January 2019 – Edition 166

December 2018 Edition 165

Jerrems Journal – Edition 166

THE HEALY FAMILY COOKS

Does anybody recognise this lady? Why is she featuring in a Jerrems Journal article, I hear you ask. Keep reading and all will be revealed!

Introduction

Exciting news! After a deafening eight years silence about the Healy family I have re-opened research into the family, where I previously wrote a total of three articles in 2008 and 2010.

Also, I have found the Healy family’s answer to the famous cook, Mrs Beeton, who according to legend famously began one of her recipes with “First catch your chicken..”.

This article will therefore

explain the background of the new research, and

describe the founder of the family of Healy cooks.

The “Jerrems” connection

But what is the connection between the Jerrems and Healy families?

It is quite simple really. The connection is that Annie Letitia Jerrems (b1882) married Ambrose Marquette (“Mark”) Healy in 1907. Annie was the youngest daughter of William George Jerrems l, who was in turn a son of my great great grandfather Thomas Jerrems. To put this in context, Thomas was a son of Big Bill.

In turn, on the Healy side, Mark was the son of Patrick Joseph Healy, the Irish migrant who in the 1870s co-founded the famous Lyon& Healy musical instrument company in Chicago in the United States.

Quite simple, really!

Impetus for re-opening research

Impetus for re-opening research was an email from Donal OCallaghan who, as his name would imply, hails from Ireland. Donal has an earlier genealogical connection with the Healy family and located me after reading my articles on the internet. He had been researching the family for several years.

At his request I resumed my research and gave him the email addresses of the grandsons of Annie, being Mark and Vincent Healy.

After exchanging information with Donal for about a month he told me that he had contacted Susan and Alison Healy. Susan, in particular, had carried out a huge amount of research, overtaking my research by a considerable margin.

Annie’s father-in-law Patrick Joseph Healy

Briefly, after migrating to the United States Patrick married Mary Ann Griffith (1842-1877) in Chicago in 1863 and they had the following children: James Edward b1866, Mary b1869, George b1870, Raymond John b1872, Paul Joseph b1874, Unnamed infant b&d 1877.

Patrick remarried in 1882 to Frances Hannan (1854-1899), and they had the following children: Marquette “Mark” Ambrose Healy b1885, Vincent Eugene Healy b1886, Mary Virginia Healy b1887, Frances Healy b1889, Columbus Healy b1890, Anita M Healy b1893, and Augustine “Gus” Healy b1894.

Susan’s research

As you would imagine, for Patrick James Healy’s family containing 13 siblings Susan has collated an amazing amount of information, providing lots of ideas for me for articles, but also raising a dilemma as to where I should start. I decided that the democratic solution would be to start with writing about Alison and Susan’s forbears, starting with Alison and her family of cooks.

Who is Alison?

Columbus Healy, one of Patrick Joseph Healy’s numerous sons, married Harriet Pardridge (born 1899 in Chicago) in 1923, and they had a son Edward Patrick Healy (1925-1998). He married Barbara Earle and their children included Alison Earle Healy and Edward Patrick Healy Jnr (known as “Patrick”).

This article concentrates on Harriet (born 1899 in Chicago) and her grandchildren Alison and Edward Patrick Jnr and their cooking careers.

Harriet

Harriet’s husband Columbus had sailed into eternity in 1946, and soon after she developed her interest in cooking. The Chicago Daily Tribune reported in 1951 that

“Mrs. Peabody’s sister-in-law, Mrs. Columbus Healy, has a new shop, “Au Bon Gout,” which is the talk of Palm Beach. Harriet Healy spent the summer in Paris and graduated from the Cordon Bleu there. When she announced she would conduct cooking classes in Palm Beach she had 65 applications instanter. In the tiny and charming shop she sells wonderful sauces and spreads which she makes herself, and other delicacies as well as handsome French antiques.”

By the way, Palm Beach is in Florida, on the south coast of the United States and is known for its warm climate. Also, “Au Bon Gout” means “At the House of Good Taste”, it has nothing to do with gout.

