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When you move away from or travel outside the region you’ve long called “home,” you discover new cookbook authors for your cookbook collection everywhere you go.
Betty Groff (September 8, 1935 – November 8, 2015) wrote six cookbooks, owned a restaurant with her husband, Abe, and shared her Pennsylvania Dutch cooking with the masses via print, television appearances, and cooking demonstrations at various events.
How isn’t this Pennsylvania Dutch food cookbook author better known beyond her Pennsylvania home?
Table of Contents
- Betty Groff Was the Pennsylvania Dutch Food Authority
- Who Was Betty Groff?
- Betty Groff Starts a Restaurant
- Betty Groff Gets Featured in a Cooking and Writes Her Own
- Groff’s Farm Restaurant Grows
- Groff’s Farm Restaurant Gets Rave Reviews
- Betty Groff’s Later Years
- Betty Groff Cookbooks
Betty Groff Was the Pennsylvania Dutch Food Authority
I don’t see many mentions of Betty Groff’s work — at least not since 2014, when The New York Times featured Betty’s Glazed Bacon recipe in a round-up of Thanksgiving favorites from all 50 states.
Betty’s recipe represented Pennsylvania, of course, though I’m not sure how well that reflects the state. What do you think? Are there any long-term or lifelong Pennsylvanians here who wouldn’t consider Thanksgiving Thanksgiving without a platter of Glazed Bacon? I’m curious.
“There are certain foods everyone expects at a holiday dinner.
The mashed potatoes and gravy, the dried corn or dried corn pudding, and the stuffing or mashed potato filling just have to be there along with the turkey.
But there’s always room for a little more,” said Groff.
Lancaster-Area Restauranteur to Share Tips During Wheels on Meals Benefit, The Morning Call, October 23, 1996, Updated October 4, 2021, Accessed December 14, 2023.
But The New York Times highlight? That wasn’t the first time Betty was featured or mentioned in The New York Times.
I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the very beginning (a very good place to start) and look at Betty’s personal information and how she found such a broad, receptive audience for her Pennsylvania German recipes.
Who Was Betty Groff?
“I think of Groff’s Farm as a wonderful example of how great American cooking can be.”
James Beard, People magazine, 1981
Betty Groff grew up on a farm in Strasburg, Pennsylvania. She was a 10th-generation Lancaster County resident — her Pennsylvania Dutch, or Pennsylvania Deutsch, ancestor, Hans Herr, was one of the first to settle the Lancaster countryside.
Visit the 1719 Hans Herr House, a registered landmark, in Willow Street, Pennsylvania. It is the oldest original Mennonite meeting house left in the Western Hemisphere.
The days we spent in Lancaster County more than lived up to our hopes.
Its 941 square miles encompass rich, rolling farmland, small towns that look like sets for a Civil War movie and prosperous Lancaster itself, incorporated as a borough in 1742 and as a city in 1812.
Michael J. Lephy, The Homespun Pleasures of Lancaster County, The New York Times, September 27, 1981, Accessed December 11, 2023.
It is a county resonant with history: the Conestoga Wagon that carried Americans westward was invented here, Robert Fulton, inventor of the steamboat, was born here, and Gen. John Sutter of the California gold rush died here — penniless, so local lore has it.
Her parents were Clarence Newton (1905-1990) and Bertha Kreider Root Herr (1908-1977). Her father was a butcher and led half the family, while her Uncle Emory led the other half. All three generations lived “out of one purse,” as Betty wrote in “Good Earth” on their 84-acre farm.
Betty’s favorite childhood memories, which she shares in abundance in her books, typically include the kitchen. It’s where Mennonite children played while busy mothers frittered around cooking, canning, and preparing every meal.
The Kitchen, I call it the International Gathering Place. I don’t think you really know someone until you’ve eaten around their table.
Betty Groff, Betty Groff’s Up-Home Down-Home Cookbook (1987).
Mealtime typically included at least a dozen people.
By age 13, Betty entered and won the fair’s adult and youth divisions with a plate of chocolate chip cookies and her homemade cake, specifically, a tall lemon chiffon cake she continued to serve as an adult. Betty was active in 4H, the Mennonite community, and played the cornet in the high school band.
