CHAPTER

3

Oysters, Peacocks, and Green Jell-O

“…Peacock which, tho’, beautifully plumaged,
is tough, hard, stringy, and untasted, and even indelicious…”
—AMELIA SIMMONS, 1798

I’ll never forget my first lesson in regional food differences. I was about eleven years old and visiting a cousin out of state. One night I volunteered to help prepare dinner and was told we were having “burros.” Panic raced through my mind as I imagined eating a small, horse-like creature. It didn’t seem like something normal people ate. I knew I would have to eat some because I was taught to always be polite and to try every food put in front of me. My stomach churned at the thought of the upcoming meal. My anxiety built for about thirty minutes until I realized that when my relatives said “burros,” they weren’t referring to the animal but to a burrito, a food I was very familiar with living in Southern California.

Anyone who has traveled out of his region knows that food differences exist. What is a very familiar food for me in California may be nonexistent as you travel east. Even areas within a region may have access to foods that are different from foods found in a city only an hour away. Foods I have dined on in the southern states, like fried okra and collard greens for example, are harder to come by when I come home to the West.

Mark Kurlansky, editor of The Food of a Younger Land, mentions that as he traveled, he found that “being raised in New England and New York, I was struck by the differences in how people ate in other parts of the country—how breakfasts get bigger as you traveled west and hamburgers became increasingly adorned until by California they were virtually a salad sandwich.”¹

Most tourists or travelers encounter regional foods at local non-chain restaurants. A few examples include Fry Sauce in Utah; the Horseshoe Sandwich in Springfield, Illinois; West Indies Salad in Birmingham, Alabama; the Hot Brown in Louisville, Kentucky; Cincinnati-style chili in Cincinnati, Ohio; the Juicy Lucy in South Minneapolis; and the Philadelphia Cheesesteak in Philadelphia. Many times, these regional foods may be the invention of a local chef who was meeting a need. The new dish then became so popular that it started a trend in the city or area, and other restaurants began offering a similar dish. The Hot Brown, a toasted, open-faced sandwich stacked with slices of turkey, ham, bacon, and sliced tomato and covered with cheese sauce and Parmesan cheese, was invented by Fred K. Schmidt, a chef at the Brown Hotel, who created it to serve to hungry guests who attended the nightly dinner-dances at the hotel.

Not so long ago many of the regional food differences existed because of lack of refrigeration, landscape, growing seasons, transportation, availability, and immigrant communities. In today’s world, food differences may be more of a product of regionalism and culture. This chapter explores the foodways—that is the cultural, economic, and social practices surrounding food—of the various regions of the United States to help you better understand what your ancestors might have eaten. You’ll also see how the foodways of the past continue to influence present-day diets. See the bibliography for books on regional cuisines for additional ideas about how your family ate.

FOODWAYS IN THE NORTHEAST

The Northeast has food traditions stretching back to the very beginnings of the nation. New England states are primarily associated with fresh seafood. Early settlers quickly established a fishing industry to harvest food from the Atlantic Ocean. Other New England staples include johnnycakes, a type of flat cornbread, and baked beans. While the seafood connection is obvious, how did Boston come to be known as Bean Town? The answer is found in colonial times.

While colonial Americans brought their British food customs with them to America, baked beans is most likely not one of them. Colonists saw that the American Indians prepared beans with maple sugar and bear fat, and the dish became very popular with the colonists.

The first recorded recipe for baked beans appears in Lydia Maria Francis Child’s 1829 work, The American Frugal Housewife dedicated to those who are not ashamed of economy. The term Boston baked beans was first coined in the mid-nineteenth century.²

The popularity of baked beans might be summed up in a story found in the History of Brooklyn, Susquehanna Co., Penn’a: Its Homes and Its People (1889), which relates that beans were popular among earlier settlers because “they were wholesome and nutritious, easily produced and gave quick returns.”³

In the History of the Eleventh Regiment, Rhode Island Volunteers, in the war of the rebellion, the author comments that once the men had settled into the idea that they were going to be involved in the Civil War for a while, they decided to improve their cookhouses. “Coming from Yankee land they were bound to gratify their desire for baked beans.”⁴ Bricks were scavenged from dilapidated houses, and beans and bacon were supplied by Uncle Sam.

