had learned the brewing business, was very helpful to him in his quest for knowledge.
Meinrad arrived in New Orleans in 1850 and came that year to Cincinnati where at first he was a waiter at Moor Garden (corner of Main and Liberty). He then became brewer of the Jackson Brewery, When the brewery was put up for sale in 1854 by Klopf, Meinrad bought it with the help of his brother, who had come to Cincinnati later. In 1859, the brothers built the large brewhouse that still stands on McMicken today.
By 1871, the Jackson Brewery used 100,000 bushels of barley, 700 bales of hops and 3000 tons of ice annually.
Only Fridolin had a son, named Joseph, who became heir to the family knowledge and became brewmaster. There was no need like the other Cincinnati beer barons did, (Hauck, Bruckmann, and others) to send him to the Royal Bavarian School of Brewing in Munich. All he needed to do was study under his father Fridolin, who had learned the family brewing secrets from his father Joseph Kleiner, who had learned it from his father, Joseph, and so on and so on, back to the first Kleiner ‘monk.’
According to family lore, the brothers’ great great grandfather in the 1670s had posed as a monk at a local monastery to learn the secrets of brewing. At that time brewing was largely done in the monasteries. He left after learning the trade and opened his own brewery, which over the generations became very prosperous and made the Kleiner family very well off.
The brothers were active in public life, they were members of the democratic party and the board of trade until their deaths and widely loved by their workers and throughout the Cincinnati Germanic community. They both built large houses next to the brewery on McMicken that were later demolished for brewery expansions.
On June 12 1871, Schutzenfest, the German shooting festival in Fairmount, announced in the Enquirer an interesting activity to be held that day. “The exercises of today will have an amusing interest as there is to be a sack race in which a large number of our most corpulent German brethren will participate. Among those named are uncle Joe Seifert (a winemaker), Mr Mulhauser (of Windisch-Mulhauser Brewery), the brewer, Meinrad Kleiner and Lew Buente.” That would have been an entertaining spectacle to see middle aged men over 300 pounds jumping across the field in burlap sacks.
After Meinrad died in 1873, several workers at the brewery stood watch and guarded his grave at St Bernard’s St Mary’s Cemetery to prevent it from being robbed as was a big problem then.
The family sold the brewery to George Weber in 1873 with an investment of $285,000. For the next decade the company would experience a continued moderate success, however this profitability did not come without its fair share of conflict.
Meinrad had two daughters, Josephine and Emma, both of whom had married into prominent New York City brewing families, and they would squabble over their in-laws shared Lion Brewery fortune, but that interesting Gilded Age story is Chapter 2.
I agree with Ethel, the sweet grandma with the spicy saying on Frank’s Red Hot commercials who proclaims, “I put that shit on everything!” I agree not only because I’m a loyal Nati products guy, but I think it’s a great universal hot sauce. It’s not too sweet, not too spicy, and super tangy. It’s the key ingredient in the 1964-created Buffalo Wings at Teresa Bellisimo’s Anchor Grill. And, although it’s named after Jacob Frank, the owner of the Cincinnati-based Frank Tea & Spice Company, we can thank a modest Cajun farmer from New Iberia, Louisiana, Adam Estilette, for the amazing recipe. It’s too common that the actual inventor of a food product is buried in corporate history. I’m here to give credit where credit is due. And that credit comes largely from a phone interview I was super lucky to have lined up last week with the inventor’s great grandson, Jerome. Two exhibits at the Cincinnati Museum Center – Jewish Cincinnati and Made in Cincinnati feature Frank’s Red Hot Sauce, but neither mentioned the involvement of Estilette.
Adam Estilette, creator of Frank’s Red Hot Sauce Recipe.Constance Estilette, Adam’s Wife might have lent a hand to the formation of the Frank’s Red Hot Sauce recipe.
Adam (pronounced A-DAMN) Estilette was from a modest Cajun farming and trapping family in New Iberia, Louisiana, in what is known as the Bayou Teche, about a two hour drive down I-10 from New Orleans. It’s largely made up of Cajuns – descendants of the Acadian French Catholics who were forced out of Canada by the British after the War of 1812 and migrated to Louisiana. Don’t confuse the Cajuns with the Creoles of New Orleans. Jerome tells me a Cajun gumbo has no tomatoes – it’s made up of a dark flour-based roux, and never mixes seafood with meat, it’s either one or the other. A creole gumbo has a tomato base. Both use peppers and hot sauce to amp up the heat.