Betty graduated high school when she was 16 and started working. She first saw Abe while on a date with someone else — even asking her date who he was.
After more than a year of catching sight of Abe here and there, it was when Betty’s friend brought him over on a date that she had a chance to chat. Four weeks later, he asked her out. They had their first date at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.
Mennonites traditionally date on the weekend. After a year and a half of dating, Abe asked Betty to marry him.
Betty married Abram B. Groff on November 12, 1955. The newlywed couple knew farming was the life for them and started searching for a farm to call their own. Betty’s father, Clarence, found the 1756 East Donegal Township home and offered to fix it up over the long winter.
The young couple finally moved in after July 4 of the following year, though not before her husband, Abe, learned a lot about butchering, cuts of meat, and carving from her father.
As is the Mennonite tradition, Betty provided the furniture, Abe provided the animals and farm equipment needed for their tobacco and dairy farm, and they purchased the rest of the items they needed together.
Betty Groff Starts a Restaurant
The years went by. Four or five years into their marriage, Betty was bored — or restless, as she shared in her “Good Earth” cookbook.
Their farm didn’t have the hustle and bustle she was used to. On the family farm, she was used to a large crowd at the dinner table and people coming and going. It only got bigger when her dad’s older, widowed half-sister moved in with her two children.
Betty spent much time in her mother’s kitchen.
“It was such a pleasant kitchen to be in, it always looked as though someone cared. I really missed the view, the train, and the sound of the horses on the nearby Amish farms once Abe and I moved to Mount Joy.
Betty Groff, Betty Groff’s Country Goodness (1981), Page 9.
Betty wanted to be around people more often. She considered working part-time in a bank, since she had worked in an office before her marriage, but her father wouldn’t allow it.
“With the farm and the house and our first son to look after, he felt I should stay home and work at my marriage.”
Betty Groff, Good Earth and Country Cooking (1974), Page 22.
Fortunately, her mother told her (as a joke) that The Willows, a local restaurant, was searching for a Mennonite woman to cook dinners in her home for bus groups.
Betty liked the idea, having already completed the Amish tradition of cooking for all the people at once who had previously invited the newlyweds over during their first year of marriage.
It was a 32-person party: The aunts, uncles, and cousins.
“If I could cook for thirty-two supercritical people who knew what they were eating, the world’s toughest audience, why couldn’t I cook for people who had never tasted our kind of food before?
Betty Groff, Good Earth and Country Cooking (1974), Page 22.
So, Betty discussed the idea with her husband, who didn’t mind — “as long as it didn’t interfere with the farming schedule,” she said in her Good Earth book. Her parents, however, didn’t see the point.
Who would drive 22 miles into Pennsylvania Dutch country for Betty’s cooking? Why would anyone care about Pennsylvania German recipes?
Betty was undeterred.
It started slow, first groups, then the locals, and then one day, Craig Claiborne of The New York Times.
Betty’s father’s friend said they would have a very important friend with them, and requested a party of four for dinner. The couple, however, had never accepted less than twelve guests. It was a hobby at that point. It didn’t pay to entertain a number less than that.
But their friend was insistent. At first, Abe and Betty didn’t know what to do. They discussed whether or not to make an exception — but then her father’s friend called again and said the dinner party was now bumping up from four to eight people.
Betty agreed to the change for dinner the next day. She was still in such a tizzy with all the group sizing conversation, she never thought to ask for information about the special guest.
The next day, the dining room was all set with antique napkins for eight. Betty’s father’s friend appeared with a full group of twelve. The special guest and a photographer were introduced without names — but the guest headed to the kitchen and started talking about the food.
He asked questions about the vegetables and the differences between the snow peas and the sugar peas before rejoining the rest of the diners.
“I didn’t know who he was until afterward, and if I had I’d have been scared silly. Once his story came out in the paper, business really boomed.
Betty Groff, Good Earth and Country Cooking (1974), Page 24.