Though once truly baked in crocks, baked beans are now mostly stewed in a sauce, and there are many canned varieties available that only need to be heated, not cooked. Heinz first tested canned baked beans in Britain in 1905 and eventually sold more cans in Britain than in the United States. In a December 21, 1936, Life magazine advertisement, Heinz boasted that they had reverently studied the New England recipes so they would know the correct amounts of molasses, pork, and brown sugar to use. The company went on to boast that Bostonians thanked them for these canned beans and noted how they were shipping the beans to Boston, the home of the Boston-style bean.

Pennsylvania, like other states, was influenced by the immigrant and religious groups that settled there. Pennsylvania Dutch greatly influenced the foodways of the Keystone State. The Pennsylvania Dutch are immigrants and descendants of immigrants from southwestern Germany and Switzerland. The term Dutch should not be confused with people from the Netherlands. Those who are Pennsylvania Dutch are not from just one religion, but include Lutherans, Amish, and Mennonites. These immigrants settled in Pennsylvania in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. One of their dishes, scrapple, is all but unknown to many people living outside the area.

Scrapple is a spiced pork sausage that contains pork scraps, flour, cornmeal, and spices. This mixture is formed into a congealed loaf, and then slices are taken from the loaf and pan-fried. Scrapple can also be deep-fried or broiled. Often served with condiments like maple syrup, ketchup, jelly, and apple butter, scrapple is most commonly served at breakfast but can also be served at other times.

THANKSGIVING

School children learn the story of the Pilgrims and Indians sharing the first Thanksgiving in New England. While many of the details of that story are probably false, the idea behind it gave us the holiday we know today. Though the first Thanksgiving was a three-day event celebrated in 1621, Thanksgiving was not recognized as a federal holiday until 1863. Prior to that, Thanksgiving was an event celebrated mostly in New England, and the date of the celebration differed from state to state.

Sarah Josepha Buell Hale (1788-1879), an American writer and editor of one of the first women’s magazines (Godey’s Lady’s Book), campaigned for forty years among mayors, governors, and five presidents in an effort to have Thanksgiving declared a national holiday. Although virtually unknown today, Hale was responsible for many forward-thinking ideas such as public playgrounds for children and daycare for working mothers. Today she is probably best known as the author of the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

In 1827, she wrote that far too few national holidays existed and that Thanksgiving should be a national holiday like the Fourth of July. Her vision was to set aside a day both to give thanks for all that we have and to remember the poor. In an editorial she wrote in Godey’s Lady’s Book, Hale said, “Let the people of all states and territories sit down together to the ‘feast of fat things,’ and drink, in the sweet draught of joy and gratitude to the Divine giver of all blessings, the pledge of renewed love to the Union, and to each other, and peace and good-will to all men.”

In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln finally granted Hale’s wish and set aside the last Thursday in November as a national day of thanksgiving. His Thanksgiving Proclamation was issued just four months prior to the Gettysburg Address.

The Thanksgiving meal has evolved over time. Food served at the first Thanksgiving, and many after that, would have been whatever was local, including corn, fish, and animals that could have been procured through hunting, like fowl or deer. However, it wasn’t too long before the Thanksgiving we are all familiar with came into being. Amelia Simmons’s cookbook, published in 1796, includes several traditional Thanksgiving dishes or dishes that modern Americans would recognize, including butter gravy, cranberry sauce, relish tray, boiled onions, boiled cabbage, butter biscuits, pumpkin pie, Indian pudding, flavored whipped cream, and cookies.⁵

Of course Thanksgiving menus reflect the place and who is serving the food. Consider the differences in the two following Thanksgiving menus. The first, served on the Plains in 1868, features foods that were mostly hunted and gathered, while the menu from the Maison Tortoni restaurant reflects foods that those living in the latter nineteenth century would expect at a fine restaurant, including favorites like oysters and turtle soup.

Journalist DeBenneville Randolph Keim accompanied General Philip Sheridan during the Indian Wars. Keim’s writing gives a sense of an 1868 Thanksgiving menu on the Oklahoma plains. It features a great amount of meat, something the soldiers could have hunted where they were camped. The menu according to Keim:

Soup—Wild Turkey

Boiled—Wild Turkey, Buffalo Tongue

Roast—Buffalo Hump, Wild Turkey, Saddle of Venison, Red Deer, Common Deer, Antelope, Rabbit

Entrees—Rabbit Pies, Wings of Grouse, Turkey Giblets

Vegetables (imported)—Canned Tomatoes, Lima Beans, Desiccated Potatoes

Bread—Hard Tack, plain and toasted, Army Biscuits

Dessert (imported)—Rice Pudding, Pies, and Tarts

Wines and Liquors—Chamapgne [sic], “Pinetop Wiskey [sic],” Ale.⁶

In 1897, the Maison Tortoni restaurant in Seattle, Washington, featured this Thanksgiving menu:

Chicken Salad

Boned Turkey

Eastern Oysters on Half-Shell

Olives

Celery

Green Turtle Soup a la Maryland

Mountain Trout au Gratin

Pommes Parisienne (French Potatoes)

Frogs a la Poulette

Asparagus au Branch

Omelette Soufflé au Maraschino

Vanilla Ice Cream

Assorted Fruits

Roquefort Cheese

Camembert Cheese

Café Noir with Cognac⁷

NEW YORK CITY

Most people think of New York City as a melting pot of foods from all over the world. Today the city’s more than 23,000 restaurants attest to New York being the place to try new foods and innovative creations by world-class chefs.⁸

New York City was home to some of the busiest immigration ports in the country—Castle Garden in the mid-nineteenth century and Ellis Island, which opened in 1892. The city reflects this diverse culinary heritage with a history of ethnic restaurants and food carts that pepper the city. German immigrants brought New York City its first ethnic cuisine in 1840.⁹ Today ethnic cuisines from throughout the world—including Korean, Indian, Filipino, Czech, Puerto Rican, Jamaican, Russian, and others—can be found in the five boroughs alongside ethnic restaurants more familiar to the rest of the United States like Mexican, Italian, and Chinese.

While New York City’s food history is a diverse one, it was not always so. In the days of the earliest colonists, when the area was still named New Amsterdam, colonists ate diets typical to other settlers of the New World—dried beans, salted meats, seafood, cheese, beer, and game.¹⁰ Their diets changed with the times and included foods acquired through trade. Restaurants opening in the early nineteenth century included oyster houses and some restaurants familiar to modern-day diners including Delmonico’s.

MIDWEST

Often called “the breadbasket of America,” the Midwest is a region associated with American food. It is here that beef, pork, grains, and dairy are the norm. The flat, fertile soil provided ample grazing areas for cows and made it easy to raise large crops of corn and wheat. The first white settlers of the area were from New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.¹¹ Early settlers in this agrarian society ate foods like bread, meats, and potatoes.

British and German immigrants then began settling in the Midwest. Northern Europeans settled in the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes region, while Irish and Eastern Europeans migrated to the urban centers.¹² German settlers brought their food traditions of pork, sausages, sauerkraut, and root vegetables. They also carried on their traditional methods of making cheese and crafting beers, and these practices can be seen in this region to this day.¹³ The famous Sheboygan bratwurst, a grilled ground-pork sausage served on a hard roll with butter and fried onions, is an example of the German food heritage found in the area.

Amish and Mennonite communities in Ohio and Indiana brought with them foods heavy in carbohydrates and meats. They are known for their “homemade noodles, chicken and dumplings, mashed potatoes, cabbage, homemade pickles and jams … and pies.”¹⁴

THE SOUTH

Most people think of eating fried foods and barbecue when they think of the South in the United States. Comfort foods like fried chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy along with regional vegetables such as greens and okra come to mind. But the South is a large region with a great diversity of foods. Just look at the countless styles of barbecue that are available. Each region or city seems to have its own style of sauce or rub.

Pigs have long been a staple of Southern cooking, including the use of smoked pork products like bacon and ham and barbecued pork. Originally pigs were left to run wild in the South and were hunted; later they were kept on farms.

Vegetables like corn, green beans, sweet potatoes, onions, cucumbers, and butter beans grew well in the South because of the long growing season, and vegetables and side dishes are still popular in Southern cooking. Some plants like tomatoes and eggplants were grown in the South before they were grown anywhere else in the United States.¹⁵ Vegetables, a large part of Southern meals, include fried or cooked vegetables as well as vegetables preserved through relishes and pickling.

AFRICAN-AMERICAN INFLUENCES

Women who were enslaved during America’s early history had an impact on Southern cooking, both during slavery and long after it was abolished. Using scraps, less-desirable parts of animals, and their own gardens, these women cooked food for their families and for the white families they served. Later, after the abolishment of slavery, these women continued to cook for their own families and in the homes of white families where they worked.

