This season on Biscuits and Jam.
We've done millions of recipes over the years,
or at least probably hundreds of thousands.
And this recipe just has stood out for some reason.
The origins of Southern Living's
most popular recipe of all time
has been a mystery for 40 years.
That's when the hummingbird cake flittered
into the magazine's Birmingham Alabama office,
signed simply from a Mrs. L.H. Wiggins.
We only knew her name, her name was Mrs. L.H. Wiggins,
and I figured that those were the initials of her husband.
Even her first name has been a mystery until this year,
when two readers emailed our editor in chief
within hours of each other,
both claiming to know Mrs. Wiggins.
(phone ringing)
Hello?
Hi Delores.
It is so good to finally talk to you
after all these emails.
One reader knew Mrs. Wiggins as Wiggy
when she nannied for that readers family.
I was with some friends of mine several years ago,
and they were talking about this hummingbird cake,
and I said, "Well, you know, the lady
"that sent that recipe in used to be my nanny".
The other reader who contacted us
knew Mrs. Wiggins as Eva, a loving dorm house mother
for college freshman adjusting to a new life.
She took those freshman girls under her wing,
including me.
Finally with a name, Eva Wiggins,
we found the family of the woman
who's been shaping the pages of Southern Living for decades.
We spoke to her daughter.
I just remember being in the kitchen with her
when she was baking a lot,
and it seemed like she was always cooking.
And her 96 year old baby sister.
I think I still have that recipe in the magazine.
But we still had one question,
Mrs. Wiggins sent us the hummingbird cake recipe,
but where did she get it?
From Southern Living, this is Biscuits and Jam.
We're tracking the origins of the magazine's
most popular and mysterious recipe of all time,
the hummingbird cake.
I'm Meg Pace.
And I'm Nella McGough.
It took 40 years, but we now know
who the woman was behind the initials L.H. Wiggins.
That's how she signed her name
when she submitted that layer cake recipe
that would go on to become Southern Living's most epic.
Now that we've tracked down her origins,
we still don't know where she got the recipe.
We have not solved that,
we have not solved that mystery yet,
so I don't know where she got it.
Southern Living editor in chief Sid Evans.
There are a number of theories about that.
There is a cake that comes from Jamaica
that's called the doctor bird cake,
and a doctor bird is a kind of hummingbird,
so we think that it's connected to that,
and maybe she picked that up somewhere.
In 1969 the Charlotte Observer
ran a recipe for the doctor bird cake.
The food editor at the time, Helen Moore
wrote that doctor bird is the nickname
for Jamaica's national bird, the swallow-tailed hummingbird.
This cake though,
was baked in a tube pan and had no frosting.
Mrs. Wiggins' cake is three layers
topped with cream cheese and pecans.
It seems like it may have it's origins in Jamaica,
it was printed on the back of a publicity marketing thing
from Jamaican Airlines.
Southern Living assistant food editor Pat York
has looked into the origin of this cake several times.
We believe it came to us from Jamaica
as part of a letter from a Jamaican Airline's.
They were trying to drum up tourism.
And so of course, versions started appearing
in those spiral bound community cookbooks
as just two pan cakes or loaf cakes,
and at some point we threw cream cheese on top of it,
made it a southern thing.
I scoured the internet looking for the origins
of Mrs. Wiggins' version with the frosting.
Every article, story,
and even the hummingbird cake's Wikipedia page
claim that that little article on bananas
in Southern Living's February 1978 issue
is the very first publication
of that layered cake with cream cheese frosting,
and the first time a recipe was published
under the hummingbird cake title.
All the earlier versions had the doctor bird moniker.
So many recipes are so hard to track down,
because they're passed along on recipe cards,
and by word of mouth, and just through families and friends,
but the recipe that she sent in
was the first one that we've been able to find
that was a layer cake using cream cheese frosting.
Hoping that maybe this recipe was a family heirloom,
Nella and I asked Mrs. Wiggins' little sister about it.
Mrs. Evelyn Rakes is 96 years old,
and she says she still has the February 1978 issue
with her sister's famous cake inside.
Do you know where she got the recipe?
You know, I really don't, I really don't know.
We also tried Joan Steele.
Mrs. Wiggins nannied Joan's children
a year after her cake was published.
Do you know where she found the recipe?
I have no clue, no idea.
I don't recall her saying where she found it.
Nella had one more idea, put in a call
to one of Southern Living's most revered veterans.
Nella describes her as genius.
Hi this is Mary Allen Perry,
and I was senior food editor
at Southern Living for a number of years.
I worked there for almost 20 years.
Oh lordy girl, how are you doing?
I'm doing great, thanks.
Good.