Up until then, we had never taken groups of less than twelve, but Craig [Claiborne] said that for his readership we would have to take smaller reservations, and that is the way we do it now.
Betty’s chicken Stoltzfus was chosen as one of the ten best dinners of 1976, according to a 1977 F&M College Reporter. It wasn’t until The Washington Evening Star did a feature on Betty that life changed again. Her husband, pictured carving meat, made the front page of the women’s section — in full color.
Restaurant duties took over, and Abe sold off his dairy herd. Abe no longer had to be up at 4:30 AM to milk the cows. It marked a tremendous change in their lives.
Betty Groff Gets Featured in a Cooking and Writes Her Own
Are you familiar with the Time-Life Foods of the World series on American regional cooking? If not, it’s terrific. The hardcover books in the series feature people and places with a smattering of recipes thrown in among the history (the spiral-bound companion books include more recipes related to the main hardback book title).
One of the authors of that series, José Wilson, heard about the Groff restaurant from James Beard and headed over for an interview to get the scoop on Pennsylvania Dutch cooking in the fall of 1969.
José wrote about the Groffs; the Time-Life photographer took pictures, and the editors asked for a few recipes and asked if Betty would work with John Clancy, the test kitchen chef.
Of course, when American Cooking: The Eastern Heartland (1971) hit the shelves, Betty sold copies in the restaurant. It contained images of Betty, her family, and her recipes.
The restaurant was a family affair.
The publication of that cookbook and the subsequent raves and questions from visitors to Groff’s Farm Restaurant were just the motivation Betty needed to begin her own cookbook.
When her oldest son, John, compiled recipes for a school project, Betty joined him and started working on her first Amish cookbook.
John had won several awards in his high school for his food preparation skills. He already worked in the family business and planned to make it his career. But shortly after Betty Groff’s Country Cookbook was written, John died in a motorcycle accident on June 10, 1979 — on his 18th birthday.
I imagine “the Circle” was a comfort for the rough time ahead.
Abe and I place a high value on our friendships, and several of ours go back to when we were preschoolers. We have known many of our closest friends through every step of our lives.
At the heart of these relationships is a group we call “the Circle.”The Circle consists of twelve couples who have shared each other’s good times and some of the sad ones for more than twenty-five years.
Betty Groff’s Country Goodness Cookbook (1981), Page 20.
Groff’s Farm Restaurant Grows
Although farm families’ diets often have been depicted as monotonous and bland, nothing could have been further from the truth in Pennsylvania, where each season heralded a new kind of feast.
Betty Groff, Betty Groff’s Pennsylvania Dutch Cookbook (1990), Page 14.
Before farm-to-table became a buzzword, Betty Groff raved about her love of farm-fresh vegetables. She prepared in-season foods long before it became the thing to do.
Read any of her cookbooks, and you’ll get the idea. She emphasizes the wonders of seasonal vegetables in her introductions.
Betty had long loved to be a part of the action. Dinner parties were no different. She had a few rules for a successful dinner event that made sense to me.
I never plan a dinner party where all the guests know each other unless it is a family affair. In fact, very rarely do more than two couples know each other before they arrive.
Betty Groff’s Country Goodness Cookbook (1981), Page 20.
I try to invite guests from as many different vocations together as possible and mix them. I have found that generally, people like to be with others who are not their own age; I always try to place a quiet person next to an outgoing one, and very rarely do I seat a husband and wife close to each other.
This rule has worked very well for me over the years.
Those who dined at Groff’s Farm Restaurant experienced more than Pennsylvania cooking traditions. They enjoyed a visit from Betty Groff and sometimes a little cornet playing, too.
“In a 1981 story published in People magazine, James Beard, who was a champion of food and a friend of Groff’s, said, ‘I think of Groff’s Farm as a wonderful example of how great American cooking can be,'” according to a PennLive article.
James Beard dined at her home a few years ago. But when Betty heard James would speak at the end of a cooking class series she took in Reading, Pennsylvania, she sent a letter asking if he’d like to come to their restaurant for dinner.
He responded, saying he’d like to have dinner at their house and wanted to stay overnight.
