Like most estuaries, the salinity of the Chesapeake Bay varies greatly from season to season and year to year. Rainstorms and melting snow in the spring can make the water fresher or, as locals sometimes say, sweeter; droughts and hot spells in the summer can make the water saltier. A dry year can result in slower currents and more sea nettles for afternoon swims; heavier rains in other years can cause oyster die-offs and drive crabs farther south. The technical term for this type of water—saltier than sweet, fresher than salt—is brackish. And there’s a technical definition, too: any water with a salinity between half and thirty grams per liter.
I’ve never consulted a doctor about this, but I have a feeling this is about the salt content of every Marylander’s blood. That’s because of our exceptionally liberal use of the locally popular substance called Old Bay. It’s a spice and herb blend that’s super salty and oh, ever so slightly sweet, a perfect culinary simulation of late summer and early fall – not too hot, with just a hint of a breeze. On the outside, it’s the deep brick red of Southern streets and flecked with gold like grains of sand. Like sand, it also has a habit of getting everywhere – on hands, pants, tables, chins, and of course, on every food imaginable.
For over eighty years, Marylanders have used Old Bay on blue crab and other seafood such as red snapper, shrimp, oysters and scallops, as well as on chicken, chili, corn on the cob, coleslaw, French fries, scrambled eggs, egg salad, guacamole, pasta, popcorn, mashed potatoes, potato chips, pickles, macaroni and cheese, hummus, carrots and ice cream—not to mention bumper stickers, boxer shorts, socks, beach towels, baseball caps, dog collars, soda can coolers, Christmas cards and babies. My own daughter wore an Old Bay onesie—with her birth weight replaced with net weight—about two days after she was discharged home from the hospital. I’ve seen other Old Bay fashions, including T-shirts that say, “I put Old Bay on my Old Bay.” No matter what you’re wearing, if you’re having a bad day or celebrating something, you can grab an Old Bay beer, drink Old Bay vodka, or mix up one of the cocktails that call for spice. All in all, there’s practically nothing Marylanders won’t add “East Coast Glitter” to.
That’s because Old Bay is America’s best spice, of course. I can understand your first objection: that it’s not a spice. But etymology, like good taste, is on my side, because “spice” oozes out of the tube labeled “Latin” and is translated into English from the noun for spice, condiment or sauce. At its core, “spice” means to put together or place, and I believe that Old Bay could do just that for our divided nation in these difficult times. If you’re not already aware of Old Bay’s bipartisan power, consider this: A few years ago, Goucher College in Towson asked a question about the spice in one of its prestigious political polls and found that Marylanders loved the spice regardless of their position on the governor or the minimum wage. “Opinions about Old Bay,” the study’s director said, “cross party, age, race, gender and ideological lines.”
Your second objection to Old Bay’s greatness probably refers to another, supposedly better condiment. This one, too, is misplaced. Mayonnaise isn’t so much long-lived as outdated; generations of cardiologists have spoiled its taste with their talk of HDL and LDL. Ketchup is really only good for kids and French fries. I’m a fan of Sriracha, but it’s too spicy for at least half the population. Ranch dressing probably should never have left Hidden Valley, and certainly not the salad. Salsa needs to be refrigerated, and comeback sauce doesn’t make it through the TSA. And what exactly is mustard? Something neon yellow to smear on hot dogs, or a pebble-brown substance you can smear on your charcuterie board?
Even if you ignore flavor, versatility and consistency, Old Bay has something these other condiments don’t: an unrivaled American origin story—one that takes it from being a great American condiment to a condiment that can make you feel good about America.
Gustav Brunngasser was not born near the Chesapeake Bay and did not encounter a blue crab until he was nearly 50 years old. The Jewish businessman, who later shortened his name to Brunn, was born in 1893 in Bastheim, a small town in Bavaria. Brunn attended school until he was 13, when his family could no longer afford the school fees. He became an apprentice in a tannery and, after saving money by selling hides and skins to a wholesaler in Wertheim am Main, he bought that operation, an older company that specialized in rawhide and furs but had a side business in spices. Towards the end of World War I, spices proved to be the more lucrative and less laborious branch of the business, and in addition to pure spices, Brunn also sold spice blends that he mixed and bottled himself.