It's so good to hear your voice
and get to talk to you. You too,
I miss seeing you.
Do you know the origins of the hummingbird cake,
where Mrs. Wiggins maybe found the recipe?
Oil cakes, especially during the 60s and 70s,
and into the 80s were hugely popular,
so I think she may have done,
like improvised on a carrot cake,
because the elements are real similar.
The carrot cake was hugely popular,
and she could've just decided
to substitute bananas for the carrots,
and a lot of carrot cake recipes,
they're lightly spiced like that.
The hummingbird traditionally has some cinnamon in it,
and carrot cake is lightly spiced,
and a lot of people put the canned crushed pineapple
in the carrot cake recipe,
so those recipes are very similar,
and the carrot cake had the cream cheese frosting on it,
so it could've just been something she created
because she had some bananas on hand,
or a twist on a banana cake and adding those elements to it.
We know she was a good cook,
all of her family has said how much she loved to cook,
and she cooked for her neighbors and had them over,
and she was a very social person.
I love carrot cake, and that's the first thing
I thought of too, Mary Allen,
that it was very similar to a carrot cake.
So maybe that's what she did.
She may have heard about that cake,
and maybe she just took the two
It's interesting that no one else
has claimed ownership of it in any way,
that there are not really any records of it before that,
because I love doing research
on different recipes and foods,
and a lot of times people will reference a source
from 100 years ago or something even,
and other sources show up,
but for the hummingbird cake, that I know of,
there's never been another source.
I almost just think that it was something
like I said, that she made,
and then everybody was telling her,
oh my gosh, this is so delicious,
you oughta send it to Southern Living.
That was just the hallmark in the south
of having your recipe validated,
if it appeared in Southern Living.
And everybody said she was a great cook,
so I could totally see her doing what you said,
coming up with this, maybe a variation
on a carrot cake or something.
Yeah, that seems the most logical to me.
Hearing that she cooked so often,
I'm sure she was very comfortable in the kitchen,
and was comfortable with making substitutions.
For so many years, people just used
what they had on hand too.
Mary Allen is one of the reasons Mrs. Wiggins' legacy
seems to be always present at Southern Living.
In her almost 20 years with the magazine,
Mary Allen spent hours upon hours
with the hummingbird cake recipe.
She's the brains behind so many
of Southern Living's variations over the years.
Mary Allen is just a genius when it comes
to coming up with all of these recipe profiles,
these flavors, it's just amazing to me, Mary Allen,
how you do this.
So how did you come up with these various
variations of the hummingbird cake?
I think that the first variation I did
was actually a contender for the Christmas cover,
the December cover, maybe 10 or 12 years ago.
And my notion there, because of course
my philosophy is there's no such thing
as too much of a good thing,
so I liked the flavor profile of it,
and I thought it would make
a great coffee cake for breakfast,
especially during the holiday time,
and I baked it in a bundt pan and put extra nuts
in the bottom of the bundt pan so it would
kind of have that nutty coffee cake topping
when you turned it out,
and then did a cream cheese glaze to go on it.
Mary Allen and her team in the test kitchen
developed many more hummingbird cake inspired recipes
that were big hits.
Pam Lolley who we spoke to in episode one
tested many of those recipes.
I know that we have turned it into cupcakes,
I know it has been a bundt cake
with the icing drizzled over the top.
We've done a pancake and turned the icing
into a cream cheese syrup that was drizzled over the top,
but it always had the same components.
It would always incorporate the bananas,
the pineapple, the spices, which was cinnamon.
I also found in 2014 we did a power bar,
someone did a power bar, do you remember that?
I do remember that, it was developed for breakfast.
What a perfect power bar
is the hummingbird cake power bar.
That's the kind of power bar I want.
Bound to be healthy, bound to be real healthy.
It's had an impact, in that we've done
over 10 different versions of it.
Editor in chief Sid Evans again.
We've had a lot of fun with it,
and I think the readers have had a lot of fun with it.
And even when we've made videos about it,
we made a video about it for out 50th anniversary,
and it was viewed more than 20 million times on Facebook.
And you think about that, this is a recipe
that was first published in 1978,
and we make a video about it in 2016,
and it gets that many views.
There is just something about that cake
that people really love.
And so the impact just continues to resonate with people,
and hopefully it will for a long time.
It sounds like you spent so much time with your recipe,
working off of it,
if you could say anything to Miss Wiggins,
what would you love to talk to her about?
I would love to talk with her
about how she did come up with the cake,
and I'd like to share with her
just all the joy that it's brought to people.
When I think of food, it's about really sharing,
and sharing in fellowship with other people,
and it's an offering to the people that you love.