James Beard is a very interesting man. He told us all about his travels around the world discovering great recipes, and I rambled on about Pennsylvania Dutch food and our habits.
Betty Groff, Betty Groff’s Country Goodness Cookbook (1981), Page 26.
He has a way of putting you very much at ease, and I became so relaxed in his company that I hardly worried about the dinner. There were fourteen of us that night, including my parents, and we all had a wonderful time.
I watched Jim sit down at our table, as he has probably done at thousands of tables around the world, I said a silent prayer.
He stared at the cracker pudding and the old-fashioned chocolate cake in surprise.
I explained my philosophy of a menu: Your appetite is bigger at the beginning, so why not enjoy a little dessert first? A smile appeared as he raised his fork, and I knew it would be all right.
James Beard joined the family for breakfast the next day. After he’d left, and later when Betty cleaned the room and pulled the sheets from the bed, she made a discovery.
There, wrapped in plastic, under the pillow, was an 1856 Philadelphia Cookbook. James had left it as a thank you, after hearing of Betty’s love of antiques and cooking.
“We have never forgotten his visit nor the kind of man he is,” Betty wrote.
Groff’s Farm Restaurant Gets Rave Reviews
In the days before online customer reviews, word of mouth helped spread the news about the wonderful Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine served in an out-of-the-way locale. It attracted the attention of restaurant reviewers, who agreed this was good food.
A better idea for dinner, always with reservations, is to head for Groff’s Farm Restaurant, where the food is plainer but typical of the region and more fun. Here, Mrs. Groff presides.
Joan Mellen, A Historic Inn in Pennsylvania, The New York Times, September 15, 1985, Accessed December 11, 2023.
Before guests enter the tables are set with savories and sweets; dinner, surprisingly, begins with chocolate cake and a cracker pudding made of saltines and grated coconut.
”They are not your desserts,” the waitress warns.
After relishes, soup and salad come the entrees, served family style, but always including chicken Stoltzfus (named for Amish friends of the Groffs).
This is Mrs. Groff’s wedding recipe, cut-up roast chicken in cream sauce over flaky, diamond-shaped pastry squares.
Desserts are quintessentially American: strawberry shortcake, raspberry crumb, lemon meringue, or Amish vanilla pie, a kind of shoofly pie. Guests may bring their own wine or sample Mrs. Groff’s homemade dandelion or elderberry in the wine cellar.
Dinner came to only $20 a person, which was for the most expensive combination: ham, prime rib, seafood, and chicken Stoltzfus. At lunch, the price goes down to $15.
Rave reviews often focused on the unusual practice of beginning with a sweet treat and ending the meal with a bigger portion of dessert.
Betty Groff’s family has had a lot of practice making good food. Ten generations ago, her ancestors settled in Lancaster County, Pa., which they thought was the next-best thing to heaven.
Jane and Michael Stern, Pennsylvania Eatery Serves Up Flavorful Fare, Deseret News, May 8, 1990, Accessed December 11, 2023.
They farmed the land and created an abundance of produce and good recipes that have been handed down through the years and have become one of this country’s great troves of regional cuisine: Pennsylvania Dutch cookery.
Of the many restaurants that specialize in Lancaster County’s let-out-your-belt-a-notch style of eating, one of our favorites has always been Groff’s Farm Restaurant in Mount Joy.
The dish that has made Betty Groff famous is a buttery fricassee named chicken Stoltzfus (after her friends Elam and Hannah Stoltzfus), served atop a plate of pastry squares.
She is also known for her extra-creamy rice pudding and made-from-scratch caramel pudding, and a most unusual appetizer: cracker pudding served alongside small pieces of caramel-frosted buttermilk chocolate cake!
She says she offers these little sweets before dinner just so customers leave room for big portions of dessert after they’ve mopped their plates of chicken Stoltzfus or schnitz und knepp (smoked ham and apples).
Earlier this year, Groff came out with a splendid cookbook called “Betty Groff’s Pennsylvania Dutch Cookbook,” published by Macmillan.
It includes recipes for many of the dishes that have made her restaurant famous as well as for typical regional home-cooked foods such as dandelion wine, authentic chow chow.
