Summer Special: Cornell Chicken: The story behind its famous flavor
Release Date: 06/30/2021
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info_outlineThe Cornell Chicken recipe has a storied history. During this conversation with Reenie Baker Sandsted - daughter of Dr. Baker, and Sarah Sandsted - grandaughter of Dr. Baker, we dive into the origins of this recipe. We also discuss other poultry innovations that Dr. Baker is responsible for. Recorded August 2018 at the New York State Fair.
Original Cornell Chicken recipe published 1950: ecommons.cornell.edu/handle/1813/2652
Accessible version of Cornell Chicken Recipe: yates.cce.cornell.edu/resources/corn…cken-barbecues
Episode Transcript:
PAUL TREADWELL: Welcome to Extension Out Loud, a podcast from Cornell Cooperative Extension. I am Paul Treadwell.
KATIE BAILDON: And I'm Katie Baildon.
PAUL TREADWELL: With summer, fall on us right now, we thought it'd be an interesting time to highlight one of our past episodes that really embraced a summary topic.
KATIE BAILDON: Yeah. It's an episode on Cornell chicken. We went to the New York State Fair a few summers ago and to Baker's Chicken Coop. And we had a great conversation about the origins of Cornell chicken.
PAUL TREADWELL: And surprisingly, it's been one of our most-listened-to episodes. So we're going to give you a chance to listen to it again if you've heard it before. And if you haven't, give a listen to the exciting origin stories of Cornell chicken.
It's time to think barbecue.
KATIE BAILDON: And being where we are, it also means Cornell chicken.
PAUL TREADWELL: For this episode, we spoke with Reenie Baker Sansted, daughter of Dr. Robert Baker, originator of the world famous Cornell chicken recipe.
KATIE BAILDON: And did you know that Dr. Baker started out as an extension agent in Saratoga County, New York?
PAUL TREADWELL: I did not know that, Katie.
KATIE BAILDON: [LAUGHS]
PAUL TREADWELL: We're also joined by Reenie's daughter, Sarah, also known as the granddaughter of Dr. Baker.
KATIE BAILDON: Our conversation took place at Baker's Chicken Coop in the midst of many happy and effusive diners.
PAUL TREADWELL: So let's fire up the grill and dig into the story of Cornell chicken, Dr. Baker, and some of his many innovations.
KATIE BAILDON: Chicken nuggets, anyone? [LAUGHS] Also, the original recipe for Cornell chicken is linked in the show notes.
REENIE BAKER SANSTEAD: Hi. So I'm Reenie Baker-Sansted. And I'm one of the daughters of Robert C. Baker.
SARAH SANSTED: And I'm Sarah Stanstead. I'm Reenie's daughter and the granddaughter of Robert C. Baker.
PAUL TREADWELL: So how long have you been running the [INAUDIBLE] here at the fair?
REENIE BAKER SANSTEAD: Well, dad and mom started it in 1949. And at that time, it was a tent, and there was maybe three places to eat at the fair then. And they love telling the story of the pigs getting loose out of next door and coming through the tent and ripping the tent down. But we started with the idea that we wanted upstate New York to know about the Cornell barbecue chicken. So it was, again, to promote chicken to this area.
PAUL TREADWELL: So you ate a lot of chicken growing up.
REENIE BAKER SANSTEAD: We did.
PAUL TREADWELL: Did you eat a lot of test chickens?
REENIE BAKER SANSTEAD: [LAUGHS]
PAUL TREADWELL: Do you remember that development process?
REENIE BAKER SANSTEAD: Well, it is sort of a family joke that when dad came out with new products, he had a taste panel at Cornell. And then his kids became the second taste panel. And if we voted it down, the dogs became the last taste panel because there was plenty of good things that came out, and there there's a lot of not-so-good things that came out.
PAUL TREADWELL: [LAUGHS]
SARAH SANSTED: Some flops.
REENIE BAKER SANSTEAD: Yeah, there were some flops. Within the Tompkins County area, everybody knows the Cornell chicken, for sure. I mean every fireman or fundraiser's cooking chicken somewhere in the area. The story is that he went to get his master's at Penn State. And the president of Penn State said, the governor's coming. Can you think of a different way to serve chicken?
And so he wasn't fond of the great tomato base will burn. And so he was trying to think of a way that would keep the chicken moist and not dry out and yet not burn like tomato would. So that's how he came up with the recipe. But of course, you have to add eggs to it because that includes more of his poultry innovation and that emulsifiers the sauce to make it hold together better.