The area has an Old World Catholic devotion and a truly unique American-French-Acadian culture. They have a very cool Eucharistic boat procession in mid August for the Feast of the Assumption of Mary called the Fete Dieu du Teche. A boat carrying the Holy Eucharist in a monstrance (a gold, highly decorated holder) and another carrying an antique statue of Virgin Mary rides down the Bayou teche, stopping at five churches in the area. Faithful follow in their own decorated boats and stop for benediction and prayers at each port along the bayou and end with a large procession and lots of good Cajun food. At each port, young girls in First Communion like ‘wedding dresses’ and veils meet the Eucharist and Statue of Mary. Pere Noel brings the gifts to children at Christmas, and he is said to bring them on a canoe led by alligators down the bayou. And, they all have a great potwah French accent. In addition to the dark brown roux gumbo, they love a good redfish or striped bass courtbouillon, which is a spicy tomato based stew, boudin balls (like our goetta balls), and pig roasts.
The Cajuns of Acadiana also celebrate Mardi Gras in a very different way from New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama. They dress up in very specific costumes with masks and pointed hats, drinking, going from door to door asking for ingredients for the big communal gumbo, which culminates in a group race to catch a live greased chicken which will be the protein in said gumbo. One of Anthony Bourdain’s last episodes was a view into this Cajun Courir de Gras.
A costume worn by those in Cajun Acadiana for the Courir de Gras on display at the Bayou Teche Museum in New Iberia, Louisiana.
Adam’s family were French speaking, but landed in New Orleans in the early 1720s from the Bas Rhine region of Germany close to French speaking Alsace. So they preceded the descendants of the Acadian French by nearly a century. Johann George Stieglieder (the Germanic version of their name) landed with his wife. They quickly moved out of New Orleans to the parishes surrounding Lafayette which became hot pepper country. They Frenchified their last name to E’stilette, and five generations of the Estilettes farmed and hunted around the bayou.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, New Iberia was the American capital of hot sauce. The king of hot sauces, the large McIlhenny’s Tobasco Sauce operations were on the family owned Avery Island just south of New Iberia. Adam, like other Cajun farmers, grew his own peppers on a small scale. Knowing there was not way he could compete with the McIlhenny operation, he knew for his own hot sauce, he’d have to use another type of pepper. He wanted to make it in the Louisiana style, which means the peppers were mashed/chopped up and fermented or ‘brewed’ as the Cajuns call it, dry with salt in oak barrels, just like sauerkraut, and then brewed again with distilled white vinegar. The high ratio of vinegar to pepper is what makes Louisiana style hot sauce. So Estilette landed on the cayenne pepper, which makes a delicious sauce.
Left to right James Crutchfield, VP of Frank’s, Frady Estilette, son of Adam, and John Frank, son of Frank’s founder Jacob Frank in the St. Martinsville, Louisiana cayenne pepper fields.
In about 1917 Jacob Frank goes down to the area of New Iberia to scout out pepper farmers and hot sauce to add to his Dove line of shelf sized spices, olives, and Jumbo brand peanut butter. He knew many thought McIllhenny’s tobasco was too hot, so he knew there was a market for a more flavorful sauce with less heat. He also knew there was a hot sauce market for the African American community now in the north that had come up from the South in the Great Migration.
He meets Adam, loves his sauce and decides to partner up with him to make Frank’s Red Hot Sauce. He builds Adam a rather large pepper brewing plant on St. Charles Street in New Iberia, and rents him lands in Crowley, Louisiana, about 40 miles west of New Iberia and nearby St. Martinsville. Conveniently, Adam and his wife and eight children live right across the street from the plant, so he employs most of his children in the operation. His oldest daughter Magna was the bookkeeper, Frady was a drier, Grady and Amilcar were pepper ‘brewers.’ It was a big operation and Adam also employed others at the plant, and hired workers to tend and harvest the peppers. Two large open vats held fermenting pepper mash in the floor of the main factory, where workers hand mixed the mash all day with wooden boat oars.
