Recipes from Hammond Castle

RECIPES FROM HAMMOND CASTLE offers not only a wonderful sampling of the foods served, but also a rare glimpse into the lavish lifestyle enjoyed, at the home-laboratory-museum built by millioniare inventor John Hays Hammond, Jr., in Gloucester, Massachusetts, during the 1920's.

The second edition of the castle cookbook has been expanded with twenty-four additional pages. Among the new recipes Nellie and Pat have added are "Knightly Loin of Pork" and "Swedish Applecake à la Garbo"—named for Greta Garbo, who was a frequent guest at Hammond Castle. Nellie has even added a couple of more memories to her narrative about life at Hammond Castle during her twenty-five year tenure as cook for Mr. Hammond.

In the summer of 2008, Hammond Castle finally implemented a decade-old idea by Hammond biographer, John Dandola, to restore the kitchen of the castle in true vintage style and dedicate it to Nellie.

Nellie even appears as a character along with Hammond in Dandola's mystery novels, DEAD BY ALL APPEARANCES and DEAD IN SMALL DOSES, which are set at the castle during World War II.

Nellie Nally Connors was born Ellen Mary Ryan in the city of Cork, Ireland. As a teenager, she emigrated to the United States, trained as a cook, and later married Gloucester mailman John Edward Nally. After working for wealthy families on Cape Ann, Massachusetts, she began a small catering business tending to their social events. Her name and her abilities spread through word-of-mouth. As a result, she began working part-time for John Hays Hammond, Jr., during World War II and continued until his death in 1965.

Widowed in 1962, she married Gloucester pharmacist Austin Connors in 1966. Nellie passed away in August of 2002.

The loss of Nellie postponed that second edition since it took time for her friend and co-author, Patricia M. Drury, to mourn and regroup in order to finally steer the project to completion. Appropriately, the second edition debuted on St. Patrick's Day of 2006.

Patricia Mary Drury learned culinary skills from her maternal grandmother. Like Nellie, Pat's grandmother had been born in Ireland (County Offaly), emigrated to the United States as a teenager, trained as a cook, and worked for wealthy families in Llewellyn Park, the exclusive West Orange, New Jersey, enclave where Thomas Alva Edison owned a home. Many of Pat's relatives had worked for Edison in his West Orange factory. Coincidentally, Edison had been a mentor to Hammond. Needless to say, besides her obvious fondness for Nellie, Pat found more than enough common ground to collaborate on this cookbook; a project made all the more special because of her fascination with Hammond Castle and its history.