Recipe Finder

Viola Brown from Indiana was looking for an easy recipe for making Polish cabbage. Brown said that she is 82 years old and doesn't have much of an appetite anymore, but that certain foods, like good cooked cabbage, still appeal to her. Jeanette Lehman from Glen Burnie shared her recipe for Polish sweet cabbage. She said the recipe comes from her mother, who emigrated from Poland, married and began making the dishes she remembered from her childhood. While her mother did not write her recipes down, Lehman said how blessed she was growing up with her mother as her teacher and that she has been able to duplicate some of her recipes just from her memory of how they tasted.

Pat Arata from Mishawaka, Ind., was looking for a recipe she had lost for making crispy fried salmon patties that she thought was once printed on a can of Crisco. She said the patty puffed up a little when fried, which made her think the recipe likely contained baking powder or soda. Evelyn Bledsoe from Letart, W.Va., sent in a photocopy of the well-used recipe taken from a Crisco can many years ago that she thinks is the one Arata was searching for. The recipe has several hand-written notes on it. One says, "can add a small amount of mashed potatoes to the patties if desired.

Marlene Millard from Longview, Wash., said that back in the 1960s she had a recipe for making a delicious sour cream cake that used a boxed white cake mix as the base. She said it was one of those cravings she had during pregnancy that she thought she would never get back, so she threw away the recipe. Now she finds herself craving the cake some 50 years later and would like to be able to recreate the taste. Perhaps back in the '60s doctoring cake mixes was something new. These days, entire books exist with nothing but doctored cake mix recipes.

Steve Frazer from Reisterstown was looking for the recipe for the chocolate chip cake that used to be sold at Miller's Delicatessen in Northwest Baltimore in the 1970s. He remembers that it was a very dense cake and most likely made with sour cream with an abundance of tiny chocolate chips and a sugary crunchy topping. I received an email from Leslie Miller-Scherr of Baltimore in response to Frazer's query. She said that her family was the original owner of Miller's deli and that she remembers the cake well.

Stanley Levy from Baltimore was in search of the recipe for the cheesy potato casserole that he enjoyed at a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Pennsylvania. He said it reminded him of macaroni and cheese but instead of pasta it was made with potatoes. A search of the Cracker Barrel website did not yield any recipes, so I contacted the company's office of corporate communications outside Nashville. Tenn., and described the dish that Levy was seeking. They thought that in all likelihood it was the popular hash brown casserole.

Janet Brunner from St. Augustine, Fla., was looking for a no-bake recipe for lemon Jell-O cheesecake. Mercedes Shideler from Sebastopol, Calif. shared her recipe for lemon cheesecake that she hopes is the one that Brunner is looking for. This likely is the cheesecake many of us grew up with. Unlike the real deal, even a novice cook can make this and expect good results. With this recipe, you get all the delicious lemon cheesecake flavor without all the extra effort. It's light and tangy — and best of all, it is no-bake.

Brenda Cox from Raleigh, N.C., was looking for a recipe for making a baked spaghetti casserole like the one her mother used to make back in the 1950s. She remembers that her mother used tomato soup in her recipe. She has tried over the years to recreate the dish without success. Wilma Muir from Street saw Cox's request and sent in a recipe for the casserole that she said she found in one of her old cookbooks called "A Campbell Cookbook, Cooking with Soup," revised in 1982.

Janet Janata from Norfolk, Va., was looking for a recipe for what her husband called a "Marc Cake. " She described it as a rolled yeast cake with a sweet poppy seed filling. DC Kiss from Ellicott City thought that the cake Janata and her husband were looking for sounded like the traditional Hungarian pastry called Makos (poppy seed) Kalacs. The recipe she sent in ran in the Sunday Sun Magazine in May 1966. This light and airy, slightly sweet yeast bread is similar in texture to challah bread.

M. Veronica Mack from Baltimore was looking for a recipe for making Czarnina, a traditional Polish duck soup, like the one her mother used to make when she was young. Like most Czarina recipes her mother's not only called for a live duck but the duck blood as well. Mack said that these days it's difficult to find a source for live duck and almost impossible to find duck blood. She was hoping someone would be able to share a recipe for the soup that had a satisfactory substitute for the blood.

