Lydia Rolerson, who died on Christmas Day in 2006, served me the first food I ever ate cooked in an Islesboro island kitchen.

Jamie and I visited the island in June 1980, my first visit, though Jamie had spent time here earlier, and knew Lydia’s son Darrell. So we visited with her that trip, happening upon a family gathering at her house around a carob cake with peanut butter frosting. I thought it was a birthday party, but maybe not. Lydia, who did not know me, nonetheless greeted me with a hug, and we stayed and ate cake. It was awfully good cake. We had an awfully nice visit. Lydia’s kindness was part of what convinced me that Islesboro might be a good place to live.

Food and history, and sometimes food history, cemented Lydia’s and my friendship over time. Lydia had a wonderful bunch of stories about Islesboro in the old days. She wrote them for our local paper, told them to people, and brought her memory of the island and her knowledge of its history to her work on the boards of island organizations where she served. She was always willing to answer questions about anything from chickens to clams, told me about a childhood in the Depression and about provisioning for the winter in the old days. She used to make jams and jellies for the summer folks; I used to save jars for her. She invited me to tea, and we had nice cookies, cheese, crackers and conversation.

And she was a good cook. Shortly after we arrived on-island to live, Lydia invited Jamie and me to supper at her house. I recall two things in particular about the meal. One was that we had a very tasty meatloaf; the other was that she especially honored us by serving a Jello salad. Most modern people don’t understand about Jello salads, which suffer the same kind of derision undeservedly dished out to fruitcake. But Lydia understood that a molded salad was a way to designate a meal as a company meal, a way to say that one meal is more special than another.

In the early days a molded dish required doing time with calves’ feet and egg whites, boiling, straining, clarifying, flavoring and chilling. It was a big deal and ordinary people had neither time nor household help to pull it off. Thank goodness for Jello: all of a sudden anyone could have a molded salad. And they did. As you well know, as soon as the masses get their mitts on something, it loses status right away. Still, for another generation or two a molded salad managed to be a special occasion dish. So when she set the green Jello with shredded cabbage and carrots on the table, I felt a surge of gratitude.

Lydia’s adoption of carob tells us that she was not stuck in the past. In the 1970s and `80s, carob was hippie food, along with things like hummus, tabouli and tofu. You couldn’t get it in the grocery store. Her kids probably introduced it to her as a substitute for chocolate, which wasn’t getting such good press in those pre-antioxidant-aware days. Lydia’s grown-up children and nieces and nephews all say she made a great carob cake, and they’re right. A great cake made by a great lady, a truly loveable friend, and one of our local treasures. We will miss Lydia terribly, but we don’t have to miss her cake though no carob cake I ever make will taste a good as the first one I ate that first time in Lydia’s friendship and hospitality.

Many thanks to Lydia’s son Stuart Rolerson and especially his wife, Kathy, for digging through Lydia’s recipe collection to find this recipe. They found the cake recipe, but could not locate the peanut butter frosting recipe. Kathy said she thought that it was a pretty ordinary sort of peanut butter frosting but that Lydia put a couple tablespoons of carob powder into it. I found a recipe on the Internet and put the carob powder in it and it tastes pretty darn good, though not as good as it would be if Lydia made it.

Sandy Oliver cooks and writes on Islesboro.

Aunt Lydia’s Carob Cake with Peanut Butter Frosting

Cake

2/3 cup soft shortening (I used butter)

1 2/3 cup sugar

3 eggs

2 ¼ cups flour

2/3 cup carob powder

¼ teaspoon baking powder

1 ½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

1 1/3 cup water

1 teaspoon vanilla

Grease and flour two 9-inch round pans or one 13 by 9 rectangular pan. Beat in the mixer the butter and sugar until fluffy, and then beat in the eggs and beat on high for five minutes. Sift together the dry ingredients. Add them to the butter, sugar and egg mixture alternately with the water and vanilla, and beat until the batter is smooth. Pour into the pans, and bake at 350 degrees for 35 to 40 minutes, checking after the first 30 minutes. It is done when the top springs back upon pressing it, and if cake pulls away from the sides, or a tester inserted comes out clean.

Frosting

½ cup softened butter

1 cup peanut butter

2 cups confectioner’s sugar

2 tablespoons carob powder

3 tablespoons of milk or cream

Beat the butter and peanut butter together until they are smooth and fluffy. Beat in the confectioner’s sugar a little at a time, and adding the milk alternately with the sugar. Makes enough frosting for two 9-inch round cakes — tops, sides and middle — and more than enough for a 9 by 13 inch cake.