Postscript: Mimi Sheraton 1926 - 2023

Mimi Sheraton (Photo by Julien Jourdes)

I see in the Times that Mimi Sheraton has died: see “Mimi Sheraton, Innovative New York Times Food Critic, Dies at 97.” Sheraton wrote one of my favorite New Yorker pieces – “Spit Cake” (November 23, 2009). It’s an account of her search for an authentic Baumkuchen, “a towering cake that is improbable both for the way in which it is produced and for the strong appeal of its simple, innocent flavor, redolent of butter, flour or cornstarch, eggs, sugar, and gently sweet hints of marzipan, rum, or vanilla.” She finds it in a pastry shop in Chicago. She observes it being made:

The Lutz Baumkuchen does not taper, because Kozik does not use a cone; before preheating the tubular spit, he wraps it in many layers of aluminum foil. Nor does he ladle the deliciously sweet batter on. Instead, he pours small quantities into the trough beneath the spit. Then he releases a lever that lowers the spit into the trough, where it revolves and picks up the batter before it is hoisted back up to cook. After about the eighth layer, Kozik holds a long wooden comb against the sides of the revolving cake to impress the ridges, a process that is repeated about six times until the ridges are firmly set. Then subsequent layers are baked on, and the drippings are smoothed off against a board as they turn. The process takes about two hours for a Baumkuchen that has twenty-four ridges, or is about forty-eight inches tall, with sixteen to eighteen layers of batter and weighing six pounds. The result was the closest to Kreutzkamm’s that I have found, but with slightly less defined rings and a milder flavor devoid of marzipan.

Rereading “Spit Cake” just now, I realize that the passage I most relish isn't about Baumkuchen; it's about the making of a Polish spit cake called sekacz. Here’s the passage:

Gradually blushing red-faced as we sweltered in the Sweet World’s tiny utility room, where Ryba clocks a three- to four-hour watch over his rotating sekacz, he demonstrated the most traditional method. First, he preheated a big, worn vertical gas-fired oven that looks like a Rube Goldberg improvisation of a sheet-metal barbecue grill. After wrapping a large metal cone in layers of parchment, he slid it over the spit’s spindle, where it establishes the cake’s tapering form. He then let the whole thing turn and heat for about fifteen minutes. “Cone must be hot, so first layer of batter sticks and also bakes the cake from the inside,” he explained. The turning of the spit also kept the batter clinging as it wrapped around itself.

Donning a protective clear plastic face mask, somewhat like a welder’s, as the heat built up, Ryba ladled the batter from a big pail. Every ladleful was poured into a trough under the spit so that it would become more liquid. As each layer toasted to a golden-brown glaze, the next was poured over, and so on until the desired width was achieved, thereby creating the defining brown rings one sees when the cake is sliced. With its rustic, nicely browned crust and the crunchy protruding brambles that developed as the drippings baked on, the cut sekacz revealed a buff-gold cake that had seductively dense sweet-smoky and slightly ripe overtones.

Mm, that description is crazy good!

Sheraton connects with The New Yorker in another way. In  1979, she wrote a piece for The New York Times, blowing the cover of the chef named Otto in John McPhee’s now classic “Brigade de Cuisine” (The New Yorker, February 19, 1979; later retitled "A Philosopher in the Kitchen"). According to Sheraton, McPhee pleaded with her not to publish her piece. She says, in her memoir Eating My Words (2004), that McPhee accused her of breach of trust. She replied,

“It’s not my breach,” I said. “I never promised Lieb [the chef’] or anyone else anything and you should not have, either, if you were going to write about him in The New Yorker. Anyway, the story is already in and the paper will be dropped on my doorstep in an hour or two. You made this a matter of public interest, especially when food is such a hot topic.

Maybe someday, I’ll delve into this ruckus in more detail. Today, I want to pay tribute to Sheraton as the writer of “Spit Cake” – one of the best food pieces ever to appear in The New Yorker.