Read The Food of a Younger Land Online
Authors: Mark Kurlansky
The Food of a Younger Land (17 page)
CHERRY BOUNCE
It has been twenty years since drinks could be mixed legally in Arkansas, and few living persons remember any of the old-time formulae. From a veteran attorney, however, comes the story of cherry bounce, of plantation origin. According to our attorney, it was the custom of the Negro houseboys to gather up partly emptied bottles of whiskey belonging to their masters (after the masters were past noticing what happened to the bottles), fill them with fresh-picked cherries, and let the mixture steep until Christmas, when it afforded an additional mixture of cheer to the slave quarters. The discovery gradually spread, and soon home-distilled corn whiskey took the place of New Orleans bourbon in the cherry bounce.
When General Frederick Steele led his Federal army across eastern Arkansas and captured Little Rock in 1864 he destroyed all the stills he found, according to our informant, so that there was little whiskey in Arkansas during the last year or two of the War between the States. The making of cherry bounce thereupon stopped, and has never since been resumed.
Foods Along U.S. 1 in Virginia
EUDORA RAMSAY RICHARDSON
U.S. 1, a two- and four-lane road along the Atlantic coast, was the major thoroughfare of the Atlantic seaboard until I-95 was built in the 1960s. If that alone does not make it clear that
America Eats
was about a different country than is known today, read the last paragraph of the following essay. Or imagine an article about eating along I-95.
America Eats
was about a different country than is known today, read the last paragraph of the following essay. Or imagine an article about eating along I-95.
Eudora Ramsay Richardson, born in 1892, wrote for women’s magazines in the 1920s and authored a few ghost stories, such as “The Haunting Eyes” for the April 1925 edition of
Weird Tales
magazine
; Little Aleck,
a popular and sympathetic 1932 biography of the Confederate vice president, Alexander Stephens; and a 1936 handbook of public speaking for women. She was made head of the Virginia Writers’ Project after it had failed to function effectively for its first year and a half. Despite an average monthly pay of $25.40, she was able to assemble a highly professional staff of writers, teachers, and librarians, and was credited with making it one of the best Writers’ Projects. The project produced what seemed at the time unflinching studies of Virginia history, including black history, in books, articles, and forty-five radio programs.
Weird Tales
magazine
; Little Aleck,
a popular and sympathetic 1932 biography of the Confederate vice president, Alexander Stephens; and a 1936 handbook of public speaking for women. She was made head of the Virginia Writers’ Project after it had failed to function effectively for its first year and a half. Despite an average monthly pay of $25.40, she was able to assemble a highly professional staff of writers, teachers, and librarians, and was credited with making it one of the best Writers’ Projects. The project produced what seemed at the time unflinching studies of Virginia history, including black history, in books, articles, and forty-five radio programs.
After the FWP ended, Richardson went back to an eclectic range of works, including academic articles on Virginia history and a book on how alcoholics could reform while avoiding complete abstinence.
E
astern Virginia, through which U.S. 1 passes, is the home of hot rolls and flaky biscuits; of spoon bread, batter bread, dodgers, pones, muffins, and batter cakes—all made of water-ground corn meal and rich with eggs and creamy milk; of Virginia hams, with amber fat and tender dark red meat; of Brunswick stew, cooked till the component parts are deliciously blended; of turnip greens boiled with Virginia-cured bacon and collards fried in bacon drippings; herring roe scrambled with eggs or rolled into cakes and fried golden brown and crisp at the edges; of chess pies and apple fritters, thick with candied syrup.
astern Virginia, through which U.S. 1 passes, is the home of hot rolls and flaky biscuits; of spoon bread, batter bread, dodgers, pones, muffins, and batter cakes—all made of water-ground corn meal and rich with eggs and creamy milk; of Virginia hams, with amber fat and tender dark red meat; of Brunswick stew, cooked till the component parts are deliciously blended; of turnip greens boiled with Virginia-cured bacon and collards fried in bacon drippings; herring roe scrambled with eggs or rolled into cakes and fried golden brown and crisp at the edges; of chess pies and apple fritters, thick with candied syrup.