Harriet expands her premises

We learn from the same newspaper later that year that:

“So successful were Mrs. Columbus Healy’s cooking classes last season that she has enlarged her quarters and even is opening a class over in West Palm Beach. Resort men are taking cooking lessons. But just who they are and when they come are Mrs. Healy’s secrets. Slaving all day over a hot stove doesn’t seem to be in the lexicon of Mrs. Healy, a graduate of Cordon Bleu in Paris. She teaches her pupils all manner of short cuts and methods to glorify simple food. Men, she says, are interested in learning how to make crepes suzette, fluffy, well seasoned omelets, and pungent sauces. The women, especially the young marrieds, are learning how to make casserole dishes.”

Harriet bursts into print

In the mid 1950s Harriet published a modest booklet entitled “Good Taste” available for the princely sum of $2 from the restaurant. She followed this in the early 1960’s when she edited the Palm Beach Garden Cookbook, a collection of recipes from the Palm Beach Garden Club. In 1980 the irrepressible Harriet (aged 81) published “Ways With Food”, a true product of its time. It had a run of about 8000 copies.

In an interesting twist, her first husband Columbus Healy having died in 1946, she married his brother Augustine (“Gus”) in 1957. Gus passed away in 1975.

More praise for Harriet

Three years later the newspaper continued to extol the merits of Harriet’s restaurant:

“When Harriet Healy started her classes nine years ago they were enthusiastically subscribed to by the Palm Beach community. The specialties she teaches are the things her students like most to eat—principally classic French dishes, but with traditional procedures simplified and many inventive touches added. Her classes are held once a week from January through March for a maximum of 16 students per session. They have proved so popular that, at $12 a lesson, there is a waiting list of never fewer than 35 or 40 women.”

It was probably at this stage that the mystery lady whose photo appears at the top of this article joined one of Harriet’s cooking classes. She was of course Jacqueline Kennedy, the wife of President John F. Kennedy.

Jacqueline Kennedy

Jacqueline Bouvier married then-Congressman John F. Kennedy in 1953. Following her husband’s election to the presidency in 1960, Jacqueline Kennedy was known for her highly publicized restoration of the White House and emphasis on arts and culture, as well as for her style, elegance, and grace. Only 31 years old when her husband was inaugurated, she was the youngest First Lady since Frances Cleveland. Her husband was of course assassinated in 1963, and she later married the Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis. Sadly, she passed away at the age of 61, from cancer.

Jacqueline thanks Harriet

In a charming handwritten note written in about 1980 Jacqueline said:

“Dear Mrs Healy,

I am so delighted with your book and grateful for your having sent it to me.

It makes me so nostalgic for your wonderful classes at Au Bon Gout. I learned so much there and consumed one jar of cinnamon flying saucers at every class.

I hope you are very well and are enjoying the success your book will surely have.

Gratefully

Jacqueline Onassis”.

The book referred to was Harriet’s 1980 book.

Harriet’s secret weapon

Alison comments that “Harriet’s shop was “famous” for flying saucer crackers which were sold in jars for a small fortune. This is what Jackie O was referring to. If Harriet had invented these in the age of the internet, we would all be rich!”

“The flying saucers were very thin and crispy and about two inches (5 centimetres) across. They were made up of layers – a phyllo-like pastry she created. They were so thin they were translucent. Smartly salted and with tons of requisite butter in the recipe, no jam or cheese was needed. Sold in jars.”

A 1977 article in the highly esteemed New York Times was full of praise, describing them as “Crisp bits of unleavened bread packaged in two ounce jars and selling for $3. Almost no self-respecting cocktail party in town is without them”.

Harriet circumvents the perennial “male problem”

Harriet had a clever solution to the problem that Palm Beach men were reticent about attending cooking classes.

Men would not want to be seen in a cooking class in general, so she hired a male friend to be her “omelette sitter”. This gave her leverage to say “Why, yes there are men in my class all the time, you should come too!”