Brunn’s success, however, collided with the rise of the Nazi Party, and soon his two children were being attacked by some teachers and classmates, his non-Jewish accountant quit, and more and more customers stopped buying “Jewish” spices. In an oral history collected and archived by the Jewish Museum of Maryland, Brunn’s wife, Bianca, recalled how one day all the stores in Wertheim am Main had signs in their windows reading, “Jews not welcome here.” Hoping they would fare better in a larger city with a larger Jewish community, the Brunns moved to Frankfurt in 1935. But anti-Semitism was spreading everywhere, and not even removing the labels from his spices allowed the merchant to circumvent trade laws restricting the purchase of Jewish goods. In 1937, when Brunn realized that both their livelihood and their lives were in danger, he contacted a relative living in Baltimore, applied for a visa, and prepared to leave for the United States.
Before the Brunns could leave, however, Jews across Germany were targeted during the November pogroms that culminated in Kristallnacht, when their homes, businesses and synagogues were brutally attacked by the Sturmabteilung, the SS, the Hitler Youth and civilians who followed their violent example. Around a hundred Jews were killed and thousands of Jewish properties destroyed. In an interview with the Baltimore Jewish timesBrunn’s son Ralph recalled how the family survived. “Fortunately for us, they made a mistake,” he said. “We were living in a second-floor apartment in Frankfurt. They had chosen the wrong house – there were no Jews living there.” The Brunns’ luck did not last very long, however. When Gustav tried to comply with a new order requiring Jews to surrender all firearms and went to the police station to surrender his hunting rifles, he was arrested. Later that night, he was taken to Buchenwald in a cattle car.
But Brunn’s wife had heard that there might be a way to get him out. “There was a lawyer in Frankfurt who was known to the Jewish community,” her son recalled, a man who “demanded five thousand marks to begin with, and five thousand marks once ‘the goods’ arrived. If the second five thousand marks were not received, ‘the goods’ went back to where they came from.” After sixteen days in the concentration camp, and within a week of Bianca providing the money, Brunn was reunited with his family, and together they fled the country. They could not take much with them to America, but Gustav packed a small spice grinder in their luggage.
The Brunns passed through New York City but made their way to Baltimore, where they moved into an apartment on Eutaw Place with their mill and two teenagers—Ralph and their daughter Lore. Gustav quickly took a job with Wolf Salganik, a Jewish man who ran a butcher shop, delicatessen, and meat processing plant on Lombard Street. Brunn, however, wanted to get back into the spice industry and found an opportunity to work at one of the city’s largest spice companies, McCormick. Brunn recalled being there only a few days before being told his English was too poor. After McCormick fired him, he decided to go back to working for himself and opened a spice shop on the second floor of a building on Market Place, near the city’s fishmongers and seafood companies.
The Baltimore Spice Company was a great name for a business that had no employees except Bianca and Gustav and sometimes Ralph, who still mixed everything they sold by hand. Brunn went door to door on Lombard Street trying to sell spices and black pepper for pickling to delicatessen merchants, then slowly made his way into the meat packing and pickling market. He often worked from five in the morning until ten at night. Most of the time Brunn had to hunt for customers, but eventually some of them came looking for him. Fishmongers would pick through his various packages, trying to put together just the right mix of pepper, mustard powder and salt for their bushels of steamed crabs. “I thought if I was a spice and seasoning man, then I should be able to make a better seasoning for the fishmongers,” Brunn later said, “so I started experimenting.”
Once Brunn thought he had perfected his recipe, he had to change it. In 1938, the United States had passed the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, which required that any processed or packaged food be sold with a label that included the name of the product, its net weight, the name and address of the manufacturer, and in some cases, such as spices, the full list of ingredients. So, in addition to red and black pepper, celery salt, and paprika, Brunn added fifteen other spices and herbs, hoping the mix would be impossible for competitors to steal. “To his amazement,” Ralph later said, “those little things he put in there—the most unlikely things, including cinnamon and nutmeg and cloves and all sorts of things that had nothing to do with crab at all—created a background bouquet that he could not have predicted.”
