Cousin Julia’s and Victor Borge’s Recipes for Thanksgiving and Life

“Put the hen in a Dutch Oven. Brown her in butter for 1 minute. If you have a piano in the kitchen, play ‘The Minute Waltz’ 12 times. Add a little water. Put on the lid and let simmer. When you have finished playing half ‘The Dance of the Hours,’ dragging it slightly, you’re ready to eat like an epicure.”

The Danish-born pianist and comedian Victor Borge is best known for his virtuosity on the keyboard, his wit, and timing. Most Borge fans don’t know that he was also a shrewd gentleman farmer.

Julia Ransom Doty, my father’s first cousin, was a food and fashion editor for the Ideal Publishing Corporation, which published popular, glossy, ladies’ magazines, back in the 1950s. Julia was more of an aunt to me than a cousin, as she was the same age as my mother. When she came out to Weston, Connecticut, from her Manhattan apartment for the occasional weekend, Julia shared my bedroom, gave me all sorts of tips on grooming and comportment and made me walk around the room with a book on my head for five minutes for my posture, while we both giggled; Julia had been an instructor at the John Robert Powers Model Agency before becoming an editor and was elegant, witty, and creative. 

I really didn’t appreciate Julia’s many talents until I was in my 20s and attended her funeral in 1969, where my father gave a heartfelt and amusing eulogy about Julia that included me and Victor Borge.

Occasionally, Julia hosted us for a Thanksgiving dinner at her weekend home in Southbury, Connecticut, where she was a neighbor and friend of Borge’s, who raised Rock Cornish Game Hens on his 310-acre farm.

One November, Borge asked Julia, knowing that she was an exceptional cook, if he gave her some of his hens, would she “invent” a recipe for Thanksgiving that he could use for publicity for his small, exotic fowl.

Borge is credited with putting the hen, the result of crossbreeding a stocky game rooster with a Barreled Plymouth Rock hen, resulting in offspring with short legs and big breasts, on the market. The fowl are killed when young, which accounts for their small size. It was praised at famous restaurants around the world. Even the French started putting Rock Cornish Game Hens on their menus.

When Julia accepted Borge’s “generosity,” her creative juices started basting her culinary senses and a family story was born.

I don’t remember if any of the other family guests at her long, antique farm table, were aware that Julia had “cooked-up” for Borge the recipe that now was before each of us. I did recall, however, from my father’s eulogy for his beloved cousin, that, instead of one big, crispy turkey with chestnut stuffing flowing between its thighs, were four, dainty birds, moist from an aromatic blend of thyme, apricots, and nuts, stuffed with wild rice. 

My father, also an inventive cook and author of The Outdoor Picture Cookbook, helped me carve my half hen, while I wondered where the traditional turkey went. Julia’s grace was a “Turkey and hen tale,” ending with “God bless neighbors who enjoy cooking as much as I do and who make beautiful music and make me laugh.”

Julia used her simple and succulent recipe in one of her magazines. Borge put Julia’s recipe on the back of his deliciously tuneful recipe for the birds’ packaging.

My father’s eulogy for Julia ended with a “Recipe for Life” from Borge, that fell out of one of the many cookbooks his cousin left him and my father, in turn, left me. Julia had copied the recipe from an article she’d seen about Borge. It read: “The shortest distance between people is humor.” 

I treasure Julia’s cookbooks. They remind me to be creative in the kitchen, keep it simple, and that cooking for others, especially family, is fun and a fine pleasure.