Alison Healy

Harriet’s granddaughter Alison continues the story of Harriet, and tells us how Harriet influenced her and her brother Patrick to follow in her footsteps:

“My grandmother was very close to many famous chefs, all of whom stayed at her home and sometimes travelled with or met her in France. These included James Beard, Pierre Franny (“The Galloping Gourmet”), Simone Beck, Julia Child and many others.

When she married Gus Healy at 60 or so, he asked her to stop working. So she sold her business to her accountant and continued to consult to him and give cooking lessons, and probably most prominently, to host culinary luminaries and their cooking lessons – including cooking with them in the years that followed selling her business. We became a family that remembered where we were and what we did based on what we ate! My grandmother was wonderful that way; her dream was to take my brother and I to Europe when we were old enough. She sold some jewelry that she bought from some Russians who came here under duress with all of their money turned into gems and sewn into their clothing.”

Julia Child

Here is a photo of world reknown Julia Child (1912-2004), the American chef, author and television personality referred to above. She is recognized for bringing French cuisine to the American public with her debut cookbook “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”, and her subsequent television programs, the most notable of which was the very popular “The French Chef”, which premiered in 1963. In total she wrote 25 cook books and had syndicated TV shows for 30 or 40 years. She was certainly prolific!

Later, in 2009, Meryl Streep played Julia in the film “Julie and Julia”, featuring Julia’s early cooking career.

Julia is well known for her quip: “Ï always give my bird a generous butter massage before I put it in the oven. Why? Because I think the chicken likes it-and more importantly I like it”.

Harriet and her grandchildren go to Europe

Here is a photo of the debonair (and prolific writer) Roger Verge, referred to below.

Returning to Alison’s account of her cooking adventures, the following year Harriet (who was was by now still sprightly and in her early seventies), instead of taking her traditional vacation to France or Italy by herself for the summer, took Patrick and Alison to a house she rented in Grasse in the French Riviera. There they lived next door to Julia Child and Simone Beck (“Mastering the Art of French Cooking”). They went to the famous Moulin de Mougins, with its iconic chef/owner Roger Verge and Julia Child at their table. The impressionable Patrick, at the age of 16 or 17 decided then and there that he was going to model himself on Verge -a white haired and mustachioed handsome guy with a tall toque.

Incidentally, a toque (not shown in the above photo) is a tall, round, pleated, starched white hat worn by chefs. Please imagine that Roger Verge is wearing a toque in the above photo.

This sojourn in Europe opened the door for Patrick’s new career which I will talk about in a later Journal. Alison and Patrick spent the summer using South France as their base so that they could travel to see their mother in Florence and go on their own to Rome and Spain. Julia Child sent them off with $20, a massive chocolate bar and (most importantly) letters of introduction to the high-profile Gritti Palace and Hotel Cipriani in Venice.

At the Gritti Palace they received cooking lessons thanks to Julia opening the door. They were also received like royalty at the Cipriani and loved the million course meal, however they were stunned when the bill came because they naively thought it all would be free!!!!

Alison says it was amazing. With this exposure to top level cooks it was little wonder that in due course, as you will see in a later article, the siblings chose cooking for their careers!

The Healy Flappers

Alison says that Harriet was also super creative and invented things all the time. One of them was a gadget called “The Healy Flappers” which were used to move a pie crust from a counter to the pie pan. She had never heard of these until she saw Julia Child on TV using and referring to them with the name she gave them! It was fun to ask Julia about these!

Harriet the rebel

Here is a photo of Harriet in 1986 at the age of 87. She is holding a Jack Daniels flask which she brought to Alison’s wedding reception because she had been informed that alcohol was not being served!

Harriet finally hangs up her apron

The redoubtable Harriet passed away in 1998 at the impressive age of 99, however I have heard it rumoured from reliable sources that she is currently teaching St Peter to cook in her new restaurant at the Pearly Gates.

Patrick and Alison Healy

As often happens, I have run out of space, so I will tell you more about Patrick and Alison’s cooking careers in a later Journal.

January 2019 – Edition 166

January 2019 – Edition 166

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