Keeping with last month's theme of cornbread, this month’s recipe is also corn bread, but from the 20th century. Ella Hall was a Black landlord and cook who lived in Ann Arbor from the early 1920s until she passed away in 1962. Her manuscript cookbook resides in the Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive and a facsimile edition will be released by the University of Michigan Press in June 2026.
Born Ella Evelyn Mitchell in New Canaan, Ontario in 1892, Ella married Roman Hall in 1916. Her husband died of tuberculosis soon after, in 1917, while Ella Hall was pregnant with their son, Philo Hall. Mrs. Hall moved in Ann Arbor sometime in the next few years, appearing in Ann Arbor historical records as a cook boarding at 1019 E. Ann St. in 1921. In the subsequent years and decades, Ella Hall established herself not only as a cook but as a landlord, keeping at least one boarding house and owning several rental properties. She was also a prominent member of Bethel AME Zion Church. There was a vibrant Black community in Ann Arbor at this time, but it was also a time of discrimination and de facto segregation in restaurants and in housing in the city. In the forthcoming facsimile edition, Forwards by Dr. Jessica Kenyatta Walker and Susan Wineberg further explore the ways that these and other historical strands shaped Ella Hall’s life and her culinary memoir.
This manuscript cookbook, self-titled “The My-T-Fine Recipes,” was preserved by Susan Wineberg, who received it from her friend and landlord, Bailey Rodgers, himself a tenant and friend of Ella Hall. The recipes are wide ranging. Today’s blog post features Ella Hall’s shorthand notes for cornbread, but she also recorded recipes for dandelion wine, grape drink, popcorn balls, ice box cookies, English fruit cake, and waffles for [an] electric iron. Ella Hall seems to have been an adherent of Swans Down Cake Flour and her recipe book includes several colorful clippings of cake recipes. If I get ambitious this summer, I may attempt Pineapple Layer Cake or even Lady Baltimore Cake for our monthly recipe. However, for today, please enjoy and consider trying this quick and easy cornbread:
Corn Bread
3/4 c. cornmeal
1 1/4 c. flour
1/4 c. sugar
teaspoon baking powder
1 c. milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1/2 tablespoon melted butter
As is fairly common in personal recipe books, Ella Hall recorded only the ingredients for this recipe, a kind of shorthand memory aid for a recipe followed steps she knew well. For my version of this recipe, I mixed the dry ingredients and wet ingredients separately, combined them in a greased 8x8" pan, and baked for 20 minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit. The result was quite tasty, and if I had time to combine it with other dishes, I think it would go beautifully on a summer’s day with Mrs. Hall’s Green Tomato Pickles and Pepper Hash!