Perhaps in other sections of the country as good hot bread is made as in Eastern Virginia, but never more of it. In the territory near U.S. 1 cold slices do not appear on tables. Three times a day two kinds of hot bread are served. Biscuits there may be or rolls or waffles or cakes made of wheat flour, but there will also be corn bread of some sort. The corn pone or dodger is still in good standing, and here and there will be found crackling bread and even the ash cake. An orthodox
corn pone
shows the imprint of the cook’s fingers that moulded it into the proper elongated shape. It is made of meal, water, salt, and a bit of shortening and is cooked to a golden brown inside the oven. The
dodger
is the corn pone’s closest of kin. It is fried, however, on an iron griddle. The
ash cake
is cooked in an open fire place, rolled in ashes near the smouldering coals. Sometimes it is wrapped in corn husks to save the trouble of dusting off ashes before serving.
Crackling bread
is the corn pone’s richest relative, filled as it is with crisp bits of fat left from “trying out” lard. Spoon bread and batter bread rank at the very top of the social scale. The former is far too soft to be eaten with a fork. Its custard-like consistency is achieved by scalding the meal and sometimes by making it into a mush. To about one cup of the swollen meal are added two eggs, a teaspoon of baking powder, a tablespoon of shortening, and a pint of milk.
Spoon bread
is cooked in a slow oven.
Batter bread
contains less liquid, need not have the meal scalded, may be cooked more rapidly than spoon bread, and is stiff enough to be cut with a knife. By the way, no good Southerner tolerates either flour or sugar in corn bread.
corn pone
shows the imprint of the cook’s fingers that moulded it into the proper elongated shape. It is made of meal, water, salt, and a bit of shortening and is cooked to a golden brown inside the oven. The
dodger
is the corn pone’s closest of kin. It is fried, however, on an iron griddle. The
ash cake
is cooked in an open fire place, rolled in ashes near the smouldering coals. Sometimes it is wrapped in corn husks to save the trouble of dusting off ashes before serving.
Crackling bread
is the corn pone’s richest relative, filled as it is with crisp bits of fat left from “trying out” lard. Spoon bread and batter bread rank at the very top of the social scale. The former is far too soft to be eaten with a fork. Its custard-like consistency is achieved by scalding the meal and sometimes by making it into a mush. To about one cup of the swollen meal are added two eggs, a teaspoon of baking powder, a tablespoon of shortening, and a pint of milk.
Spoon bread
is cooked in a slow oven.
Batter bread
contains less liquid, need not have the meal scalded, may be cooked more rapidly than spoon bread, and is stiff enough to be cut with a knife. By the way, no good Southerner tolerates either flour or sugar in corn bread.
Many
hams
that pass for the Virginian product, like young Lochinvar, came out of the west. The real thing is born and bred in the peanut section of Virginia, through which passes the southern part of U.S. 1. The meat is the color of Cuban mahogany, not an anemic pink, and the fat has the deep gold transparency of amber beads. Real Virginia ham is so tender that it can be cut by the dull edge of a fork. Contented hogs that have been fed on peanuts yield the delicious product. The smoking and the aging, however, are the second part of the secret. Months of exposure to the smoke of hard woods and then other months of mellowing are necessary before a Virginian ham is ready for the epicure. Only a conscienceless dealer sells customers hams that are less than a year old.
hams
that pass for the Virginian product, like young Lochinvar, came out of the west. The real thing is born and bred in the peanut section of Virginia, through which passes the southern part of U.S. 1. The meat is the color of Cuban mahogany, not an anemic pink, and the fat has the deep gold transparency of amber beads. Real Virginia ham is so tender that it can be cut by the dull edge of a fork. Contented hogs that have been fed on peanuts yield the delicious product. The smoking and the aging, however, are the second part of the secret. Months of exposure to the smoke of hard woods and then other months of mellowing are necessary before a Virginian ham is ready for the epicure. Only a conscienceless dealer sells customers hams that are less than a year old.
Another much misunderstood Virginian dish is
Brunswick stew.
Indeed, all that is stew is not Brunswick, and many a Virginian is thrown into a stew when he is subjected to heretical mixtures that foreigners try to pass for the real thing. The stew is a native of Brunswick County—and of course there is a story connected with its birth. Men, it is said, accustomed to bringing a variety of foods for hunting trips, left one of their number to do the cooking while they pursued game in territory nearby. The lazy fellow, whose talents were not culinary, dumped into one iron pot all the provisions, including the squirrels that had just been killed. So, a miracle was wrought.
Brunswick stew.