And it sounds like that's the way
that she really lived her life.
As Nella and I have learned more and more
about Mrs. Wiggins, one thing keeps coming to my mind.
We talked to almost a dozen people
who knew her at different points in her life,
and Mrs. Wiggins was exactly what each person
needed in their life when they met her.
For Delores Griffith it was a surrogate mother
for a college freshman away from home for the first time.
She really calmed my fears
and helped me to assimilate into the college life,
and I am so grateful for her for doing that,
because I think she sensed that I needed some mothering.
But she was a wonderful woman, she really was.
For Joan Steele it was a friend and nurturer
to help care for Joan's three children.
I trusted her explicitly with my kids, needless to say.
It seemed like when we met her,
we came into her life when she needed us,
and she came into our lives when we needed her.
And for Southern Living,
a deliverer of a recipe so special
it's become a regular at southern gatherings,
celebrating some of life's best moments.
Probably when she passed away,
she had no idea how much joy that had brought to people
for birthdays, celebrations, and family reunions.
40 years later, she's still a daily source
of inspiration for our staff.
To me Mrs. Wiggins represents a Southern Living reader.
She's just doing her thing, cooking for her family,
taking care of people, not realizing
that she's special at that very moment,
so I would love to just tell her,
I'd like to give her a hug.
I just wanna give her a hug,
'cause I feel like she's our mom,
she's our grandmother, and again,
she represents what Southern Living was designed for.
There were a lot of people
who submitted recipes over the years over and over again.
Miss Wiggins, as far as we know,
this is the one recipe that she submitted.
And boy, what an impact it had.
Named for the tiny bird who will
appear one second and be gone the next,
the hummingbird cake and the legacy
of the woman who sent it here is anything but fleeting.
Biscuits and Jam is produced by myself,
Meg Pace with Nella McGough,
executive producers Mike Grady and Sid Evans.
Sound mixing by Jason Keener.
For Photos, videos, and the hummingbird cake recipe,
visit our website southernliving.com/culture/podcast.
Thanks to digital editor Abby Wilt and fellow Jory McDonald
for maintaining that page for us.
Our logo and art is by Miles Kain.
As always, thanks to our editor in chief Sid
and executive editor Krissy Tiglias
for giving us this assignment.
And there are so many more people to thank
for helping us put this podcast together,
Mary Allen Perry who let us
pick her encyclopedia of a brain,
assistant food editor Pat York,
test kitchen specialist Pam Lolley,
Delores Griffith and Joan Steele
who answered our call for more information on Mrs. Wiggins,
and got this whole thing started.
And of course, thank you from the bottom of our hearts
to Mrs. Wiggins' family, her sister Evie Rakes,
her daughter Janet Silcox,
and her grandchildren David and Brenda
for sharing with us so many details
about this special woman.
And if you like Biscuits and Jam,
leave us a review, it helps other folks find our story,
and we think everyone should know
about Mrs. Wiggins and her decadent hummingbird cake.
And subscribe, so you know when we're back with season two.
And then one other thing, I have a surprise for you today.
You do?
I do.
Let me get it back here.
Wow!
What is that we get to eat, is that hummingbird cake?
It is.
It's the hummingbird so this is wrapping it up
This is wrapping it up
With actually eating the cake.
This is the bundt cake version,
one of Southern Living's variations,
and I would like to say that I totally planned this for you,
but actually they were just making it in the studio,
and so I swiped it.
Well you know what?
That is how great things happen, like accidental.
And it just goes to show that we are literally
always making this cake.
Isn't that hilarious?
Thank you Mrs. Wiggins once again
for this great recipe that we tend to make
in every kind of variation.
Maybe we should do a hummingbird cake milkshake.
Ooh that sounds good.
Here you go.
All right, thank you.
You're welcome.
Anything they make up in the test kitchen team
is incredible.
I know.
This is actually really good for breakfast.
Mm hmm, it's really good for breakfast.
Too bad I already had a bacon biscuit,
but I'm still gonna eat this.
Any parting thoughts on Mrs. Wiggins,
since you've spent so many months thinking about her?
I have a mouth full of hummingbird cake right now.
I was looking back at the pictures
in my folder the other day.
Your Mrs. Wiggins folder?
Uh huh, it is a Mrs. Wiggins folder.
And so I was looking back in that,
and looking at her pictures,
and she's just got the sweetest face,
and seems to have such a sweet disposition,
that she actually should be remembered
for the sweetest cake too.
It's just delightful,
as I'm sure Mrs. Wiggins was delightful.
I hate we didn't get to know her in person.
I know, but she lives on here at Southern Living.
She sure does.
Thank you and cheers Mrs. Wiggins.
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