(“the fun in making this relish is to see how many kinds of vegetables you can get in a jar”), chicken-corn soup and scrapple (topped with apple butter or molasses).
Every meal at Groff’s restaurant includes a gorgeous array of relishes, green salads, and pickled vegetables.
Some sources incorrectly comment on how each meal includes “seven sweets and seven sours.” This is not entirely true, as Betty is quick to correct in her book, “Good Earth and Country Cooking.”
Pennsylvania Dutch choose the sweets and sours that match the meat served.
Naturally, the more meats served at one meal, the more sweets and sours.
Betty Groff, Good Earth and Country Cooking (1974), Page 30.
While for company dinners, we would provide plenty of each, so every guest could find something to suit his or her palette, for family dinners and everyday eating, we would have maybe one or two relishes and a couple of desserts.
With beef, we might have a hot and spicy mustard pickle; with ham, a sweet and spicy watermelon rind or cantaloupe.
It was something they did. Betty contemplated the idea as something Mennonites did to cleanse their palette in lieu of wine.
“There was never any rule that we had to have seven sweets and seven sours. That was some promoter’s invention. At home, we sometimes had nine sweets and five sours or eight sours and six sweets.”
Relishes Pennsylvania Dutch Cook has a Sweet — and Sour — Touch, The Morning Call, October 3, 1984, Updated October 1, 2021, Accessed December 14, 2023.
There’s a relish to complement any meat or sandwich.
Betty explained, “I serve apple butter and mixed relishes with pork; pickled cantaloupe with chicken; bread and butter pickles and green tomato relishes with ham; corn relish with red pepper and pickled beets with beef; and brandied apricots with fish.”
Betty Groff enjoyed canning fruits, pickles, and relishes.
One evening, when guests at the Groff’s Farm Restaurant included an Amish neighbor, I said, “I hope you will come down to the basement and see my canned fruits and taste our homemade wines because I’m very interested in keeping the tradition.”
Betty Groff, Betty Groff’s Pennsylvania Dutch Cookbook (1990), Page 9.
After dinner, when she and her friends descended the basement stairs, she commented as she surveyed my handiwork,
“For you, it is a matter of preserving a tradition. For us, it is still a matter of survival.”
For Betty and her family, it was fun. They enjoyed deciding which canned goods should compete.
On opening day . . . the women sized up their competition in the exhibit halls. They studied the jars of jellies and jams, relishes, vegetables, and fruits with the precision of quality-control inspectors.
Betty Groff, Betty Groff’s Pennsylvania Dutch Cookbook (1990), Page 9.
They were their own judges as they decided whose canned and baked goods looked the best.
Of course, the fun was seeing if the real judges had the good sense to make the right choices when it came time for the blue ribbons and their accompanying two-dollar cash prizes.
Now, what about this chicken Stoltzfus these reviews keep mentioning? What is chicken Stoltzfus?
I’ve heard how Pennsylvanians handle pot pie differently than we do in the Midwest. Back home, a chicken pot pie included a top and bottom crust. In the opinion of my youngest son and I, the crust is the best part. Not so for many homes in Pennsylvania.
Chicken Stotzfus veers in a different direction.
Mrs. Groff’s version of the staple pot pie, chicken Stoltzfus, is representative of the evolution. Pennsylvania Dutch pot pie is not the familiar crusted version: it’s boiled.
Elaine Dann Goldstein, Fare of the Country; A Plain People’s Bountiful Table, The New York Times, October 25, 1987, Accessed December 11, 2023.
Small squares of dough resembling noodle dough are dropped into chicken and broth, then boiled until done.
Mrs. Groff based hers on the chicken and biscuits served at Amish weddings, creating a creamed saffron chicken on rich pastry, which she named after her neighbors, Elam and Hannah Stoltzfus.
(Saffron, a frequent flavoring in this cookery, is a good buy at farmers’ markets in the region.)
Groff’s Farms Restaurant, housed in her 1756 farmhouse in Mount Joy, might be considered the home of the best of Pennsylvania Dutch cooking.
