A Taste of Upstate New York: The People and the Stories Behind 40 Food Favorites

By Chuck D'imperio

Upstate New York is the birthplace of many of America’s favorite foods. The chicken wing was born in a bar in Buffalo, the potato chip originated in the kitchen of a glitzy Saratoga Springs hotel, the salt potato got its start along the marshy shores of a Syracuse lake, and Thousand Island dressing was created in a hotel along the St. Lawrence Seaway.

In this book, D’Imperio travels across the region to discover the stories and people behind forty iconic foods of Upstate New York. He introduces readers to the black dirt farmers of Orange County who give America its best-tasting onions, to the Catskill’s Candy Cane King, and to "Charlie the Butcher," purveyor of the best beef on weck in the state. Filled with color photographs, the book includes a map of the various regions around Upstate New York, allowing readers to create their own cultural and historic food tour.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Syracuse University Press
• Release date: Apr 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9780815653233

Book preview

Region One

CHAUTAUQUA/ALLEGANY

Chautauqua, Allegany, Cattaraugus

1

PINK STRIPED COOKIES

Jamestown

In the mid- to late 1800s, one out of every five Swedes left their homeland to come to America. Sweden was emptied of more than a million natives in a span of about fifty years. Most of these new immigrants settled in the Chicago and Minnesota areas. Many others planted themselves in Western New York. It was here in Jamestown, beyond the rolling Finger Lakes and just northwest of Pennsylvania’s coal country, that the industrious Swedes left an indelible mark with their foods, religions, culture, and traditions.

More often than not Swedish was the language used in the small one-room school houses of the region. The pickled fish meals, the colorful floral bonnets, the lilting sounds of the nyckelharpa, and the smells of the baking fruit breads of the old country were all a part of rural Western New York life.

The breads are heavily flavored with spices you just don’t find in baked goods much anymore, Richard Ecklof told me. He is the owner of Ecklof Bakery in Jamestown, one of the oldest from scratch bakeries in New York State. At our bakery we use a lot of almond flavoring, almond paste, and cardamom in our breads. A lot of the old Swedish families come in regularly for it. It reminds them of the good old days. Of home. At one time there were a dozen or more little Swedish bakeries in Jamestown. Now it is just us. We are the last free-standing Swedish bakery in the area.

Richard began working in this bakery when he was ten years old. It was his father’s place, and he grew up surrounded by the wonderful aroma of the Swedish baked goods that were made from his grandfather’s recipes. My grandfather, David, came right over from Sweden to Jamestown where he opened up a traditional bakery. I was mopping floors in here when I was a little kid. Now I have a family of my own and my son Chad runs the place with me. In fact when I retire he will take over as yet another in a long line of Ecklof bakers in the area, the sixty-four-year-old said.

The pink striped cookie from ...

The pink striped cookie from Ecklof’s Bakery is a Western New York tradition.

Ecklof Bakery has changed quite a bit since Grandpa kneaded his first batch of Swedish Limpa. They now serve lunches, have a deli, and have a full service kitchen. Of course the bakery is still what they are known for. My dad started his own bakery when he got out of the service after World War II. We stayed at one location for almost fifty years. A decade ago we had to move a block away and open up another, bigger place. We went from three thousand square feet to almost five thousand square feet. It’s a busy place, Richard said.

If there is anything this legendary bakery has made over the decades that still rings true with the thousands who have come through the front door of Ecklof’s, it is the pink striped cookie.

When my Dad opened up in 1956, he made these little cakey pink striped cookies. He had them on the counter for sale, but he was always giving them away to the little kids who came in with their mothers. Soon the cookies were a well embedded tradition that is still carried on in the shop, he said. There is no magical secret to the cookie. My father bought a cookie machine at a food show in the 1950s and the cookie recipe came with the machine. It’s kind of like a cross between shortbread and a sugar cookie. We put a pink stripe of icing down the middle and people just love them. We make one hundred dozen a day and they are by far the most popular item we have at Ecklof’s.

I asked him about carrying on the tradition of handing out a free pink striped cookie to the little ones. Oh, yes. We have to. Only today it is more than likely to be a mother or even a grandmother who comes in with a child and they tell them about coming in fifty years ago getting their own free pink striped cookie. It is a nostalgic thing, mostly, and we couldn’t be happier to make sure all the little ones get a cookie.

Ecklof’s has made and sold millions of pink striped cookies over the years, and has given away countless more. We sell them online and we believe that we have shipped the pink stripes to about thirty states as well as overseas. Many residents buy them to send to their sons and daughters who are serving throughout the world in the military. A lot of our mail order customers are folks from the Jamestown area who have moved away and love to receive a little memory from home once in a while. That little cookie does have its fans, for sure. In fact Jim Kelly, the former quarterback of the Buffalo Bills, really loves them a lot, he told me.

From Grandfather Ecklof to father to son and soon to grandson, the strain of love and familial ties lie deep within the walls of this old bakery in far Western New York.