African slaves brought with them foods that are now considered staples of Southern cooking, including rice, yams, black-eyed peas, okra, mustard greens, sweet potatoes, peanuts, and other vegetables. As slaves, they grew this produce in their private gardens.¹⁶

The term greens refers to the leafy tops of some vegetables and leaf vegetables, including beet tops, turnip tops, spinach, collard, and mustard greens. Slaves brought the tradition of eating greens with them from Africa (greens are also popular in Brazil and Portugal). Greens were cooked in water with bacon or ham hocks. The end result produces not only the cooked greens but also “pot likker.” Pot likker becomes part of the served dish and is soaked up with cornbread. The benefit of eating the pot likker along with the greens is that it contained the vitamins and minerals leached out during the cooking process.¹⁷

The recipes cooked by African-American women for white families and their own were initially passed down orally; however there were early African-American cooks who did write down these recipes. One example is Abby Fisher, who was a slave and later a successful businesswoman. In her cookbook, What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking, Soups, Pickles, Preserves, Etc. (1881), she provides recipes for some of the food that we associate with Southern food today, such as plantation corn bread or hoe cake, fried chicken, ochra [sic], gumbo, and sweet potato pie.

As African-Americans started moving to the north in the twentieth century, the soul food movement was born. What became known as soul food in the late 1960s was influenced by foods born out of slavery, sharecropping, and poverty. According to James C. McCann in his book Stirring the Pot: A History of African Cuisine, soul food has two characteristics: The first is that many of the ingredients have an African origin such as collard greens, okra, watermelon, and black-eyed peas. The second is the food has regional variation—ingredients and recipes differ all over the South.¹⁸

CREOLE AND CAJUN

Louisiana has a rich history that includes Creole and Cajun peoples. Creoles are the descendants of colonial French, Haitian, and Spanish settlers in Louisiana. Cajuns are an ethnic group descended from exiled Acadians (from whence the word Cajun comes), who left Canada after the French and Indian War. The diets in the bayous are unique to the region and influenced by French traditions and the food readily available, including alligator, shrimp, crab, crawfish, lobsters, and oysters. Food like gumbo (a stew with meat or seafood), cracklins (deep-fried pig skin), boudin (a sausage), étouffée (a thick stew of shellfish served over rice), and jambalaya (a rice-based dish with meats, vegetables, and spices similar to paella) are staples in the cuisine of this region.

The first published jambalaya recipe can be found in the 1881 African-American cookbook What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking, Soups, Pickles, Preserves, Etc. This recipe does not contain all of the ingredients normally associate with jambalaya.

JUMBERLIE—A CREOLE DISH

Take one chicken and cut it up, separating every joint, and adding to it one pint of cleanly-washed rice. Take about half a dozen large tomatoes, scalding them well and taking the skins off with a knife. Cut them in small pieces and put them with the chicken in a pot or large porcelain saucepan. Then cut in small pieces two large pieces of sweet ham and add it to the rest, seasoning high with pepper and salt. It will cook in twenty-five minutes. Do not put any water on it.¹⁹

French isn’t the only influence in this area. Dishes here also have influences from the Spanish, Portuguese, Italians, Greeks, American Indians, and African-Americans.

TEXAS AND THE SOUTHWEST

The foods of the Southwest reflect the early history of the area—settled by American Indians and later Spanish explorers and Mexican inhabitants. Foods such as corn, beans, and chili peppers were the basis of food from this region, but then the food was transformed by the immigrant populations who settled here. Corn was transformed into masa for tamales and tortillas, and, when treated with lye, made hominy for pozole (a Mexican soup made with hominy, pork, and red chile). Chili peppers were used for everything from stuffing to sauces.

In 1823, Anglo residents started moving into what is now Texas with land grants from the Mexican government. The later discovery of gold brought additional waves of Americans and Europeans to this region.²⁰ German immigrants to Texas brought sausages and potatoes with them. As more Anglos came to the area, beef, pork, and potatoes were added to the foods, and eventually new chili peppers were developed that were milder to appeal to the tastes of non-Hispanics.²¹ As Americans from the southern states started to migrate to Texas, they brought bacon, ham, cornbread, and biscuits.

The influx of Anglo and Southern foods helped to influence Tex-Mex cuisine. One example of this cuisine is chili con carne, a mixture of beef and red chile.²² Other southwestern cuisines include such dishes as barbecued beef brisket, Navajo tacos (an open-faced taco on Navajo fry bread topped with refried beans, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, avocado, sour cream, and salsa), son-of-a-gun stew (a stew made from beef organ meat), machaca (made with beef or pork and served with eggs or in a burrito, taco, or flauta) and cheese crisps (flour tortillas baked with cheese).²³

CALIFORNIA

California cuisine is influenced by its long growing season and its produce-friendly climate, which is suitable to everything from citrus to berries to avocados. It also has heavy Mexican and Spanish influences because they were the original settlers of the area. California is also home to major Pacific Ocean ports that welcomed almost all of the Asian immigrants, and their influence is seen as well.

