The Quest for Grandma Louise’s Meatballs

Click here to go to the meatball recipe

Warren Whitney is a close friend of my parents, who recently reached out to me about his family’s search to recreate their Italian grandmother’s delicious meatballs. His grandmother Louise would make them every weekend that he would come visit, and they were the stuff of legend.

Any legendary meatball is a legend I need to hear about, so I asked for more information and dove right in.

A Calabrian Family in Wisconsin

Louise DeMark Litrenta lived her whole life in Racine, WI, enjoying the vibrant Italian-American community present there. Her parents, Roger and Rose DeMark, immigrated to Racine from a Calabrian town called Rovito, and started a family and new lives in Wisconsin. Louise, born in 1904, was the oldest of their 9 children. Many in the family still live in Wisconsin, while others have dispersed far and wide.

The DeMark’s quickly established firm roots in their new home. Roger DeMark and his brothers opened DeMark’s Tavern in 1906 – and it’s still in operation today! With an exception of briefly closing for a few years following the Great Depression, the tavern has been in continuous operation by the family for over 110 years. Known for it’s pizza burger and famous red hat (which I believe was worn by Rocco DeMark) DeMark’s Bar and Restaurant has kept the Racine, WI community fed and watered on Italian-American comfort food and beer.

Lots of beer, in fact. During their hey-day, DeMark’s would serve 50 half-barrels of beer a week to the predominantly working class community of Racine.

Louise grew up being a part of the family business (which, when she was growing up was a tavern AND a grocery store). She graduated from 8th grade, and wanted to continue her education, but her father wished her to stay home and help with her siblings.

She married Jerome Litrenta in 1922, and they established a family-life in Racine together, eventually living in the Litrenta family home in Racine. The Litrentas had immigrated from the same Calabrian town as the DeMarks when Jerome was a toddler, and their marriage united two of the prominent Italian-American families in Racine.

Louise and Jerome raised five children together, including Rose, Warren’s mother. Jerome worked as a postal worker, and Louise worked at the local Racine company Rainfair, who manufactured raincoats up until the turn of the century. Louise worked at Rainfair until she retired.

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Warren remembers driving to Racine from his home in Cleveland and being welcomed into a warm environment, filled with family and food. His family would get together at the Blake Avenue home, where fresh kringle (a Racine specialty) would be waiting, and a lush family garden would be blooming. He’d spend the days exploring the neighborhoods nearby, wandering around alleys or the tracks of the Chicago & Northwestern railroad, and watch his Grandpa coming home from the grocery store, with a newspaper tucked under his elbow.

It was a fun environment being around his extended family, and it was often centered around Grandma Louise’s meatballs. Every Saturday night she would make her meatballs, let them sit overnight, and then Sunday morning she would begin her cooking – meaning that little Warren’s nose would tickle every Sunday with the scent of meatballs frying. I haven’t asked to be sure, but as I’ve been writing this article, I’ve had the image in my head of him as the little boy at the stove, carefully watching his grandma, trying to sneak a bite, because he’s too excited to wait for the fully-finished product (and there’s a bit of evidence to justify this. See below.)

How Long Have Italians been eating Meatballs?

Warren’s family is relatively certain that Louise learned how to make meatballs from her mother-in-law, Marie Gallo (Litrenta). They came from Calabria as well, and one could guess that the meatball recipe came with them on the boat – though, probably just written in their heads. It took until Warren’s generation to get the recipe written down.

Thinking about all this expertise being passed down made me start wondering just how long have Italians been eating meatballs? The answer is: WAY LONG.

A Roman cookbook compiled circa the 1st century A.D. called Apicius (and sometimes called De Re Coquinaria) has quite a few recipes for isicia, and the common thread between the recipes is ground meat. There are quite a few varieties of isicia, one of which (isicia omentata) seems to be the grandfather of the hamburger, and another recipe (isicia amulata) more resembles modern day meatballs, as it is simmered in a sauce containing starch.

The book is a touch mysterious, as the author is unknown (though often erroneously attributed to ancient Roman gourmand, Marcus Gavius Apicius), more recipes have been added through the centuries, and it has gone through many less-than-adequate translations that have widely spread and only really hold historical interest at this point. (Which is still interesting to me! The first English translation is available to read, for free, on Project Gutenberg.)