You know the old saying about something ‘being in your blood?’ Well, this bakery is definitely in my blood. It is so satisfying to me when I come in here early in the morning and start things up. To know that I am beginning with just a bunch of raw ingredients and that eventually throughout the day, we will be providing reliable, tasty and beloved items to our many customers is very gratifying. People share comments with us about how much they enjoy our product and our service. It makes me proud to know that we have given folks so many nice things they have enjoyed over the years. And that includes that little pink striped cookie!

2

CUBA CHEESE

Cuba

New Yorkers love to say cheese!

The state ranks third in total cheese production in the United States, just behind Wisconsin (#1) and California. We make nearly a billion pounds of it annually. And while it is still a key component in the Empire State’s agricultural output today, there is a lot of fascinating history to the cheese-making industry of the past.

New York State cheeses have won every award ever offered in the industry and have been a favorite of Americans since the early 1800s. Even President Andrew Jackson, a dyed-in-the-wool southerner, insisted on having New York State cheese stocked in the pantry of the White House all throughout his eight years in office. One time he ordered two thousand wheels of cheese at once just to make sure he never ran out.

Many of the state’s cheese-making companies have been around since the infancy of the New York dairy industry. Herkimer Cheese has been churning out cheddar cheese for more than sixty years in the Mohawk Valley. German immigrant Leo Kutter opened up his first cheese factory in Corfu, east of Buffalo, nearly a century ago. Kutter’s Cheese Factory is still there, excelling in producing the finest sharp, Muenster, Gouda, and Edam varieties.

William McCadam cut his first wheel of cheese on his kitchen table at his home in Heuvelton in 1876. From the kitchen to the ox cart to the Erie Canal, McCadam Cheese soon became one of the most widely known brand names of them all.

Thousands of tourists stop here ...

Thousands of tourists stop here every year to stock up on Cuba Cheese.

Jesse Williams founded America’s first cheese factory in Rome in 1851. The largest wheel of cheese ever made was made in Upstate New York. It came from the Martinsburgh Cheese Factory in Central New York, and the cheese wheel was seven feet tall. It weighed two tons. The state has two cheese museums. As you can see, the history just keeps going and going.

Cuba Cheese is a wonderful cross section of history, pride, quality, and success. The first cheese company was formed in Cuba in 1871, and in 1889, that plant was expanded to include three stories. That is the building we are still in, said Sarah Bradley, Vice President of Marketing and Advertising for the Cuba Cheese Shoppe. There were dozens of dairy farms around this region and many people boasted that we made the best cheese in the state. Some attributed our famous cheddar cheeses to the characteristically rich flavor of the milk from our New York State cows. There is something in the soil and water out here in the Great Lakes area that makes our cheese sharp, buttery and unique.

The Cuba Cheese Shoppe no longer makes the cheese in their building, but they are the purveyors of some of the Northeast’s best locally made dairy products. We carry over 325 types of cheeses, mostly from Upstate New York but also from as far away as Italy and Germany. No matter how many items we sell, the New York State Extra Sharp Cheddar Cheese is far and away our best seller.

Sarah Bradley is the new face of the modern cheese industry. A young, attractive woman who is comfortably in charge of this vast retail operation, Sarah always has an eye on the future with a special recognition of the past. Believe it or not, Cuba was once considered to be the ‘Cheese Capital of the World.’ We made lots of cheese around here and it was all of the finest quality. In the 1800s each week over at the Kinney Hotel on West Main Street (now gone) a group of old cheese barons would meet at the bar and settle upon the going price of cheese. They would then announce it to the world from the hotel’s front porch and the price would be set until the following week. Hard to imagine that the going price for cheese around the world was set in a small hotel every week here in Cuba. Now that is history, and we take our role in the cheese industry here very seriously, she told me.

I asked her if there were any secrets in the Cuba Cheese Shoppe building.

Oh, if these old walls could talk, she said with a smile. For example, Old York cheddar cheese, horseradish and port wine spreads are extremely popular at our shop. They were first created and made right below our feet in the basement in the 1940s. The previous owners sold the recipe to Schriber Foods in Wisconsin. We know, and all of our regular customers know that even though the label says York is made in Wisconsin, the truth is it was invented right here in Cuba in our cellar.

Today the Cuba Cheese Shoppe is one of the largest such retail stores in New York. Sarah keeps a watchful eye on the myriad of local cheese products that come through here and get slapped with the Cuba Cheese Shoppe label.

We have our regulars, for sure, but more and more people are finding us as we expand the store online and through the mail. My dad, Jeff Bradley, bought the business back in 1991. I am a graduate from the State University of New York in Brockport, and although I didn’t start out active in the business, it just kind of happened that way. As a little kid I used to work out back with the ladies putting labels on the cheese. Before long I did it all. I even drove the cheese truck for a while. I sure put on a lot of miles, she