Printed in California in 1898, El Cocinero Español by Encarnación Pinedo was the first Spanish cookbook published in the United States. Some of the recipes documented are still staples in California cuisine today.

PACIFIC NORTHWEST

Pioneers to the Pacific Northwest of the United States had to make do with what they had. Like pioneers to any region, supplies were few and far between, and in many cases even the local merchants, when there were merchants, had shortages. According to author Jacqueline B. Williams in The Way We Ate: Pacific Northwest Cooking, 1843-1900, water had to be hauled, cooking outdoors or in a fireplace substituted for a stove, and basic ingredients like flour, sugar, and coffee were often in short supply. She writes that substitutions like pie filling made with beans and sheep sorrel instead of fruit were just one of the ways those early pioneers made do with what they had.²⁴

Today we associate this region with salmon, and the same was true for early settlers. Large amounts of fish and wild game were available to them, though not all game was considered choice. Williams reports in her book that settlers tended to shy away from bear meat if they could help it because the taste was not to their liking.

The nineteenth-century Pacific Northwest was enamored, just like the rest of the United States, with oysters. Understandably so, this region had access to fresh oysters, and locals ate them at home and in restaurants. An 1875 issue of The Oregonian features a column-length advertisement for the Oyster Saloon promising fresh Shoalwater Bay Oysters and Eastern Oysters shipped in by steamer and dishes like oyster pan-roasts, raw oysters, and oyster patties.

Over-harvesting caused the local oyster population to dwindle by the late nineteenth century, and locals started using canned oysters instead.

A DISH BY ANY OTHER NAME

It’s obvious that there are regional food differences in the United States. But in some cases those differences may not be as much about a different type of food as a variation of a theme. You may visit a restaurant in a different state that serves dishes you are familiar with, but the restaurant may use unfamiliar names for these dishes.

Consider an American pasta dish that combines macaroni, tomato sauce, and ground beef. In some cases there might be additional ingredients such as onions, garlic, or green bell peppers. What did your mother call this dish? It all depends on where you grew up. People from New England have called it American chop suey. Those from the Midwest call it goulash. Other title variations on this recipe are hunchy gunchy, macaroni casserole, macaroni and beef, and chili mac.

This was a common twentieth-century dish featured in school cafeterias, Army mess halls, and prison cafeterias, and on the dinner table of many people. It’s easy to understand why. The ingredients are inexpensive. Variations of the dish can be made so the cook can customize it with any number of vegetables, herbs, or whatever is left in the refrigerator. This recipe for American chop suey, submitted by Mrs. Derby in 1914 for A Collection of Selected Recipes by Girl’s Friendly Society of Trinity Church, Concord, Massachusetts, shows just one of the ways to cook this dish.

AMERICAN CHOP SUEY

1 lb Hamburg Steak

1 cup Macaroni

½ lb Pork Chop

1 small can Tomato Soup

Fry an onion in the fat of pork chop, then brown in this the Hamburg steak and pork, which has been cut in pieces. Cover bottom of baking dish with sliced raw potatoes, add a cup of boiled macaroni to the meats, mix thoroughly with tomato soup, cover with bread crumbs and bake. ²⁵

Notice that this early recipe does not list some of the ingredients (onion, bread crumbs, potatoes) in the list of ingredients. It also lacks information on how to bake the dish or how many people it will feed. These omissions were common in early recipes.

WOODCOCKS, SNIPES, AND PEACOCKS

Today eating local and organic foods is a popular trend. But historically, locally grown food was the only option available to most of the population. Limited food preservation options meant food had to be eaten quickly close to where it was produced or it would spoil. These limitations meant our ancestors couldn’t be choosy. They had to eat anything they could find, and they had to make the most of the meat they butchered. The foods they once ate would probably not be as desirable to us. I love to eat my great-grandmother’s fudge but not so much my grandmother’s head cheese. This section explores unique recipes our ancestors ate to give you an idea of how our tastes have changed over time.

