By By Robert St.John / food columnist
November 10, 2004
The Da Vinci Code is not the only form of secret encryption in existence.
My hometown of Hattiesburg had its own secret society filled with coded documents, clandestine meetings and cryptic writings. This surreptitious group was more secretive than the Illuminati, more cunning than the Order of Sion, and second to no one when it came to enigmatic riddles.
They were the Lydians and I have broken their code.
The Lydian Women's Society of Christian Service was formed at my church, Main Street United Methodist Church, in the early half of the 20th century. To the casual observer, this was a group of little old ladies who gathered monthly for garden club lectures, Bible study, bridge games, and recipe swaps. To an astute and informed culinary code-breaker, they were a secret society of the first order.
To break the Lydian Code, one must delve deep inside the "Lydian Cook Book," a harmless document to the untrained eye but a primer for hedonism to those in the know.
I have several editions of the "Lydian Cook Book." The ladies of my church published quite a few. They sat on my kitchen shelves for years ancient documents with pages yellowed by time filled with recipes for Welsh rarebit, frozen fruit salad and baked tuna croquettes. My grandmother was a Lydian and contributed many recipes over the years.
The first clue in my quest to crack the Lydian Code came on page 95, in Mrs. H.O. Siebe's custard recipe. Hidden in the ingredient list, immediately after cornstarch and cream, was the ambiguous component "flavor to taste." The secret phrase appears again in the 1953 Lydian Cookbook, sometimes using the subtle code "add your favorite flavoring," other times simply "favorite flavoring." These ambiguous ingredient listings are secret Lydian code for brace yourself liquor!
It turns out that the Lydian Code, "favorite flavoring" wink, wink, nudge, nudge, actually meant: Break out the booze, Erma Jean, it's time to party!
That's right, bourbon, brandy or liqueurs were staples in Lydian recipes. However, one could never include those ingredients in a Methodist church-sponsored cookbook, so the wise and party-minded Lydians came up with secret codes to communicate.
It doesn't take a cryptologist or a symbologist to know that when Mrs. Jimmie Mason listed "favorite flavoring" in her black bottom pie recipe, she meant 80-proof bourbon.
We know when Mrs. B.D. Blackwelder's recipe for "gourmet turkey casserole" included the ingredient "cooking sherry" it was Lydian code for the real thing gasp sherry! Orange extract = Grand Marnier. Almond extract = Amoretto.
I contacted a former member of the Lydians, a mole if you will, and asked her why they didn't just list "bourbon" as an ingredient. "Oh, we could never do that in a Lydian Cookbook," she said as she dropped the dime on her cohorts.
I have pictures of the Lydian ladies from the 1950s. My grandmother and her friends were all wearing sensible dresses, white gloves and pill box hats prim, proper and cut straight from the mold of Emily Post.
In reality, they were a secret society of blue-haired party animals. We only thought they were playing bridge, reading scripture and compiling recipes. Not so, they were shakin' it like a Polaroid picture in a 1940s-era version of Girls Gone Wild.
My grandmother and her Lydian friends were gathering for bridge games and sewing circles, but as soon as the doors were closed, the party started. They were probably drinking "favorite-flavoring" sherry straight from the bottle, doing vodka-spiked Jell-O shots of tomato aspic, and dancing the Charleston to Lawrence Welk records.
These pillars of the community and matriarchs of Hattiesburg society weren't learning how to prune gardenia bushes and arrange narcissus. They were snacking on bourbon balls, scarfing down rum cake and singing Irish pub songs after consuming massive amounts of "flavor-to-taste" recipes.
They weren't playing bridge at all. They were dealing five-card stud, smoking cigars, and eating rum cake. They probably even had a secret handshake.
It is said that the Lydian Society has disbanded. The newest edition in my collection is dated 1965. I suspect, however, that the ladies of the Lydian Women's Society of Christian Service have gone underground and, like the Illuminati, are still meeting in secret and baking dishes from the definitive blue-haired party manual, the "Lydian Cookbook."