The Poet’s Table: Recipes of the Sandburg Family

By Madi Duran

When it comes to the eating habits of poet Carl Sandburg’s family, we know that they generally enjoyed hearty meals made from simple, homegrown ingredients. Fresh baked bread, hearty stews, and plenty of products made from Mrs. Lilian Sandburg’s prized Chikaming Dairy goats’ milk were the norm for the family at Connemara, their home in Flat Rock, North Carolina. We have few recipes written by the family in the collection, with most of our knowledge about their eating habits coming from oral histories with the daughters and grandchildren after Carl Sandburg’s death in 1967. However, scanned copies of recipe cards provided by his daughter, Helga Sandburg Crile, and granddaughter, Paula Steichen Polega, for the reference files at the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site show how Mrs. Lilian Sandburg integrated recipes learned from her Luxembourgian parents and ones honoring her husband Carl’s Swedish heritage into their lives. There are also instructions written by Mrs. Sandburg herself for making goat cheeses in various styles, like a simple cooked cheese and a nut Neufchâtel, and her well-used copy of The Settlement Cookbook (1901).

Fig. 1. Recipes for Oma’s grape wine and a dandelion wine, copied for the Park reference files by Helga Sandburg Crile in May 1991.

A recipe for dandelion wine points back to Mrs. Sandburg’s European immigrant parents, the Steichens. Dandelions were brought by European colonists in the 1600s, both as a source of edible greens and as a means to make a cheaper alternative to grape wine.[i] A grape wine recipe, passed down by “Oma,” the German word for grandmother and used by the Steichens to refer to Mrs. Sandburg’s mother, is accompanied by a note urging the recipient to “keep this in verry [sic] save [sic] place as it is verry [sic] good resepie [sic].” Another recipe for cold borscht is specifically labeled as coming from the Steichens, and a pound cake is also accompanied by “Oma” in parentheses.

Fig. 2. A collection of Swedish Christmas cookies copied at an unknown time, likely by Helga Sandburg Crile.
Fig. 3. A recipe for Mrs. Sandburg’s favorite German pfeffernüsse cookies, typed for the Park by her granddaughter Paula Steichen Polega in 1979.

When it comes to holiday fare, a variety of Swedish cookie recipes have been saved, an homage to Carl Sandburg’s Swedish heritage: Swedish butter cookies, spritsar, and one recipe card simply labeled “Swedish Christmas Cookies” that call for warming spices and molasses, like a gingerbread but without any ginger. However, Mrs. Sandburg’s heritage is evident in a much-beloved recipe for pfeffernüsse that her granddaughter, Paula Steichen Polega, passed on to the park with the remark that it was “Mrs. Sandburg’s favorite.” It seems only fitting that the family made efforts to reconnect with their heritage during the holidays, a time for celebration, togetherness, and remembrance.

Fig. 4. A recipe for “Connemara Custard” copied for the Park reference files by Helga Sandburg Crile in May 1991.

The recipes documenting various uses for goat milk reflect Mrs. Sandburg’s dedication to bettering the dairy goat industry, including her own award-winning Chikaming Dairy herd, and desire to make goat milk a mainstream alternative for traditional dairy products. Even in basic recipes one can find evidence of her family’s flavor profile — anise and nutmeg appear in almost every cookie recipe, and anise makes an appearance in the recipe for cooked cheese written by Mrs. Sandburg. A custard recipe is modified into “Connemara Custard” by substituting goat milk for condensed milk. The recipe for a nut Neufchâtel, a cheese believed to date back to sixth-century Normandy,[ii] is also reimagined as a goat dairy product by Mrs. Sandburg from their days in Harbert, Michigan.

Fig. 5. A recipe for Nut Neufchatel goat cheese created by Mrs. Sandburg pre-1945 and distributed as part of her dairy goat operation, Chikaming Goat Farm, copied for the Park reference files by Helga Sandburg Crile in May 1991.

While we do not have many written recipes for the Sandburg family, what we do have illustrates how Mrs. Sandburg blended hers and her husband’s cultural backgrounds into memorable foods for her family and her ability to adapt recipes for her own health and benefit with goat dairy products. Some additional recipes used by the family can be found on a park webpage that references Lizzie Black Kander’s The Settlement Cookbook,[iii] a staple in the Sandburg home that can be seen in the kitchen in the historic house museum. Originally created for immigrants in Milwaukee, Kander’s work combined traditional Eastern European and American recipes.[iv] The use of this book also points to both the Sandburg and Steichen families’ lived experiences as European immigrants settling in the American Midwest — though they were in Illinois and Michigan, respectively, rather than Wisconsin. The use of The Settlement Cookbook, further exemplifies the efforts Mrs. Sandburg made to honor her and her husband’s European heritage and their lived experiences as first-generation Americans.

Figs. 6 and 7. Photographs of the Sandburgs’ copy of The Settlement Cookbook on display in their kitchen at Connemara.

At the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site, we have a varied collection that shows a life well-lived. As the final home of an illustrious author, Connemara includes thousands of books on display and a large archival collection in our repository, but also, uniquely, the evidence of the Sandburgs’ mundane daily life, which sets it apart from other collections. Half-smoked cigars, tens of thousands of annotated bookmarks, and unfinished knitting projects are just some of the artifacts left behind by the Sandburg family. Recipes, too, tell a part of their story. Though the original recipe cards remain in the hands of descendants, the scanned copies in our reference files and the copy of The Settlement Cookbook reveal staples of the family’s diet as well as foods chosen for special occasions like Christmas, showcasing their values and heritage through their diet.


[i] Kate Dingwall, “Summery, Sweet and Refreshing: Get to Know Dandelion Wine,” Wine Enthusiast, May 17, 2024.

[ii] Ma. Luisa De Guzman, “Neufchatel Cheese,” What Cheese, March 5, 2024.

[iii] Leah Koenig, “As American as Pot Roast and Potato Salad,” Tablet Magazine, April 20, 2016.

[iv] Leah Koenig, “As American as Pot Roast and Potato Salad,” Tablet Magazine, April 20, 2016.


Madi Duran is a Museum Technician at the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site in Flat Rock, North Carolina. She has had a love of museums ever since she was a child and has been volunteering and working at museums since she was in high school. In 2020 she graduated from St Olaf College with a degree in Art History, and went on to complete her master’s in Museum Studies through the University of Oklahoma’s online program in 2024. She started as an intern at the Carl Sandburg Home NHS in 2021 and began working as a National Park Service employee in 2024. She loves sharing information about the collection and Sandburg family with the public through the park’s official social media pages, speaking to visitors, assisting researchers, and sharing information through publications like this one!


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Jess Clark (April 22, 2026). The Poet’s Table: Recipes of the Sandburg Family. The Recipes Project. Retrieved May 19, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/164ao


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