Talk of The Villages Florida - I have lost my strawberry pie recipe darn it

Morrison's Cafeteria

While Horn & Hardart automats were an institution in the northern U.S., in the cities of the southern U.S. we had our cafeterias: Morrison's and Piccadilly.

James A. Morrison opened the first Morrison's Cafeteria in Mobile, Alabama on September 4, 1920. This cafeteria's success led to the opening of more Morrison's Cafeterias in cities across the Southeast.

There were 142 Morrison's Cafeterias at the time they were bought by Piccadilly. The entire Morrison's Cafeteria chain was bought by Piccadilly Cafeterias in a $46 million transaction. However, Morrison's still seems to be involved in institutional food service in some areas, at hospitals and the like.

I've had numerous requests for Morrison's recipes, and a few of those requests are not in the Morrison's Recipe Manual. There were a few dishes that were unique to particular Morrison's locations - these dishes were only made at those locations. There's not much hoping of getting those except from asomeone who was actually employed the specific location. In over 80 years of operation in over 150 locations, there have to be a lot of ex-Morrison's chefs and cooks and other employees around. Hopefully some of them will read this and help us out with the recipes that we have been unable to locate.

I have been told by former Morrison's employees that sometimes their fruit pies and pecan pies were made with a canned filling. These fillings would have been made for Morrison's by a commercial producer, possibly Gumpert's, according to reliable information. There would be no recipe available for these canned fillings. Over the years, Morrison's began buying premade ingredients more and more, replacing some ingredients that were originally made in-house.

Many of the Morrison's Cafeteria recipes from the actual Morrison's kitchen manuals call for something called "Voltex". This is an institutional food service product, a frozen mixture of liquid eggs and margarine that appears to have been made by Fleischmann's. I cannot find any eveidence that it is still being sold. I have no idea exactly how to substitute for it in a recipe.

No luck with these:

7 Layer Salad
Caramel Pie
Chicken & Dumplings
Deviled Crabs
Grape Jello Dessert
Peach Cobbler
Spaghetti Salad
Whipped Cheesecake