Posted by Bruce Bilmes and Sue Boyle
, April 05, 2010 22:54
We are sad to have to report that The Biscuit Lady of Nashville’s Loveless Cafe, Carol Fay Ellison, has passed away, according to a report in The Tennessean. Ms. Ellison’s biscuit-making talents, and her spirit, were legendary. In honor of Carol we present, from Jane and Michael Stern’s Southern Country Cooking from The Loveless Cafe, their story about Carol Fay Ellison, in its entirety:
Carol Fay Ellison is the steady anchor in the kitchen of the Loveless Cafe. Business tides may ebb and flow, but her biscuits are a constant fact of life, as are the fruit preserves she makes to go with them.
One of ten children who grew up in a home where Mother made biscuits for the family, Carol started work as a dishwasher at the Loveless twenty-six years ago [as of 2005]. One day when someone didn’t come in for work, she filled in as a line cook making eggs, ham, and sausage. “Oh, lordy, it was hot then,” she remembers. “If it was a hundred degrees outside, it was two hundred in the kitchen. You had to walk into the freezer to get cool.”
Gifted with expertise learned from watching her mother, she soon became the biscuit lady. Biscuits had always been an essential part of the cafe’s meals; when they became her responsibility, she made a change or two in the recipe and created what has since become a Loveless signature. “They had been using powdered milk, buttermilk, and water,” she recalls. “But with powdered milk, you make a dough that chunks and gunks. So I took it out of the recipe.” Precious few people have since apprenticed with Carol Fay to become proficient as biscuit makers. “It can be tough teaching people,” she says. “A lot of them don’t want to put their fingers in the dough. And handling the dough just right is key.”
As she describes it, making preserves is a less exacting science. “All I do is add sugar to the fruit,” she reveals. “We used to cook them on the stove in big old rondos. Now I’ve got a tilt skillet, and we make preserves every day.”
After the Loveless shut down for remodeling early in 2004, Carol Fay’s skills and experience were key ingredients in a new kitchen that would stay true to the cafe’s culinary roots. “When we reopened, I did 149 hours in the first two weeks,” she says with a serene smile.
Jesse Goldstein, vice-president of operations for TomKats, the company that saved and revived the Loveless Cafe, told us that Carol Fay’s presence in the new kitchen is essential, and not only because she is keeper of the precious biscuit recipe. As one who has been an essential part of the Loveless Cafe for more than a quarter century, she embodies an indomitable spirit that gives strength to those around her. “I love her,” Jesse says. “There is no one in the world better to hug, or to be hugged by.”
Our condolences go out to the family, friends, and coworkers of Carol Fay Ellison.