The New Iberia, LA, Frank’s and Estilette Cayenne Pepper Brewing Plant. Bookkeeper Magna Estilette, daughter of Adam holding the ‘books’ at far left.Frank’s pepper plant with workers.
The first bottle of Frank’s Red Hot sauce came to market in 1920, and can be seen in the original 1922 photograph of the inside of the first Cincinnati Chili parlor, Empress Chili, on the counter. Franks sold spices and hot sauce to both Skyline and Empress and each ordered in different quantities so that no one would know the sacred ratios of their chili spice blends. Soon other hot sauces in the area were released. The local Bauman family released, Crystal Hot Sauce, another cayenne-based sauce, in 1923. In 1929, the local Bruce family of New Iberia, came out with Louisiana Hot Sauce – which doesn’t specify the type of red pepper it uses. As Frank’s customer based was largely around the Cincinnati-Midwest supply chain, it was largely unknown in Louisiana, and so was not really competition with the other me-too hot sauces popping up around New Iberia.
John Frank, Frady Estillette, and pepper plant workers.
The Estilettes and their factory workers mashed and aged the peppers with salt, then again with vinegar, all in oak barrells. Then they filtered out the peppers and sent the liquid gold in oak barrels to Cincinnati, where spices were added and they were bottled at the Frank Tea and Spice plant. The Estilettes kept the concentrated pepper mash, putting it in glass mason jars. They would use a tablespoon in a pot of gumbo or in other Cajun dishes. It was so strong it would corrode the metal mason jar lids in only a few months. But there must be something to be said for capsicum and longevity. All of Adam’s eight children lived well into their 80s. His oldest daughter Magna lived to be 103.
The front offices of the New Iberia facility before sale to Durkee and today.Hot pepper mash barrel scars today testify what was made in the New Iberia Franks hot sauce facility.Inside the Franks New Iberia plant today
Hot peppers die in the cold winter, so they need to be seeded every year. And during the dormant winter, after all the peppers had been processed, Jacob Frank sent parsley to the Estilettes, which they dried in the pepper plant. This was for a government contract that started during World War II.
There were about four different bottle companies who supplied the hot sauce bottles to Franks in Cincinnati. They were Owens- Illinois, Rockaway Glass, and Armstrong Glass.
Jacob Frank was also responsible for bringing the paprika pepper cultivation to America. Once he had set up Estilette with the cayenne factory for hot sauce, he co-funded a paprika drying plant in nearby Opelousas, Louisiana, in 1940. Originally Frank had looked at bringing them to New Iberia, but he thought it would be too close to the tobasco and cayenne pepper crops and cause cross pollination, making funky franken-peppers. Arthur G. Denes, representing both the Frank Spice and Tea Company of Cincinnati and the Woodson Spice Company of Toledo, Ohio, moved to Opelousas with his family and ran the plant pepper drying plant. Dried paprika spice was in great demand in the U.S. as about 6 million to 8 million pounds were imported annually from Europe. The business became known as American Paprika Pioneer Mills Inc., later called First American Paprika Mills.
When Adam died in 1961, his sons Frady and Grady took over. Grady owned a sugar mill in New Iberia and also had a great business in that industry. Grady’s son Felix Francois never came into the business and went off on his own and started the Evangeline Hot Sauce Company, which shortly went bankrupt. His other son Grady, Jr became a Catholic priest. Evangeline is a character in an old Acadian folk tale who searches far and wide to find her husband during the Acadian migration from Canada to Louisiana.
Vice President James Crutchfield and Jacob Frank’s son, John Frank, who took over as president, would visit the Estilettes a couple times a year and stay at the old Hotel Fredrick in the center of town in New Iberia. The Estilettes would put up a large dinner of gumbo, fish courtbouillon, roast a whole pig or serve large Fred Flintstone sized steaks for the visiting party, spiced up with their filtered pepper mash from the brewing of the hot sauce. John Frank Jr. so loved Grady’s wife Eulah’s cooking that he got her and the family to cook some cajun food – etouffee, gumbo, etc – in great quantities and had it shipped to New York City for the National Spice Associations’s annual meeting.
