47 handwritten recipes
10 students living in Longman Dorm
4 Tuesday nights of dorm snack
1 playlist of 1960s popular music

Mix the above ingredients. Add copies of The Epilogue.
Yield: a taste of Chaffee School life, 1958–1968

Sometimes the evening dorm snack involves time travel.

Such was the case this winter when the girls in Longman Hall agreed to sample dishes made from recipes preserved in the school archives. This collection of 47 handwritten recipes, penned in ink on lined pages of steno notepad, document a slice of mid 20th-century American cuisine: Chicken a la King; Eggplant Ranch Style, Queen Elizabeth Cake; Orange Snow; Pineapple Cheese Salad; tapiocas; aspics; sauces; and so many jellied salads. Penciled-in notes indicate specific instructions: “cream cheese first, then cherry filling” or “make 3x.” On others, the circular brown shadows of long-ago kitchen splatters almost obscure the cooking directions. These must have been favorites.

Marcia Sanderson, a Chaffee faculty member from 1963 to 1978, donated the recipes to the Loomis Chaffee Archives decades ago. Although the group is labeled “Recipes from Sill House/Mrs. Platt’s?,” referring to the building that housed the Chaffee School’s Dining Room and Mrs. Platt, the school dietician and head of the Dining Room from 1958 to 1968, it’s not certain that these were used for school lunches. Jean Sanderson, Marcia’s daughter, confirmed that the handwriting is not her mother’s. Despite the mystery surrounding their connection to the Chaffee School, the recipes, along with a historically accurate soundtrack created by Margot Korites ’21 and browsing in period yearbooks — Chaffee’s Epilogue from the 1960s — helped to open an authentic “way” into the past.

As with all experienced food critics, the Longman girls gathered details about the food before any of it crossed their lips: they looked, they smelled, they poked, and they asked a lot of questions about ingredients. There were some unlikely and pleasing combinations, including the peanut butter, butterscotch morsels, and Rice Crispies in Scotch Crispies. More dubious (and less enthusiastically received) medleys included the lemon Jello, sliced beets, celery, and horseradish of Jellied Beet Salad. Fruit-flavored Jello, unflavored gelatin, or frozen fruit juice concentrate figured prominently in many of the recipes. Three-ingredient recipes, including Ice Cream Cake (lady fingers, ice cream, and maple syrup) and Chocolate Cake Surprise (devil’s food cake, cream cheese, and cherry pie filling), were surprisingly simple and quick to prepare.

The Longman girls noted the bold colors and bold flavors of these 1960s dishes. The brilliant gem-like green of Jellied Emerald Dessert, the intense depth of Orange Snow’s orange, and the rich red of cherry sauce atop the Chocolate Cake Surprise caught their eyes. The striking flavors of Lemon Chiffon Pie (intensely tart), Butterscotch Square (smooth and mellow sweetness), and Jellied Beet Salad (frankly, hard to put into words) spoke of another’s generation’s culinary culture. 

As eager as we are to continue cooking and eating our way through the rest of these 47 recipes, we are even more keen to gather additional recipes connected with the Chaffee School. The often-spoken of sweet potato casserole, the very tender and thin pork chops (“absolutely phenomenal,” according to Jean), and the all-time favorite chocolate chip brownie — and others — remain undocumented in the Archives collection. We welcome any recipes that might engage our senses — and our taste testers — in this journey of food nostalgia.

View the handwritten recipes