Our ancestors took a different approach to the way they ate. They didn’t have the luxury of eating only the parts of the animal that appealed to them. While there are definitely tales of waste in the nineteenth century for example, white hunters would kill buffalo for delicacies like the tongue—our ancestors ate every bit of meat, and that included organs—that are generally undesirable today. During hard economic times, organ meat was a common alternative to more expensive cuts of meat. In addition, organ meat often wasn’t rationed like more desirable cuts of meat during wartime. While organs are largely avoided today, it wasn’t too long ago that our families ate organ meat and found creative ways to cook it. Consider this recipe from the Milwaukee Cook Book by Mrs. J. Magie (1894):

BOILED TONGUE WITH TOMATOE SAUCE

Boil a pickled tongue until well done, then skin. For the sauce: One can of tomatoes, boil half down; strain; rub together one tablespoon of butter, one tablespoon of flour, little salt; stir these into the tomato; let it boil; then pour over the tongue and serve.—Mrs. J. B. Oliver²⁶

FROG AND TURTLE

Most modern Americans have a limited view of what constitutes meat—beef, pork, fish, and poultry. But our ancestors enjoyed a much wider variety of meats.

Eating frog is not that unusual today, and many fine restaurants sell frog legs. However, the idea of eating frogs in some regions might be reserved for only the most daring diners.

“The only true way to cook a frog is to fry it brown in sweet table butter. First the frog must be dipped in a batter of cracker dust, which should adhere closely when cooked, forming a dainty cracknel of a golden-brown color, with a crisp tang to it when submitted to the teeth. The tender juices retained lose none of their delicate flavor. –Miss Minnie Aikens”²⁷

Turtle soup was once a common dish for nineteenth-century Americans but is now more of a regional dish. According to the Oxford Companion to Food and Drink, the taste for turtle soup traveled from the Caribbean to England and then to North America. It gained popularity in the latter part of the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century. Prior to the American Civil War, turtles were so plentiful that they were considered slave food in the Southern states. According to the Oxford Companion, canned turtle soup was sold in stores by 1882, and by 1911 turtle was one of the higher-priced foods in the United States.²⁸ It was so popular that there were even recipes for mock turtle soup. In some areas of the United States, you can still hunt and trap turtles during turtle season.

Some nineteenth-century recipes provided information about how to butcher live turtles for the soup, but it must have been a difficult dish to prepare because the turtle’s shell makes killing the turtle and harvesting the meat difficult. It was so complicated that the 1848 cookbook Directions for Cookery, in Its Various Branches states, “We omit a recipe for real turtle soup, as when that very expensive, complicated, and difficult dish is prepared in a private family, it is advisable to hire a first-rate cook for the express purpose.”²⁹ It goes on to suggest that the way to get turtle soup is to buy it from a turtle-soup house.

Turtle meat was expensive, so to cut costs mock turtle soup recipes were created. These recipes used a calf head and feet in place of turtle. It’s difficult to understand how a soup made with a calf’s head tastes similar to a soup made with turtle meat, but the texture of the meats is said to be similar. Author Christopher Kimball re-created both a traditional and a mock turtle soup in preparation for a re-creation of a Victorian meal. In Fannie’s Last Supper he says, “Remarkably, the flavor [of the mock soup] reminded me of the turtle soups I had made a few weeks before, but substantially more delicious.”³⁰

TURTLE SOUP

You must have the turtle alive; cut the head off and let it bleed to death. Boil the turtle tilt [sic] the shells can be separated, and the meat is cooked. Take off the gall bladder, and if you find a black ball (if there are any) throw it away. Put butter and flour in a sauce pan, and the pieces of turtle and cook a little; pour in some broth; put in your dish a lemon cut in slices, an egg boiled and cut up; pour over it the soup and meat and serve.³¹ –from My Mother’s Cook Book, from the Ladies of St. Louis, compiled for the Women’s Christian Home, 1880

MOCK TURTLE SOUP

Take the head and two feet, of a calf, that have been carefully cleaned. Separate the jaws and remove the brains. Place the meat in cold water, let it heat slowly, and skim with care. When it is done, take it up, and set it away until the next day. Then skim off the fat, pick the meat from the bones and chop fine; put the liquor and part of the meat in the pot. Tie, in a thin muslin cloth, a few grains of allspice, bruised slightly, and a dozen cloves; add to the soup, also, a grated nutmeg; this is spice enough for a half a gallon of soup. Salt and pepper to taste. Stir frequently to prevent the meat from burning. Half an hour before the soup is done, one tablespoonful of batter, made with water and browned flour, should be added for each gallon; force-meat balls may also be added, if desired. Fifteen minutes before sending to the table, add have [sic] a gill of good catsup to each quart of soup. To each gallon, add two tablespoonfulls of lemon juice. The yolks of eight hard-boiled eggs, sliced, should be put in the soup after it is poured into the tureen. This soup may be made equally good with a shank of veal or beef. A little butter and cooked Irish potatoes added to the remaining meat and laid in pie-crust, make a good mock turtle pie.³² –from “76”: A Cook Book, edited by the Ladies of Plymouth Church, Des Moines, Iowa, 1876

