Monthly Archives: January 2019

St. Paul’s Pudding (and other Culinary Pets)

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On a recent visit to the Albany Institute library, I discovered a small treasure: a typescript St. Paul’s cookbook compiled in 1940 and titled “Culinary Pets of The Women of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.” The title is curious for its use of pet to mean a things of which one is particularly fond. This usage must have seemed a little old-fashioned even in 1941.

Title page “Culinary Pets of the Women of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church” (1940)

The compiler was Ruth Maria Pugliese (1918-2006), whose McCammon ancestors (including William McCammon, founder of the McCammon Piano-Forte Company) had been communicants at St. Paul’s for four generations. Many current members will remember her by her married name, Ruth McDowell. We have one photograph of her, taken 26 years later, when, as president of Women’s of St. Paul’s, she organized the decoration of the new building on Hackett Boulevard.

Knickerbocker News 18 May 1966

Contributors to “Culinary Pets” (1940)

In addition to the recipes contributed by a list of many of the prominent women of the parish, the booklet contains a selection from its 1891 predecessor, “Favorite Recipes of the Ladies of St. Paul’s Church.” I share one example from that group, hoping that we can revive “St. Paul’s Pudding” at our next church potluck.

An 1891 Recipe for “St. Paul’s Pudding”

 

Two 1919 Church School Memorials

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A room in St. Paul’s Parish House on Jay street contained a portrait gallery of prominent men and women from the parish: rectors, wardens and vestry members, curates, and significant donors. You can just make out some of these portraits in these 1947 photographs of the Parish Aid Society.

Parish Aid Society Ladies January 1947

Parish Aid Society January 1947

Because this collection was completed in the first half of the 20th century, the clergy, warden and vestry portraits were entirely of men. It is only among the donors that we find a few women, including three of whom I have already written: Flora Myers Brady Gavit, Pauline Hewson Wilson and Caroline Gallup Reed.

But the photo gallery also included portraits of two much younger women, both of whom were honored by the establishment of memorial funds in St. Paul’s Church School one hundred years ago this year. Both had attended St. Paul’s Sunday School, and their parents commemorated their young lives by establishing funds in their memories.

On the centennial of the creation of those memorials, let us also remember Beatrice and Marian, and the many unnamed young people who have been  touched by St. Paul’s Sunday School.

Beatrice Pinney Butler

Beatrice Pinney Butler was born in 1906 in New York City, and during her first 10 years lived with her parents and maternal grandparents in Brooklyn. In November 1915, her father (then a captain in the New York State National Guard) was posted to the Adjutant General’s Office in Albany, and the family moved here.

Beatrice developed appendicitis in March 1918, and despite surgery, she died on April 15, 1918.

Marian Sparrow Blanchard

Marian Sparrow Blanchard was born in 1898 in Albany, and lived here with her parents. She contracted influenza during the epidemic of 1918, and died on October 18 of that year.