PAUL TREADWELL: So what I hear you telling me tell, though, is that this really is not Cornell chicken. It's Penn State chicken.
REENIE BAKER SANSTEAD: Well, so what happened was right after, then, he got a job at Cornell. And he brought the recipe with him and gave it to Cornell.
PAUL TREADWELL: So the secret is we don't talk about Penn State [INAUDIBLE].
REENIE BAKER SANSTEAD: Yes. And I will tell you that the little known fact is that what really he did was to come up with a way to cook the chicken because with the racks and putting 25 on a rack and [INAUDIBLE]. So you could cook large numbers at the time and doing it over charcoal fire and how to do that outside on the pits. And that was all his innovation.
He was never into keeping it a secret. He was never into making money off a patent from it. It was all about encouraging people to eat chicken.
PAUL TREADWELL: I remember reading about that [INAUDIBLE]. And there was several other things he developed that were truly impressive.
REENIE BAKER SANSTEAD: Well, the chicken hot dog was one of his first and chicken baloney, one of the many things he did. But I think what people will think of him the most is the chicken nugget because that was a way to use chicken that had been ground up and sort of pushed together. It was sort of a way to put it together and make it a bite to eat and then bread it and fry it.
SARAH SANSTED: One of the things that fascinates me most about my grandfather is that I think part of his mission and part of his whole life principle is to figure out how to support poultry farmers. And that's something that's really important globally is making sure small farmers are successful. And mom has told me many times about how back when he was innovating and creating, that poultry farmers in upstate New York were suffering if they didn't have big enough broilers or they weren't producing what was needed for rotisserie chicken or fried chicken.
And so he wanted to help figure out a way to create more yield for them. And that's, I think, a really noble thing that he did because he-- the chicken nugget is an example of how to use the leftover pieces that aren't maybe used in other recipes and to figure out how to use smaller broilers so that those farmers could be successful and not go out of business.
REENIE BAKER SANSTEAD: I think one of the other family secrets is that of his six children, three of us became vegetarians, due to all the taste testing. [LAUGHS]
PAUL TREADWELL: So are you still currently a vegetarian?
REENIE BAKER SANSTEAD: I still am.
PAUL TREADWELL: Oh, so--
REENIE BAKER SANSTEAD: So I have not eaten a chicken nugget since I was on the taste panel for them when I was a little kid.
PAUL TREADWELL: [INAUDIBLE] secrets are coming out left and right here. This is amazing.
REENIE BAKER SANSTEAD: So don't know what they taste like, yeah.
KATIE BAILDON: Talk a little bit about what his job was at Cornell and how long he was there.
REENIE BAKER SANSTEAD: So he started at Cornell in '49. And he retired in about '86. And he would have retired sooner, but mom had decided he was the kind of guy who needed something to do. So that's why she started Baker's Acres. And the joke was that he couldn't retire because he had to help pay for this endeavor that she had started.
So he did finally retire in '86. And she was absolutely right. It was very hard for him to not go into work every day. But he grew up in Sodus, New York. So part of Baker's Acres is a apple orchard and that [INAUDIBLE]. And he actually went to school in [INAUDIBLE] at Cornell. So that really made him very happy to work in the orchards.
But at Cornell, he was a professor in poultry science. He also became the head of the department many times. He even ran the Food Science Department for quite a while there. But he did a lot of consulting around the world for many, many different companies. But he truly loved Cornell and wanted Cornell to get credit for everything.
SARAH SANSTED: Also Grandpa, I would say it wasn't that he wasn't proud of the chicken nugget. But that wasn't really what he was most adamant about it. It was the Cornell barbecue sauce that, I think-- I didn't actually find out that he had invented the chicken nugget until I was, like, 15 years old. I didn't know.
REENIE BAKER SANSTEAD: Well, it was just another product. It was one of the many products.
SARAH SANSTED: It was one of the many products. Yeah, he didn't see it as the big breakthrough.
REENIE BAKER SANSTEAD: I think McDonald's made it famous.
SARAH SANSTED: Commercialized it, yeah.
REENIE BAKER SANSTEAD: Yeah.
PAUL TREADWELL: Thanks for listening to this episode. Extension Out Loud was produced and edited by Paul Treadwell with help from Katie Baildon.
KATIE BAILDON: For more about this episode, including show notes and more, visit extensionoutloud.com. And be sure to subscribe to Extension Out Loud on your favorite podcast directory.