As Frady got older, transferred the running of the plant to his relative, Raymond Babac, who with his wife Eulah, ran the plant until the Frank’s sold the operation to a group of investors in 1969, who changed the name to Frank Foods. They in turn sold it in about 1974 to Durkee Foods who renamed Frank’s Hot Sauce to Durkee’s Hot sauce. But it was changed back to Frank’s when Durkee sold to McCormick’s.
Jerome and the Frank descendants still own a few acres of land together on Cypress Island. They had bought it as an investment, thinking it would be a good place for pepper cultivation. But the majority of pepper growing moved south into South America. Maybe it would be a good place for a Frank’s Red Hot Museum.
The Estilette family house across from the factory burned down about five years ago, but the original Frank’s / Estilette factory building still stands, set to become a sugar cane museum.
Today Frank’s is one of the top selling and most popular hot sauces in America, all because of a little known Catholic Cajun and a Cincinnati Jewish collaboration.
Jim Borgmann’s famous East Meets West cartoon of Cincinnatians.
The East Side of Cincinnati has just as many beloved restaurants and signature dishes as the West Side that are gone but not forgotten. And, much as East Siders of today would like the world to think there isn’t as rich a history of dives to the east of Vine Street, it’s just not true. And, there is just as much culinary innovation and sophistication on the West Side as there is on the East Side. Throw those old stereotypes out the window!
Thankfully the East Side still has some classics. There are the Zip Burger and its yummy chili. There’s the Quatman Burger special. Who doesn’t like throwing back some fried mushrooms at Salem Gardens. There’s the simple Stanley sandwich, on the menu at Stanley’s Pub in Tusculum since 1935 – a heaping half pound of grilled or cold ham on rye bread. You have maybe the original Cincinnati Pad Thai at Bankock Bistro in Hyde Park East. You also have the amazing goetta breakfast plates served at the Echo near Hyde Park Square. We have the house made meatballs from Ramundo’s Pizza on Mt. Lookout Square. And finally, there’s the decadent, cheesy, gooey Crab and Artichoke Croissant at Carl’s Deli in Hyde Park.
One of the first dishes I miss from my early move to the East Side is the fried chicken gizzards they used to serve at the Hitching Post on Kellogg Avenue. I was actually introduced to them by an out of towner. They were fresh, perfectly fried so that you got the organy chewiness inside and the right amount of crispy outside. They were kind of like fried oysters. And, dunk them in any spicy dippin sauce or tarter sauce and they were the most heavenly comfort food. I gave them up in favor of my heart muscle.
I miss the ribs from BBQ Review that used to be on Madison Road in Oakley next to the Madison Bowl. They also crafted some yummy cobblers. They gave Eli’s BBQ a run for their money but the owner’s desire to retire won.
The notoriously haunted Habits Café on Oakley square was famous for their Potato Rags. They were crisp golden hash browned potatoes covered with bacon, onions, tomatoes, cheddar, mozz AND provolone, and of course Ranch Dressing. It was a pure hangover cure.
There were the stuffed pasta shells and other great pasta dishes served at Pasta al Dente in Hyde Park East before they closed. Prices were low and the portions were huge – like enough for three meals.
Until the fire that shut down the Pleasant Ridge Irish pub Molly Mallones, their shepherd pie filled many stomachs heartily for decades. It was a true shepherds pie with lamb, veg and charred mash on top.
Keystone Grill in Hyde Park East resurrected another hangover cure dish from a now demolished campus bar at UC between Calhoun and McMillen. The dish was called the Inn the Woods Potato Crisp and like the Potato rags at Habits, it was an ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ on top of fried potatoes dish.
Many East Siders and Madeirites loved JK Chili Parlor in downtown Madeira. The chili had a lighter brown color than most Cincy style chilis, and a milder flavor, but also had a cult following.
The famous local double decker called the Hippo was created in Deer Park in the 1940s by Harry Sarros at the Marathon Inn on Montgomery Avenue. It’s a heaping pile of turkey and ham with choice of adding cheese tomato and mayo. It was so popular that it spread to other legacy chili parlors, like Price Hill Chili.
The genius Indian-Tunisian fusian restaurant which was the brainchild of Alex Mchaikhl date importer Cumin had some amazeballs Samosas and spicy chutneys.