The recipes in the book would have been for the very elite of Rome, often containing exotic and inaccessible ingredients for most inhabitants. A really lovely recreation of the isicia amulata recipe has been recently published on a blog called Historical Italian Cooking . I recommend checking it out, and maybe give an ancient meatball recipe a whirl. There’s a good video on there, as well.

Beyond meatballs, Italian-Americans brought so many wonderful recipes with them, and created many more in their new homes on the east coast, mid-west and beyond. Click here for more history on Italians and their culinary journey to America.

Getting the Recipe Right

Louise’s grandchildren were having a hard time recreating her meatball recipe. Every time they would ask her for a recipe, she’d be unable to provide one, since, hey! She didn’t have one. She knew what went into it, then relied on tasting the raw mix before cooking to adjust for seasoning.

A few recipes began to circulate, none of which tasted quite right against their memories. Eventually, his cousin Michelle decided to stand next to Louise and weigh and measure everything before she added it to the mix, and this recipe became Warren’s new standard, (and very similar to his final version, which is the one posted on this site).

This version had quite a bit more cheese and bread than previous versions, which Warren believes makes these meatballs “so good, where are others are so disappointing.” (I agree.)

I can’t say enough how much I admire Warren and his family’s persistence and passion for getting their grandma’s meatball recipe just right. Because not only did his cousin go the distance of stalking Grandma down to see exactly what she did, Warren in turn has kept meticulous care in comparing all existing recipes circulating in the family, using a chart to compare all the differences.

“I have all the known recipes recorded,” Warren told me, “as well as many of my attempts to make them. In this way I hope to zero in on the ideal recipe.”

I was lucky enough to be sent his chart, and it was after looking it over that I decided I absolutely had to try these meatballs out. It chronicles three of his cousin’s recipes, and over 8 different episodes of making the variations, and the results of each. Very impressive. I asked him if he was a chef or a food scientist in a former life, and he responded, that no he’s an engineer, “and we love spreadsheets.”

As I mentioned above, he has sent me a finalized recipe, which I recreated and have published here. But in resigning that he’s not sure if it’ll ever be quite the same, he told me “… my mother always said that all food tastes better if prepared by someone else. I think this is true. ”

There really is something to that. As Warren went on to posture, it could be that a chef is more likely to taste a single ingredient and miss the whole experience, while a diner will be able to taste the whole, which I think is a really excellent point. I also think at work here is the mysterious LGF, the Lost Grandma Flavor. This is a theory I’ve been developing, and I wax on about (at length sometimes). It’s a mixture of nostalgia, emotions, fuzzy memories, and techniques that maybe never got translated into a recipe. The LGF is the flavor a descendant can’t ever seem to get quite right, and often the flavor they crave the most.

Recreating Louise’s Meatballs

Click here for the meatball recipe!

Well, the next step in the journey was to recreate her recipe and have a GIANT MEATBALL PARTY AT MY HOUSE! It was tough work, but somebody had to do it.

And that somebody was my partner, Alex. I made him roll all the meatballs.

The recipe makes over 75 individual meatballs, which was far more food than the four people I had over could eat. I thought about cutting the recipe in half, but decided to go “full Nonna batch.” I wanted the feeling Louise might have had on her Saturday nights, getting her meatballs ready for her family (of course, up to the point of rolling them, in which I let Alex take over as Nonna, as previously mentioned.)

After shaping, we were going to have two different meatball tastings. Warren had told me that his family is divided between people who prefer the meatballs freshly fried and those who prefer them simmered in tomato sauce. Warren prefers them just fried, with fresh bread and butter, and so we had to give those a try.

This is what made me imagine young Warren standing by the stove as his grandma was cooking, snitching a meatball as soon as they were out of the skillet. We all really enjoyed them this way, though they do taste majestic after being simmered in a tomato sauce.

I think Warren is right that the high amount of cheese and bread, and the fact that the bread is fresh, really make these meatballs distinctive. They have a lovely firm texture, and a rich, balanced flavor that isn’t too much of one element. I was shocked by how little garlic the recipe calls for, but when all was said and done, it was the correct amount.

Alex asked that this becomes our new go-to meatball recipe…so…yes…they really are that delicious.

Thank you so much to Warren and his family for letting me learn about their family and sharing their delicious meatball recipe’s journey. I encourage you to make a big batch of these, and invite over family and friends to enjoy them.