Clipped from newspapers, taken from the backs of boxes and written in cursive on index cards, the recipes that Herman B Wells’ kitchen staff would cook for the former IU president and chancellor are a medley. At least one was written on the back of a dinner-party invitation, while others seem to have been transcribed with a typewriter.
For such a pivotal figure in the history of IU — Wells was instrumental in growing IU’s prestige and his death in 2000 made national news — there’s something very ordinary about the collection.
It’s relatable, in that it reminds me of my mom’s stack of recipes that she keeps on the kitchen counter, pulled out of magazines or printed on recycled paper. The recipes in Wells’ box aren’t glossy spreads from a Gordon Ramsay cookbook. They’re folded, stained and yellowed with age.
“They're really fun to look through,” Dina Kellams, director of the university archives and special collections, said. “[A]s you go through, you'll see little notes. ‘HBW wants’, you know, or ‘keep always,’ those sorts of things.”
“Keep always” is written on a well-loved recipe for “Fresh Peach Cobbler with Hard Sauce.” At the top of the paper it says that this was Miss Louise Irwin’s recipe.
In a 2011 interview with the Herald-Times, James Capshew, a professor in the department of History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine — and Wells’ biographer — described Wells as very social and focused on others.
Indeed, many of the recipes in Wells’ box included specific names, whether signed or jotted down. For example, “Mushroom Seafarers Casserole” bore the words “Fondly, Louisa” and instructions for jam cake were labelled “Maret Garard” and “Mrs. John Trumbo (1854-1933) Great-Grandmother.”
I can’t speak for Wells, but to me, recipes are more special when they are connected to friends and family. My cousin’s sherbert punch is good on its own, yes, but I get extra satisfaction when I bring it to a potluck and say, “it’s my cousin’s recipe.”
Wells would often host people for dining events, Capshew said. He served as a houseman for Wells during Capshew’s junior and senior years at IU, which included working at parties.
“When I was a houseman, Wells would have frequent dinner parties (formal, up to 12 people) and occasionally garden parties, which he termed ‘cocktail buffets’ (informal, around 100 people),” Capshew told the IDS in an email. “He was, to my knowledge, the only host in town who had finger bowls (to wash individually) as dinner parties.”
Finger bowls, according to Southern Living, are small dishes of water where diners can rinse their fingers, though they became uncommon after the 1950s.
One of my favorite recipes from Wells’ box in the archives is for ginger-snap cookies. It’s not the recipe itself that makes me smile; it’s the fact that it was printed as an “Interdepartmental Communication.”
Harry Gonso, from the department of the university chancellor, sent the recipe to Wells on June 5, 1973, with a note: “To let you know what you have been eating and how they are made, Jonni sends you her famous ginger-snap cookie recipe.”
As Kellams said, looking inside Wells’ recipe box gives us a window into the former president.
“It just really kind of tells us a little bit about the person,” Kellams said. “I mean, this is what he wanted. This is what he ate. This is what he enjoyed.”