Indeed, all that is stew is not Brunswick, and many a Virginian is thrown into a stew when he is subjected to heretical mixtures that foreigners try to pass for the real thing. The stew is a native of Brunswick County—and of course there is a story connected with its birth. Men, it is said, accustomed to bringing a variety of foods for hunting trips, left one of their number to do the cooking while they pursued game in territory nearby. The lazy fellow, whose talents were not culinary, dumped into one iron pot all the provisions, including the squirrels that had just been killed. So, a miracle was wrought.
Here is the way the ambrosian concoction is prepared. In 2 gallons of boiling water cook 9 pounds of squirrels—or chickens, if squirrels are not in season—until the meat is tender. Throw in 6 pounds of tomatoes, 2 large onions, 2 pounds of cabbage, 5 large potatoes, 1 pound of butter beans, 6 slices of bacon, a pod of red pepper, and salt. Cook for about 6 hours. Then add 8 ears of corn sliced off the cob. Stir constantly for a few minutes and serve. This is the real Brunswick stew. Accept no substitutes.
As you travel down U.S. 1 you will be fed
turnip greens
—often called turnip salad or turnip sallet—and in season
collards
will appear on the table. No one should miss the
black-eyed pea cakes
that come in July and August. Turnip greens really should be cooked with hog jowl, the sort Virginian hogs yield. Now there’s a dish for a hungry man, whether he has been plowing or working in an office, turnip greens and hog jowl—a food that should not be mentioned unless it is right beside you! If the jowl is not available, other fat meat is substituted in the boiling. Collards should be boiled first and then fried, for there is something indefinable about collards that requires the double process. In regard to black-eyed peas the eternal question is whether to mash or not to mash, but along U.S. 1 in Virginia, the decision is usually rendered in favor of mashing. The peas are boiled with a bit of fat meat. Then they are converted into a paste, moulded into a loaf, covered with strips of bacon, and baked.
turnip greens
—often called turnip salad or turnip sallet—and in season
collards
will appear on the table. No one should miss the
black-eyed pea cakes
that come in July and August. Turnip greens really should be cooked with hog jowl, the sort Virginian hogs yield. Now there’s a dish for a hungry man, whether he has been plowing or working in an office, turnip greens and hog jowl—a food that should not be mentioned unless it is right beside you! If the jowl is not available, other fat meat is substituted in the boiling. Collards should be boiled first and then fried, for there is something indefinable about collards that requires the double process. In regard to black-eyed peas the eternal question is whether to mash or not to mash, but along U.S. 1 in Virginia, the decision is usually rendered in favor of mashing. The peas are boiled with a bit of fat meat. Then they are converted into a paste, moulded into a loaf, covered with strips of bacon, and baked.
No continental continence that limits breakfasts to fruit juices and hard rolls or dry toast is tolerated along U. S. 1 in Virginia, for hearty folk, your hostess will tell you, should have hearty appetites early in the morning. Among all the many foods that are served for breakfast you will often find
fried herring
or
herring cakes
—whips for wayward appetites. The herring is rolled in corn meal and fried crisp. For the cakes herring flakes are mixed with eggs, and with potatoes, flour or corn meal.
fried herring
or
herring cakes
—whips for wayward appetites. The herring is rolled in corn meal and fried crisp. For the cakes herring flakes are mixed with eggs, and with potatoes, flour or corn meal.
Perhaps chess pie and fried apple pie will not be found in restaurants along the highway. No all-day picnic, however, is complete without them.
Chess pie
is made of butter, sugar, and eggs, poured uncooked into pastry and baked in a slow oven.
Fried apple pies
elsewhere are perhaps called tarts or fritters. Within their half-moon of very short pastry are sliced apples, mixed with sugar and spices. They are fried in deep fat.
Chess pie
is made of butter, sugar, and eggs, poured uncooked into pastry and baked in a slow oven.
Fried apple pies
elsewhere are perhaps called tarts or fritters. Within their half-moon of very short pastry are sliced apples, mixed with sugar and spices. They are fried in deep fat.
If the tourist does not find the Virginian foods along the highway, he should knock at some farmhouse door, register his complaint against American standardization, and be served after a manner that conforms to the ancient rules of hospitality.
