Family Recipe Earns Dad in Kitchen a Tidy Sum

Most recipes are faded and some are illegible.

Who doesn’t remember making a salt and flour map when they were in school?  I remember both of mine very well.  One was a map of Iceland and the other was of Italy.  The great thing about a salt and flour map is that they look so realistic.  You can sculpt the coastline and form mountains and river valleys that look just like the real thing.  Forget the fact that your map isn’t accurate.  Most weren’t, but they passed.  Let’s face it, when you’re making the map; a glob here and a plop there; it all looks good, so why move it?

And how about durable?  Almost all salt and flour maps survived the school bus trips to and from the schoolhouse…because they were as hard as rocks.  They were rocks!  Some can still be found in attics, years after their creation.  It was the high concentration of table salt that preserved them, from mold as well as from rodents.  What mouse in his right mind would bite into anything that is two parts flour to one part salt?

When I made my salt and flour maps in fifth and seventh grades, little did I know that my great-grandfather was responsible for innovating the use of German Salt Dough for topographic or relief map construction for school projects.

The cover is encrusted with flour and
many pages have shortening stains.

It started about seven months ago when I found my great-grandfather’s recipe book.  Hosea E. Latshaw was born about the time of the Civil War and had started Latshaw’s Bakery in Spring City, Pennsylvania by 1882.  By the time he was born, at least four generations of Latshaws had resided in the United States.  It’s unclear where Hosea’s recipes came from, but many include German references.

One such recipe is “Salzteig.”  When I first read the ingredients, (2 qt. flour, 1 qt. salt, 2 jiggers weinstein, 1 qt. water), I wondered, “Who in their right mind would want to eat that?  And what in the world is ‘weinstein?’”

I then did a little research.  “Good old” Alta Vista Babelfish translated “Salzteig” as “salt dough.”  More Internet research revealed that salt dough was originally used to make decorative sculptures, as far back as Ancient Egypt.  The high salt content really served as a preservative.  Germans used the mixture to make Christmas ornaments and other holiday decorations.

But what is “weinstein?”  After more Internet research I learned that weinstein is the white residue that forms on the inside of casks of wine when it ages.  It’s actually potassium tartrate and it’s left to dry, scraped off, and used in cooking.  You might know it as cream of tartar.

Someone made a LOT of salt dough ornaments!

All of this would explain the old photo I found of what I surmise are salt dough Christmas decorations.  The larger items in the foreground are wall hangings of some kind, but the garland creating the booth is dripping with Christmas ornaments.  Most are wreaths.  If you look closely, you’ll recognized the Holy Family is the subject of the picture hanging in the center.

Someone in the Latshaw family obviously made a ton of salt dough Christmas ornaments.  That is interesting, but here is the unique part.  At the bottom of the page with the Salzteig ingredients in Hosea’s recipe book, is this notation:  Russell - China map for school.

Russell Latshaw with one of the
horses used to pull the bakery
delivery wagon.

Russell Latshaw was Hosea’s oldest child, born in 1895.  He did not graduate from high school, as he was needed in the bakery and to work on the family farm on Wall Street, also in Spring City.  However he did finish the sixth grade.  Could it be that Russell made a map of China from the Salzteig?  I suddenly became interested in the history of salt and flour maps.

After many hours on the Internet, as well as chasing down many false leads and bad information, I received a reply email from Amy Nibbet of the Smithsonian Institution.  Amy is a conservationist with the Smithsonian’s Donald Rockwell Research Center for the History of American Education.  Amy told me that the first mention of salt dough maps is in 1911 in a school annual, the forerunner of the yearbook.  The location was even more important:  Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.  After 1911, the recipe for salt dough map making appears in educational periodicals and teaching books.

Here’s the best part:  Amy told me that an “H. Latschar” had registered the recipe’s use for map-making and that royalties had been paid whenever it was published for twenty years, the term of the registration.  Due to the spelling error, the money was never paid to Hosea, and a law firm in New York City has held the royalties since 1913…with interest.  The original amount was only slightly over $7,000, but with interest averaging 4.5% the total is now almost $612,000!  Since I am the holder of the original recipe, which must still be tested for authenticity, I will be able to claim the entire amount.  And if you believe that, don’t forget it’s April Fool’s Day!