Word of Betty’s cooking spread. New opportunities came her way.
In the 1970s, Groff was invited to do cooking demonstrations in a corner of the Farm Show Complex, and she became an annual destination point for many people attending the show.
Michael Yoder, Groff Hangs Up Her Apron: Local Woman is a Farm Show Favorite, LNP: Lancaster Online, January 12, 2007 and Updated September 11, 2013, Accessed December 11, 2023.
Groff said people come up to her each year to ask her advice on recipes and the secrets for her cooking style.
The Groffs wisely decided to expand operations.
In late October of 1981, the Estate was transformed into a country inn when Lancaster County culinary celebrity Betty Groff, who for decades was the face of Pennsylvania Dutch cooking, along with her husband Abe, purchased the Estate.
Cameron Estate Inn History, Cameron Estate Inn and Restaurant
Betty and Abe considered purchasing it from Mary Cameron’s Estate in 1961, but instead focused on their Groff’s Farm Restaurant in Mount Joy.
Yes, they decided to reach a larger audience. With so many people clamoring for a spot at their table to enjoy Pennsylvania Dutch food, they needed more room and decided to try something a little different.
Today, both the inn and the farm restaurant are known for fine food, albeit different kinds.
The Professor Earned an “A” for her Menu Spring Foods and Fond Memories Flavored Betty Groff’s Curriculum During the Recent Culinary College, Morning Call, March 27, 1985, Updated October 2, 2021, Accessed December 13, 2023.
The farm restaurant, under the direction of Betty and Abe’s son Charlie (a Culinary Institute of America graduate), serves traditional Pennsylvania Dutch fare.
The Groffs’ chef at the Cameron Estate Inn explores the world of French and American country cuisine.
She continued to write cookbooks about Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine (six in total, as you’ll see at the bottom of the page).
Betty Groff, a 10th-generation Pennsylvania Mennonite, also runs an eatery. Groff’s Farm Restaurant in Mount Joy, PA, specializes in the family-style country cooking of the Pennsylvania Dutch.
Sada Fretz, Betty Groff’s Pennsylvania Dutch Cookbook, Entertainment Weekly, March 9, 1990, Accessed December 11, 2023.
In her Pennsylvania Dutch Cookbook, Groff shares recipes for dandelion wine and blackberry cordial; imparts the secret of good slaw (long hand-squeezing); instructs in the stuffing of beef hearts and pig stomachs; and sets down directions for the scrapple, souse (head cheese), and home-canned relishes still made every day in Lancaster County.
She has marked certain dishes as likely fund-raisers for fire department suppers or 4-H and high school band projects, and she links others with barn raisings, country fairs, and front-porch get-togethers.
Urbanites bored with deli muffins might well be transported by Betty’s sweet delights: the Moravian Christmas cake that annually strains the local druggist’s saffron supply, the Shrove Tuesday Fastnacht’s (potato doughnuts) that provide sustenance through Lent, and maybe even the raisin-filled “funeral pie” served to mourners.
Alas, her fetchingly evoked square meals — replete with bacon, eggs, cheese, cream, butter, and flour-based white sauces — take us back to the days before cholesterol counting became a national obsession.
Betty didn’t stop there. She built an empire.
Betty Groff has a lot in common with cracker pudding. Both are familiar, sweet and soothing. Yet, there’s more than meets the eye.
Take the pudding, for example.
Cracker pudding looks like vanilla custard, has the creaminess and texture of rice pudding and the smug blandness inherent in comfort food. Groff`s signature dessert, cracker pudding, is addictive.
As for Groff, a small, trim blonde in her early 50s, she’s regarded by people in the food world as a spokesperson for Pennsylvania Dutch cooking. In Chicago recently, she demonstrated recipes from her latest cookbook at Carson Pirie Scott & Co.’s Kitchentech.
There’s more to the native of Lancaster County, Pa., than her sensible clothes, her pastel blouse and skirt protected by an apron.
Early on in her chatty demo, you learn of her farm upbringing, her enjoyment of good food, her marriage, and two children.
