Baked Rock

Striped Bass, or Rockfish, Maryland's state fish from "Life in the Chesapeake Bay" from Miller Library.

In the Maryland Special Collection, within the pages of an ordinary-looking spiral-bound church cookbook is a most unusual recipe: Baked Rock with Curry Stuffing. A perusal of the ingredient list fails to clear up any confusion, as the first ingredient listed, plain as day, is “1 large rock, cleaned.” The only indication that the main ingredient is not actually a rock is the instruction “stuff fish.”  

Spiral-bound church cookbooks are products of their time and place and can provide a lot of insight into the community and people who contributed to them. The author of the “baked rock” recipe, for example, thought it was so obvious that they were referring to Maryland’s state fish that they did not even feel the need to list “rockfish” in the ingredients. Hopefully, the contemporaneous readers of the cookbook also found it so obvious! 

This cookbook, Emmanuel Recipes, was produced by the congregation of the Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Chestertown. Unfortunately, the book contains no information about the writers of the recipes; the only credit provided is the illustrator, Doris T. Joyce. There is also no information regarding the creation date, publication, or history of the church. Despite the lack of contextual information, Emmanuel Recipes remains a testament to the community that created it, and “Baked Rock with Curry Stuffing” is a great example of why you should read a recipe thoroughly before you begin cooking.