Wanda Reynolds from Baltimore was looking for a recipe for baked shad. She remembered seeing a recipe for making the fish some years ago in a local newspaper. She thought the recipe called for a long baking time that helped soften the bones. Pamela Green from Arnold sent in a recipe that she says she found in either The Washington Post or the Capital in Annapolis in the 1980s that calls for wrapping the fish in foil and baking it for six hours at a very low temperature.

Stanley Levy from Baltimore was in search of the recipe for the cheesy potato casserole that he enjoyed at a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Pennsylvania. He said it reminded him of macaroni and cheese but instead of pasta it was made with potatoes. A search of the Cracker Barrel website did not yield any recipes, so I contacted the company's office of corporate communications outside Nashville. Tenn., and described the dish that Levy was seeking. They thought that in all likelihood it was the popular hash brown casserole.

Viola Brown from La Pointe, Ind., was looking for a good and easy recipe for making tomato basil soup. She said she is 82 years old and has a hard time finding things she still likes to eat. It's not surprising that she would be in search of a recipe for homemade tomato soup, as it's a classic comfort food no matter what the season. Jenny Garcia from Santa Rosa, Calif., shared a recipe that she and her husband came up with that she said was inspired by a similar recipe in the Barefoot Contessa Cookbook.

Holly Renew from Baltimore was looking for a recipe for a mushroom loaf that was served at the now-closed restaurant in Canton called the Wild Mushroom. She said it was a featured item on the menu and similar to a meatloaf in consistency but contained no meat. I was not able to track down the exact recipe she sought, but I did some research and found a recipe for a very tasty vegetable "meatloaf" that was published in the March 2012 issue of Cooking Light magazine. This loaf is full of mushrooms and other vegetables.

Rose Dodds from Bel Air was searching for a recipe for a cake similar to one that she enjoyed at a party. She said the texture was similar to poundcake and the almond flavor reminded her of Italian amaretti cookies. Patricia Waxman from Chapel Hill, N.C., sent in a recipe she had seen in Southern Living magazine for an amaretto-almond poundcake that she thought might be similar to the one Dodds was looking for. She thinks it is the best poundcake she has ever made: "It's moist and delicious, and it's almost impossible to stop at just one slice.

Jeffrey Clayton from Baltimore was hoping someone would have the recipe for the sticky buns that were served in the cafeterias at Garrison Junior High and Forest Park High school back in the 1950s when he and his wife were students there. Unfortunately, I did not receive any recipes for those particular goodies, but I did get a super-easy and delicious recipe for making sticky buns from Helen Braun of Charleston, S.C., that I decided to try. She said she frequently makes these when she has last-minute company or if she just wants to treat her kids on a weekend morning.

Brenda Cox from Raleigh, N.C., was looking for a recipe for making a baked spaghetti casserole like the one her mother used to make back in the 1950s. She remembers that her mother used tomato soup in her recipe. She has tried over the years to recreate the dish without success. Wilma Muir from Street saw Cox's request and sent in a recipe for the casserole that she said she found in one of her old cookbooks called "A Campbell Cookbook, Cooking with Soup," revised in 1982.

Harold Lauer from Spearfish, S.D., was looking for a recipe for the Coney dog sauce that was served at many A&W drive ins in the 1960s. John Van Meter from Dickeyville sent in a recipe for the sauce that was given to him by his late sister. He said the recipe is attributed to Hank's A&W root beer stand in Wabash, Ind. He sent the recipe to me exactly as it read, but he thought it needed a little tweaking, which I did without much difficulty. I tested his recipe on a day when my house was full of hungry football-watching boys, and it was a resounding success.

Linda Settles from Havre de Grace was looking for a recipe for brown sugar pie that duplicated the one her grandmother used to make. She said her grandmother had five daughters but none of them remember how she made the pie. Jeannie Armstrong from Dayton, MD found a recipe for the pie in a cookbook she bought at an antique store years ago. It was first published in 1915 and revised in 1944. I tested the recipe that she kindly sent in and found that it needed a little tweaking.