It is easy to envision her at home in that rural community in southeastern Pennsylvania — a woman reared by melon farmers, a grandmother who enjoys the simple pleasures of work, family, and honest food.
But like the pudding made of crackers, with more tastes, you learn of the unusual ingredient. Same with Groff. She’s a businesswoman with Madison Avenue savvy, the head of a mini-empire. No pious net prayer cap for this 10th-generation Mennonite.
As she stir-frys whole kernel corn, sliced sweet peppers, and sausage in a skillet, she reminds you the dish is so simple you can make it in a portable wok ”right by the swimming pool.”
As she extols the virtues of beet eggs, hardboiled eggs marinated in beet juice, she refers to her home tennis court where she sneaks in a few sets between writing and overseeing her businesses.
As she beats eggs and guesses at measurements for milk, she reigns proudly over the range, flanked by copies of her cookbooks and order forms for comestibles and home furnishings.
There are no lazy bones in Groff, an alumnus of television talk shows and national food magazines. She’s on first-name basis with Craig Claiborne, who advised her, after dining once in her restaurant, to raise her food prices.
The late James Beard she counted on as a friend and cheerleader. He encouraged her in the middle ’60s ‘to do what you do best, cook, and uncover your culinary roots.”
Her name is stamped on a line of relishes and condiments and a line of home furnishings which are described as ”upscale country.”The design of fabric and wallcoverings, party goods, and accessories prompted some critics in the home accessories business to nickname her the ”Laura Ashley of America.”
Margaret Sheridan, Author’s Style is as Down-Home as Her Recipes, Chicago Tribune, April 7, 1988, Accessed December 11, 2023.
She’s as down-home as her food — pork chops, chicken pot pie, vanilla pie, and pig’s stomach. And as unpredictable as one of her passions — washing her red Corvette.
Betty had the people-oriented, busy life she had hoped for. They sold the inn in 1996.
Betty Groff’s Later Years
From appearances on The Today Show and Good Morning, America, according to a 1981 article in The Gettysburg Times, Betty shared the cozy goodness of Pennsylvania Dutch cooking.
But that’s not all. From receiving the Lancaster Chapter of the Pennsylvania Restaurant Association’s first Lifetime Achievement Award to beginning a publishing company (GFE Pond Press) to cooking demonstrations for the Farm Show, fundraisers, and other groups as requested, Betty Groff lived fully.
“To this day, Groff said her favorite meal is chicken pot pie, especially with her recipe for thin homemade noodles,” according to a 2007 LNP: Lancaster Online article.
Betty died on November 8, 2015, a few days before reaching her wedding anniversary. She left behind her son, Charles N. Groff and two grandchildren. She was 80 years old.
Betty Groff Cookbooks
This is the quick list of Betty Groff cookbook titles. They include the following six Pennsylvania Dutch cooking books:
- Good Earth & Country Cooking (1974) with José Wilson
- Betty Groff’s Country Goodness Cookbook (1981, 1987)
- Betty Groff’s Up-Home, Down-Home Cookbook (1987)
- Betty Groff’s Pennsylvania Dutch Cookbook (1990, 1996)
- Betty Groff Cookbook: Pennsylvania German Recipes (2001)
- Classic Pennsylvania Dutch Cooking (2010)
Note the publication dates of the works below so you don’t accidentally purchase the same book twice.
Good Earth and Country Cooking (1974) by Betty Groff and José Wilson
Betty Groff’s Country Goodness Cookbook (1981) by Betty Groff
Betty Groff’s Up-Home Down-Home Cookbook (1987) by Betty Groff
Betty Groff’s Country Goodness Cookbook (1987) by Betty Groff
Betty Groff’s Pennsylvania Dutch Cookbook (1990) by Betty Groff
Betty Groff’s Pennsylvania Dutch Cookbook: Includes over 300 Classic Homemade Hand-Me-Down Favorites (1996) by Betty Groff
Betty Groff Cookbook: Pennsylvania German Recipes (2001) by Betty Groff and Diane Stoneback (with photographer Blair Seitz)
Classic Pennsylvania Dutch Cooking (2010) by Betty Groff
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