Mississippi African-American Recipes
(William Wheeler Talks)
The American persimmon,
Diospyros virginiana,
is a subtropical fruit that grows mainly in the South. This must not always have been true, since the word
persimmon
comes from the Algonquin language, one of twenty-seven languages in a language group that spread from Canada to Delaware and west to the Rockies, but not to the South. The word, originally
putchamin,
may come from
pasiminan,
the Cree word for dried fruit. The Indians did dry the ripened fruit but also were the first to make persimmon into beer. This jack-o’-lantern orange fruit ripens late in the fall, and it used to be believed in the South that it could not be picked until the first frost. Southern blacks ground the seeds into coffee in the same way that William Wheeler talks of making coffee from huckleberries. Midwesterners have their own persimmon recipes, but beer and coffee are largely southern. These traditions have greatly diminished since
America Eats,
partly because there are fewer people in the South too poor to buy real coffee and partly because the American persimmon has been largely replaced by the more commercially viable Japanese persimmon,
D. kaki,
whose entry into the United States is attributed to Commodore Matthew C. Perry in 1855.
Diospyros virginiana,
is a subtropical fruit that grows mainly in the South. This must not always have been true, since the word
persimmon
comes from the Algonquin language, one of twenty-seven languages in a language group that spread from Canada to Delaware and west to the Rockies, but not to the South. The word, originally
putchamin,
may come from
pasiminan,
the Cree word for dried fruit. The Indians did dry the ripened fruit but also were the first to make persimmon into beer. This jack-o’-lantern orange fruit ripens late in the fall, and it used to be believed in the South that it could not be picked until the first frost. Southern blacks ground the seeds into coffee in the same way that William Wheeler talks of making coffee from huckleberries. Midwesterners have their own persimmon recipes, but beer and coffee are largely southern. These traditions have greatly diminished since
America Eats,
partly because there are fewer people in the South too poor to buy real coffee and partly because the American persimmon has been largely replaced by the more commercially viable Japanese persimmon,
D. kaki,
whose entry into the United States is attributed to Commodore Matthew C. Perry in 1855.
The somewhat odd format of this valuable piece of anthropological investigation—the title “William Wheeler Talks,” the slightly off attempt at dialect rather than simply recording the words as would have been done for a white person with a deep southern accent, and the label “Negro” to explain who William Wheeler was—comes out of the tradition of the slave and the Negro narratives that the FWP had been doing for years before
America Eats.
America Eats.
W
e used to gather huckleberries, put dem in a skillet, parch em real brown. Den beat ’em up fine wid a hammer and use this fer coffee. We used to drink bran coffee too. Dis wuz made by parchin’ corn, takin’ de husks and making into a brew.
Other Recipese used to gather huckleberries, put dem in a skillet, parch em real brown. Den beat ’em up fine wid a hammer and use this fer coffee. We used to drink bran coffee too. Dis wuz made by parchin’ corn, takin’ de husks and making into a brew.
Peppergrass washed rale clean, boiled down rale low with meat skins, den add meal dumplins. You made dese dumplins like hoecake, shaped de dumplins wid you hans. Dis is fine, Miss.
ASH CAKEMake a hoecake out’n meal, salt, a little grease, and some boilin’ water. Shape wid yo hands. Pull out some live coals out of de fire place. Wrop cakes in a collard leaf, place on dese coals coverin wid some more hot so hot. Let dem bake about 15 minutes. Dey’s sho fitten’.
PERSIMMON BEER1 bushel of ripe persimmons. Pick out de seeds. Take ½ bushel of meal, and ½ bushel of sweet potato peelings. Line a keg wid corn shucks, shake dem out rale clean first, den pour in de meal, potato peelings, and persimmons which has all been mashed together rale good. Cover wid water. Bore a hole in de keg to draw out de beer. Mash up some corn bread in a cup and fill it up with dis beer and it is fine.
William Wheeler, Negro.
Leflore County
Miss.
Diddy-Wah-Diddy
ZORA NEALE HURSTON
Zora Neale Hurston was born in 1891 in Notasulga, Alabama, and grew up in the town of Eatonville in rural central Florida, which she once described as “a pure Negro town.” She attended Howard University and then transferred to Barnard College, where she received a B.A. in anthropology in 1928. At Columbia she did ethnographic research under the celebrated anthropologist Franz Boas and was a fellow student with Margaret Mead. Having published three books, including her best novel,
Their Eyes Were Watching God,
led a dance group on Broadway, and been one of the first to study vodun in Haiti after winning a Guggenheim Fellowship for the project, she was broke. Though she was a more accomplished writer than most of the Federal Writers’ Project participants, as well as a highly qualified anthropologist, it was this penniless state that qualified her for the Florida Writers’ Project. She had met with fellow Columbia graduate Henry Alsberg. Alsberg had intended for her to be a supervising editor in the Florida project, but the Florida WPA found it unthinkable to place a black woman in a supervisory position over whites. She was taken on as a bottom-level interviewer. She traveled rural Florida with a heavy “portable” disk recorder doing the kind of anthropological investigations that had long fascinated her.
