Katharine Howes Schultz, 1930s to 1950s home economics teacher in La Crosse Wisconsin was one of the first to propagate the use of the 1930s recipe, Potato Chip Casserole. Besides teaching her students at La Crosse Vocational School Home Economics Department, she broadcast the recipe on a Cooking School of the Air 1938 radio cooking radio. This is the earliest record of the classic mid-century modern recipe that baby boomers either loved without end or hated immensely at the family table. There’s a hint in 1941 The Sexton Cook Book that the recipe could have been developed for large-scale institutional dinners, at schools or hospitals. I’m hoping to find a reasonably priced Sexton’s 1937 edition for an earlier date.
Katharine completed 5 years of college, perhaps from the Normal School in La Crosse. She was born 1892 in Wisconsin, married Reinhold Schultz in 1920, also Wisconsin-born, as was his father, and his mother was born in Germany. In 1925 they had a son, William, named after Katharine’s brother who was assistant General Post Master of the United States. In 1935 the Katharine and her husband lived at 1228 Madison St in La Crosse, just 3 miles away from where she taught home economics which is now Western Technical College. The school changed their name through the years.
In 1938 Katharine was a host on the radio show “Cooking School of the Air” sponsored by her school and WKBH. Their radio brochure announcement was the first instance of the recipe Potato Chip Casserole that we’ve found, pictured here.
Before we reenact Katharine’s Potato Chip Casserole, here’s a little more about her life, and the life without her husband, Reinhold. In 1940, Mrs. Schultz was living at 2326 Madison St with her son and a live-in maid. Katharine’s husband “has been taken at camp,” perhaps meaning a military camp? or the US government detained him as a German national and he lived at an internment camp under the Alien Enemies Act? He was a US citizen, with a German mother, and a very German name. During WWII there had been only 11,000 German Americans interned — compared to how many German-Americans there were in the US in 1940, this was “a drop in the bucket,” though still very real. 1940 is early. Could Reinhold Schultz have just been just working at a camp? Yes, this was more likely. In 1940 there was the first peacetime draft in the country’s history. During WWI it was said Reinhold was a Captain at Camp Culver, and in 1919 led a cargo of $2 million in supplies to trade with Russia. For decades after he had roles of leadership in government work, along with being an Alderman. In 1930 he was a superintendent of the public employment office, and near retirement in 1950 he was a Hospital Aid for the VA hospital. so it’s very likely he was drafted in 1940, leaving his wife with household help as he was “taken to camp.”
Katharine in 1950 continued as a Home Economics teacher at the vocational school, near retirement age, husband finally at her side for 5 more years, living at her same address as 1940. No maid.
Widowed in 1955, and retired, she moved 50 miles east, perhaps to be near a relative. She died at the age of 89, having lived a life of helping others and developing American foodways.