“Beer is a good family drink.” —LYDIA MARIE FRANCIS CHILD, 1830

SQUIRREL

While squirrel is something that most Americans would not eat today, it provided an easy meat source for many early Americans. Explorers Lewis and Clark ate squirrel as they traveled the western wilderness. In the November 1, 1921, issue of the Palm Beach Post newspaper, the “Timely Recipes” column by Sister Mary included three squirrel recipes. Sister Mary let her readers know that “squirrel pie was an old-fashioned delicacy much relished by our grandfathers.” She stated, “Squirrels are delicious cooked with vegetables in a stew” and provided a recipe for squirrel stew.

This squirrel recipe is from the 1885 cookbook Pittsburgh Tested Recipes:

ROAST RABBIT OR SQUIRREL

Split through the breast and soak one hour in salt water; then put in a pan and slice an onion all over it; sprinkle with celery seed and a little sage and a tablespoonful of butter; place in the oven to roast—Mrs. S. P. Tanner, Frankfort, Ky.³³

OYSTERS

A few years ago my family was camping in southern California near the coast. To entertain my eight-year-old, I had given him a children’s book about the weird foods people eat. He enjoyed looking at the pictures and reading about all kinds of unusual foods people eat in the United States and around the world. One of those foods mentioned was raw oysters. Always the adventurous eater, he asked if he could try some raw oysters because we were so close to their source. Reluctantly, my husband and I, who had never eaten raw oysters, said yes. Though we dreaded it, we ordered raw oysters in a nearby seafood restaurant. The oysters were large and difficult for my eight-year-old to eat; even so, he wanted to try them again the next night. He actually enjoyed the smaller versions and continues to ask for them at seafood restaurants. Because of the texture of oysters and the fact that you have to slurp them rather than chew them, I was shocked that a child would like them.

While today raw oysters are considered a delicacy that often commands a higher price, at one time in America oysters were considered everyday food.

“The two most common gastronomic observations made about
nineteenth-century New York were that the oysters were cheap and that the people ate enormous quantities not only [of] oysters but everything.”³⁴

New Yorkers, as well as others in the United States, ate oysters raw, “stewed, stuffed, fried, roasted, put in soups, or in some way cooked.”³⁵ Recipes for oysters and ways to eat them were endless, including recipes for pickling them. Oysters fell out of fashion and started to become a delicacy in the early 1900s as oyster beds became contaminated. On January 27, 1920, The New York Times reported the findings of a state commissioners’ report and warned, “Oysters, once plentiful and considered a frugal repast, are gradually being classed as luxuries and will soon become a delicacy.”³⁶

JELL-O SALADS

Most everyone has had an occasion to enjoy a dessert made of Jell-O. Many people associate Jell-O with salads from the mid-twentieth century, but in reality the method for making a Jell-O type gelatin has been around since 1845 when a patent was taken out for a gelatin dessert preparation created by Peter Cooper. Gelatin was not unknown prior to this time period, but it was a laborious process to create gelatin molds in the nineteenth century. Gelatin was sold in sheets and had to be boiled and prepared with egg whites and shells. The name Jell-O was first coined in 1897 and was sold in fruit flavors.

Today those sweet, fruit-flavored Jell-Os are what most people are familiar with. However, Jell-O, as any company, experimented with a variety of flavors over time and produced recipes for those flavors that might seem strange to modern tastes.

Congealed salads, popular in the mid-twentieth century, served as entrées and relishes and included everything from cheese to meat and fish as well as vegetables. Some ingredients included onions, cabbage, lettuce, radishes, olives, pimentos, bell peppers, celery, tuna, shrimp, and salmon. These salads were often molded.

