A who’s who of dinner guests - 

Novelist and poet laureate Robert Penn Warren. Historian Shelby Foote. Paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey and British broadcaster David Attenborough. Lucy Littleton fed them all.

Evolutionary biologists Stephen J. Gould and Richard Dawkins. Novelists Joyce Carol Oates, William Styron, and Eudora Welty. Historians David McCullough, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and C. Vann Woodward also shared a home-cooked meal with my mother.

For twenty years, my mother welcomed visitors of national and international reputation who came to Auburn through the Auburn University Franklin Lecture Series – today, in its forty-third year, known as the Littleton-Franklin Lectures. My father, Taylor Littleton, an English professor and vice president of academic affairs at AU, directed the series for more than three decades.

Numerous Pulitzer Prize winners — including McCullough, Daniel Boorstin, and conservative columnist George Will — as well as Nobel Laureates, such as physicist Leon Lederman and economist Gary Becker, came to lead classroom discussions with students, give a public lecture, and then dine with faculty, alumni, and friends at our home on Norman Circle. For many of the lecturers, this was their first visit to Alabama.

Home-cooked menus for these gatherings of fifteen to twenty people were varied, as were the necessary appetizers. The American poet Archibald MacLeish remarked of one, “First time I’ve eaten a mushroom sandwich!” Main dishes might be Oysters & Wild Rice or Chicken Veronique with a salad and a vegetable. Dessert could be Sherry Cake, a Chocolate Roulade, and Lemon Curd Tarts. We Littleton children acted as servers and passers. As the youngest, I stood at the door in my pressed pinafore to greet guests and take their coats and purses before passing the hors d’oeuvres

This was an era when elegant restaurants were scarce in Auburn, and catering services were nearly non-existent. For faculty members and spouses, entertaining was simply part of  the job. Dinners, luncheons, cocktail parties, even for large numbers of guests, were home affairs.

Conservative commentator William F. Buckley, Jr., a guest at one soiree in 1990, stepped into the kitchen and asked if he could lend a hand. He wrote to my mother later, thanking her for “the fine reception and dinner.”

“I should be used to Southern manners by now, exposed to them as I have been for so many stretches of my life. But yours are truly distinctive.”

Things didn’t always run perfectly. “One evening, I forgot to turn on the oven, and dinner was forty-five minutes late,” my mother said. “Taylor just made everybody more drinks while they waited. I think I got the most compliments that night.”

Entertainment was not limited to the international glitterati. My mother invited my father’s students over for dinner at the end of each term. “I decided it would be all right to use paper plates for the students, but I still used the silver. Fortunately, I discovered in time that the students had thrown their paper plates in the trash along with their silver forks. Taylor and I had to go through loads of trash to recover them all.”

Learning to prepare a variety of elegant dishes was not an easy undertaking for a person living in a small college town, even though my mother had studied home economics at Florida State University in her hometown of Tallahassee. She read many cookbooks and took classes from a woman who had studied at the Cordon Bleu in Paris. Many of my mother’s friends also entertained, and each became known for their own special creations. This prompted my mother and colleagues Helen Baggett and Jeanne Blackwell to publish “Auburn Entertains” in 1986. Now celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary with a new printing, the book includes a rich assembly of recipes — the legacy of many of Auburn’s finest entertainers, including AU President Harry Philpot, First Lady Caroline Draughon, and even Sue Dye, wife of Coach Pat Dye.

After a successful first effort, my mother wrote another cookbook in 1994, “Picnics on the Plains: The Owl Bay Guide to Auburn Tiger Tailgating.” With a change of covers and a different introduction, versions were published for the Crimson Tide, the Tennessee Vols, Ole Miss, Miami Hurricanes, Georgia Bulldogs, Florida Gators, Penn State, Wisconsin, Michigan, Texas, Notre Dame, FSU, and many other universities. The cookbooks — a collaboration with her son George, daughter-in-law Dorothy and me — generated the money needed for George and Dorothy to adopt their youngest son from South America.

My mother says the most fun party she ever had was a bridesmaids’ luncheon, co-hosted by the bride’s aunt and the three-year-old flower girl, Lucy Littleton, my mother’s granddaughter. According to an established dictum for fine Southern dining, every Southern table should have five things — antique linens, family china, family silver, fresh flowers and place cards. “We used old embroidered cloths and napkins. For centerpieces at each table, we filled silver tussie mussies (bouquet holders) with sweetheart roses, baby’s breath and maidenhair ferns and propped them up with silver napkin rings. Silver cake charms tied with ribbons were tucked under the ferns and connected with place cards at each of the bridesmaids’ plates to be pulled out at dessert time.”

The groom’s mother, who was visiting from Montgomery, admired my mother’s embroidered guest towels and told a story about one of her friend’s daughters, who had married a man in the military. The mother told her daughter to keep linen guest towels in the bathroom, so that her new acquaintances would know she came from a nice family. “Now that I’m in my eighties,” my mom told her, “I’m ready to pass down my linen towels to my daughter and my three daughters-in-law, who are all great party givers, and just enjoy their wonderful hospitality.”

Try as I have, I am a weak imitation of my mother when it comes to entertaining. I have my strengths, the least of which is cooking, but my three sisters-in-law and I realized long ago that it takes all of us to pull off the grand family occasions that my mother did for years all by herself. Although I recall her managing these monumental events with ease and aplomb, she reminded me, “I was always a nervous wreck before the parties, certain I’d never have everything ready. But when everyone arrived, it somehow came together, and I always had so much fun.”

Sherry Cake

Wonderful for buffet dinners.

• Oil to grease pan
• 4 eggs, separated
• 1 cup sugar
• ½ cup sherry
• 1 ½ envelope plain gelatin
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1 pint heavy cream, whipped
• 1 angel food cake, crust cut off, pulled into 1-inch pieces

Grease large tube pan with oil. Beat egg yolks with ½ cup sugar and sherry. Cook in double boiler until thickened to hot custard, stirring constantly. Soften gelatin in milk and dissolve in hot custard. In a separate bowl, beat egg whites. Fold egg whites into whipped cream and add ½ cup sugar. Fold in custard. Alternate layers of cake pieces and custard, ending with cake. Chill overnight. To serve, unmold and slice. Serves 12 or more. This can be frozen.

Mushroom Sandwiches

A favorite of the distinguished American poet and Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish. You can juice an onion using a fine grater.

• 1 tall can mushrooms, drained
• Juice from large onion
• Mayonnaise
• Fresh or dried parsley
• White sandwich bread

Chop mushrooms with a knife. Pour onion juice on mushrooms. Add mayonnaise to bind. Set in refrigerator in the morning to use in the evening. Chop parsley finely and mix with above. Spread mayonnaise on bread slices with crusts removed. Spread mushroom mixture on one slice of bread, top with other slice, then cut into two or three finger sandwiches. These keep well in Tupperware boxes in the refrigerator.

Sarah’s Deviled Crab

• 4 tablespoons butter or oleo
• 2 tablespoons flour
• ½ cup milk
• ½ cup sherry
• 2 teaspoons lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon prepared mustard
• ½ teaspoon bottled horseradish
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper sauce or Tabasco
• 2 hard-cooked eggs, minced
• 1 pound crabmeat
• ½ cup bread crumbs, optional

Make cream sauce of butter, flour, and milk. Add sherry, lemon juice, mustard, horseradish, salt, Tabasco, eggs, and crab. Put into casserole dish. Sprinkle bread crumbs. Heat in 325-degree oven until bubbly — about 20 minutes. Serves 6-8.

by Mary Wood Littleton