What happens when an ancient restaurant dies – Cheese Soup at The Old Drover’s Inn

Opening montage: bucolic country settings, old barns, portraits of the people mentioned in the voice over.

Ambient sounds: crickets and other appropriate country sounds.

Music: soft, melancholy fiddle music should start midway through the opening narration.

Voice over (should be David McCullough-esque): In 1750, Louis the 15^th presided over the Court at Versailles. Across the channel, 12 year-old Edward the 6^th sat on the throne on England. In America, Benjamin Franklin had just captured nature's fury with his invention the lightening rod. It was an invention he never patented and freely gave away to the world. In China, the Qing Dynasty ruled and would continue to until the early part of the 20^th Century. The Pope, Benedict the 14^th, officiated services at St. Peter's in Rome.

In 1750, Philadelphia was the largest city in the English speaking American colonies with a population of some 25,000. New York had just 15,000 people and Baltimore, a mere 7,000. The average life expectancy was 35 years of age.

In 1750, the Declaration of Independence was 26 years in the future. Its author, Thomas Jefferson, was seven years old. The United States Constitution was 39 years away. Its author, James Madison, had yet to be born.

In 1750, in the town that would later be named Dover Plains in Duchess County, New York, John Preston opened his house to the folks driving cattle from farms in Upstate New York to Vermont. Eventually, it would be called the Old Drover's Inn and it would operate for the next 260 years, serving hearty fare and its famous Cheese Soup to anyone that came by. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton famously fled there to avoid the glaring eyes of the paparazzi and her then husband, Eddie Fisher, in 1962.

Then, in July of this year, 2010, it went through foreclosure and was and shut down. Gone forever. It was sold for less than $350,000.00. So rapid was its demise, it was reported that dirty dishes were simply left on tables and food was allowed to rot in refrigerators.

The economy can be blamed. Changes in diners' tastes can be blamed. Lax management or inattentive service could also be culprits. It's out of the way location -- miles from the nearest Interstate -- may have been a factor.

Whatever. The fact remains, it's gone. And while this one restaurant's closure may or may not be a big deal, it is part of a disturbing trend: America is losing some of its culinary heritage. 

Now, some may argue that we never had any great culinary heritage; that we were all immigrants, bringing our old school recipes and culinary culture with us from Africa, Asia and Europe. America was not France or Italy or China or Japan or some other country with a great culinary tradition; that only now are we learning to cook and care about food in the way that those countries with great culinary traditions did way back when most Americans didn't have indoor plumbing. And you'd be right. But that misses a larger point.

The food our grandparents and great-grandparents ate at the turn of the 20^th century up through the Eisenhower era is alien to most hipsters today. People in Middle America in the early part of the last century -- the non-urban, rustic, bucolic countryside of the Depression -- often ate something they killed in their backyards. Preparations were simple. Restaurants, such as they were, churned out regional comfort food. And as more of these ancient restaurants die, they take their traditional recipes with them to their graves.

I have a cookbook from 1950 that lists the Old Drover's Inn as a destination and includes the recipe for their famous Cheese Soup. Her Imperial Majesty and I visited the Inn during happier times when it was open and, yes, we had the soup. It was astonishing and I can see why it made it into the book. But the book is long out of print. Now, thanks to the internet, the recipe for its' Cheese Soup may live forever. Here it is:

• 12 ounce cheddar cheese, shredded
  
• 4 tablespoons of butter
  
• ½ cup diced carrots
  
• ½ cup diced green peppers
  
• ½ cup minced onion
  
• ½ cup minced celery
  
• 1/3 cup flour
  
• 1 quart, chicken stock
  
• 3 to 4 cups of milk
  
• Salt and pepper
  

Melt butter in 4 quart pan, melt the butter. Sauté all vegetables until soft. Blend in flour to make a roux. Cook one minute, then add stock and stir until thick. At this point, the recipe calls for straining the veggies, but since I don't have a strainer, I put the stock and veggies in a food processor and pureed them. Then, back into the pot. Add the cheese and stir until it melts, then add the milk until it reaches a creamy consistency. Season with salt and pepper. I like to add a shot of sherry at the end for a bit of an extra kick.

Wholesome and savory. Hale and hearty. One can close one's eyes and with the aroma alone be magically transported back in time to a much different America, an America before it had its cultural ADHD, a time when everything didn't have to be oh-so-up-to-the-minute and the 24 hour news cycle simply didn't exist. A time when things were much slower and people stopped at out of the way inns and watering holes to take in the local fare. Sadly, it's an America that slowly going away, dying one by one like the last veterans of wars fought long ago. Soon, they will all exist only in our collective memories, their recipes in ancient, out-of-print cookbooks, preserved for the ages.