Finally, but not least are the chewy sourdough crust gourmet pizzas and decadent desserts from ZZ’s Pizza on Gilbert Avenue in Walnut Hills. Life and business partners Bill Enz and Thomas Rehme were ahead of their time when in 1986 when they opened their gourmet pizza shop in a quirky Victorian Flat Iron in a struggling neighborhood. This was in a pizza town dominated by LaRosa and Pasquale’s before Dewey’s ushered in the gourmet pizza trend. They had a prima vera pizza – artichoke hearts, olives, peppers, mushrooms over tomato sauce and a blanked of provolone and mozz, a white sauce seafood, a spicy cajun, and a four cheese with mozz, gouda, gruyere and romano. Enz won the sweet teeth of his customers with his famous Banana Cream pie and chocolate cheesecake.
There are many more dishes gone but not forgotten in the collective memory of East Siders, but these are the ones that delight my memories.
Cincinnati Germania’s “Big Stinky”, a Limburger and red onion sandiwch on German rye.
Korean restaurants, with their stinky kimchee have taken foothold in Cincinnati, a city made up of largely Germanic immigrant families. That’s because Germans have long enjoyed stinky things. Take the resurgence of makers non-pasteurized, fermented craft sauerkraut. If you’ve ever been in the fermenting room at the basement of the Pickled Pig in Walnut Hills, you know what good sauerkraut stinks like. It’s the smell of healthy bacteria that will nestle snugly in your gut and help ward of cancer and disease. There are two other companies that make non-pasteurized naturally fermented krauts – our local Fab Ferments, and Cleveland Kraut.
Then there’s the proliferation of smelly Limburger cheese sandwiches at church festivals, Oktoberfests and other local fests. Many amp them up with smelly raw onions. Germania, whose Oktoberfest is coming up in August, calls their Limburger Cheese sandwich appropriately “The Big Stinky.” It’s a heaping pile of Limburger Cheese and red onions on rye. You’ll also find Limburger cheese sandwiches at Donauschwaben’s and Zinzinnati Oktoberfest, and many others around town. It’s Cincinnati’s durian fruit – which smells funky, but tastes delicious.
Germanic Cincinnatians have been enjoying our smelly foods for over 150 years. An interesting account in the regimental history of the Civil War local Ohio 9th German Regiment details confederate guerillas who stole their provisions cart in August of 1862 as they travelled between Corinth and Tuscumbia, Alabama prior to the Battle of Perryville. The southern mauraders took everything, but left the smelly Limburger cheese. It’s maybe a statement like the famous line in the Godfather, “take the hardtack, leave the Limburger cheese.” Luckily the ninth were able to restock their supply of Limburger cheese after Perryville, and always had access to smelly fermented kraut.
Back in the 1890s, importing European Limburger cheese was problematic – it often spoiled in transport, without commercial refrigeration. But in 1891, a Swiss immigrant named Emil Frey, working for the Monroe Cheese Company in New York, invented a domestic, and milder version of Limburger cheese, or what the Germanic immigrants in the Hudson Valley called Bismark Schlosskase. Frey’s father had been a dairy farmer and cheese maker in Switzerland.
It used a slightly different bacterial culture for smear ripening than Limburger, which made it easily spreadable, with the same dirty gym socks smell. It is a cow’s milk cheese, with an edible pale yellow-orange tan crust, and a semisoft, pale interior distinct aroma that can turn unpleasantly ammonia-like if aged incorrectly. Think of Liederkranz as the Germanic version of Philly Cream Cheese, only smellier.
Liederkranz offered a domestic, creamy pungent cheese that scratched the itch for Limburger and other smelly Germanic cheeses. Germanic immigrants were delighted. Adolph Tode, the owner of the Monroe Cheese company and a New York deli, test marketed the new cheese with his friends at the New York Liederkranz, or German singing society, and they literally sang its praises. And, so as the legend goes, the company decided to name the cheese after the society.
Liederkranz cheese was on the menu of many Cincinnati restaurants from the 1920s until it came out of fashion by the end of the 1950s.
Ludlow Kentucky Veterans sponsored their annual Ludlow Limburger Festival at the end of July, which featured their Limburger sandwich.
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My suggestion for the next big German-Cincinnatian festival food is Limburger-Goetta Kasespaetzle or Limburger mac n cheese.
dannwoellertthefoodetymologist 