Their Eyes Were Watching God,
led a dance group on Broadway, and been one of the first to study vodun in Haiti after winning a Guggenheim Fellowship for the project, she was broke. Though she was a more accomplished writer than most of the Federal Writers’ Project participants, as well as a highly qualified anthropologist, it was this penniless state that qualified her for the Florida Writers’ Project. She had met with fellow Columbia graduate Henry Alsberg. Alsberg had intended for her to be a supervising editor in the Florida project, but the Florida WPA found it unthinkable to place a black woman in a supervisory position over whites. She was taken on as a bottom-level interviewer. She traveled rural Florida with a heavy “portable” disk recorder doing the kind of anthropological investigations that had long fascinated her.
Nor were the times after the FWP good for her. In 1948 she published
Seraph on the Suwanee,
a novel about poor rural whites in Florida. It was what Lyle Saxon had been praised for in reverse. But it was not acceptable for a black to write about white people. In the climate of the emerging civil rights movement, Hurston’s style, shaped by her anthropological training and adopted by the FWP, of quoting blacks in dialect, was seen as racist. Politically she had broken with her former colleagues of the Harlem Renaissance such as Richard Wright and Langston Hughes, refuted their leftist politics, and in 1952 actively campaigned for the conservative Republican Robert Taft for president. She became a leading black of the political right, a group that did not have many blacks. Worse, she was perceived as an opponent of the civil rights movement, especially after writing a letter to the
Orlando Sentinel
in 1954 denouncing the Supreme Court ruling on
Brown v. Board of Education
. Her stance—that blacks did not need the presence of whites to get a good education, and that it was insulting to say that they did—might have resonated fifteen years later in the black power movement. But in 1954 it found support only among white racists.
Seraph on the Suwanee,
a novel about poor rural whites in Florida. It was what Lyle Saxon had been praised for in reverse. But it was not acceptable for a black to write about white people. In the climate of the emerging civil rights movement, Hurston’s style, shaped by her anthropological training and adopted by the FWP, of quoting blacks in dialect, was seen as racist. Politically she had broken with her former colleagues of the Harlem Renaissance such as Richard Wright and Langston Hughes, refuted their leftist politics, and in 1952 actively campaigned for the conservative Republican Robert Taft for president. She became a leading black of the political right, a group that did not have many blacks. Worse, she was perceived as an opponent of the civil rights movement, especially after writing a letter to the
Orlando Sentinel
in 1954 denouncing the Supreme Court ruling on
Brown v. Board of Education
. Her stance—that blacks did not need the presence of whites to get a good education, and that it was insulting to say that they did—might have resonated fifteen years later in the black power movement. But in 1954 it found support only among white racists.
Desperately poor, Hurston was working as a cleaning woman in a white man’s home; the man realized the woman he had just read about in a magazine article was his cleaning lady. In 1960 she died with no money and was buried in an unmarked grave, almost completely forgotten until novelist Alice Walker wrote about her in 1975, spurring a Zora Neale Hurston revival that continues to this day.
In the
America Eats
files there are two references to Hurston, both with her name wrong. One says, “Please ask Zora Thurston to contribute something on Negro foods.” The other asked the Florida Writers’ Project, “Would Miss Thurston write an account of a Negro picnic?” No such articles are to be found in the
America Eats
files and Hurston’s papers have been scattered to numerous archives and libraries. Little food writing has turned up, nothing on “Negro picnics,” but Pamela Bordelon, an academic in Pensacola, Florida, did unearth the following unpublished piece written by Hurston for the Florida Writers’ Project about a mythical land with good food, especially barbecue. The place was called “Diddy-Wah-Diddy.”
America Eats
files there are two references to Hurston, both with her name wrong. One says, “Please ask Zora Thurston to contribute something on Negro foods.” The other asked the Florida Writers’ Project, “Would Miss Thurston write an account of a Negro picnic?” No such articles are to be found in the
America Eats
files and Hurston’s papers have been scattered to numerous archives and libraries. Little food writing has turned up, nothing on “Negro picnics,” but Pamela Bordelon, an academic in Pensacola, Florida, did unearth the following unpublished piece written by Hurston for the Florida Writers’ Project about a mythical land with good food, especially barbecue. The place was called “Diddy-Wah-Diddy.”
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