The following recipe calls for the preparation of the Jell-O and then adding the vinegar, salt, and cayenne and whipping the ingredients together until frothy. Then combine the cheese and mayo and pour into a Jell-O mold and chill. After the Jell-O sets, unmold the salad and garnish with lettuce and more mayo.³⁷

JELLO-O CHEESE LOAF

1 package Lemon Jell-O

1½ cups boiling water

1 tablespoon vinegar

1 teaspoon salt

Dash of Cayenne

1 cup grated American cheese or 1 cup cottage cheese or 6 ounces snappy cheese

½ cup mayonnaise

– from Quick Easy Jell-O Wonder Dishes. 1930

While some of our ancestors’ foods may seem foreign to us, they reflect the tastes of a different era. Knowing the foods that your ancestors enjoyed eating or had to eat when times were tough or food was limited will help you better understand the everyday life of your ancestors.

Notes

» ¹ Mark Kurlansky, ed., The Food of a Younger Land (New York: Riverhead Books, 2009), 3.

» ² Ken Albala, Beans: A Histor y(New York: Berg, 2007), 165.

» ³ Edward A. Weston, History of Brooklyn, Susquehanna Co., Penn’a: Its Homes and Its People (Brooklyn, Pa.: W.A. Squier, 1889), 232.

» ⁴ John C. Thompson, History of the Eleventh Regiment, Rhode Island Volunteers, in the war of the rebellion (Providence, RI: Providence Press Company, 1881), 61.

» ⁵ Mary Anne DuSablon, America’s Collectible Cookbooks: The History, the Politics, the Recipes (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1994), 6.

» ⁶ Janet Clarkson, Menus from History: Historic Meals and Recipes for Every Day of the Year, vol. 2 (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood, 2009), 734.

» ⁷ Ibid., 740.

» ⁸ “NYC Statistics,” NYC & Company, Inc., http://www.nycgo.com/articles/nyc-statistics-page (accessed October 17, 2011).

» ⁹ Andrew F. Smith, ed., The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 414.

» ¹⁰ Ibid., 414.

» ¹¹ Ibid., 384.

» ¹² Lucy M. Long, Regional American Food Culture (Santa Barbara, Calif: Greenwood Press, 2009), 30.

» ¹³ Ibid., 30.

» ¹⁴ Ibid., 31.

» ¹⁵ Andrew F. Smith, ed., The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 554.

» ¹⁶ Anne Bower, ed., African American Foodways: Explorations of History and Culture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 47.

» ¹⁷ Ibid., 48.

» ¹⁸ James C. McCann, Stirring the Pot: A History of African Cuisine (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2009), 167.

» ¹⁹ Abby Fisher, What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking, Soups, Pickles, Preserves, Etc. (San Francisco: Women’s Cooperative Printing Office, 1881), 58.

» ²⁰ Lucy M. Long, Regional American Food Culture (Santa Barbara, Calif: Greenwood Press, 2009), 37.

» ²¹ Andrew F. Smith, ed., The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 556.

» ²² Ibid., 556.

» ²³ Ibid., 557.

» ²⁴ Jacqueline B. Williams, The Way We Ate: Pacific Northwest Cooking, 1843-1900 (Pullman, Washington: Washington State University Press, 1996), xvii.

» ²⁵ Girl’s Friendly Society of Trinity Church, Concord, Mass., A Collection of Selected Recipe s (1914), 9.

» ²⁶ Mrs. J. Magie, Milwaukee Cook Book (Milwaukee: Riverside Printing Co., 1894), XX.

» ²⁷ Ibid., 119.

» ²⁸ Andrew F. Smith, ed., The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 551.

» ²⁹ Eliza Leslie, Directions for Cookery, in Its Various Branches (Philadelphia: Carey & Hart, 1848), 31.

» ³⁰ Christopher Kimball, Fannie’s Last Supper: Re-creating One Amazing Meal From Fannie Farmer’s 1896 Cookbook (New York: Hyperion, 2010), 49.

» ³¹ Women’s Christian Home (Saint Louis, Mo.), My Mother’s Cook Book (Saint Louis: Hugh R. Hildreth Printing Company, 1880), 19.

» ³² The Ladies of Plymouth Church (Des Moines, Iowa), eds., “76”: A Cook Book (Des Moines, Iowa: Mills, 1876), 14.

» ³³ Ladies of Trinity M.E. Church, eds., Pittsburgh Tested Recipes (PittsPress of Stevenson & Foster, 1885), 152.

» ³⁴ Mark Kurlansky, ed., The Food of a Younger Land, Large-print edition (New York: Riverhead Books, 2009), 369.

» ³⁵ Ibid., 382.

» ³⁶ Ibid., 446.

» ³⁷ Jell-O Co., Inc., Quick, Easy Jell-O Wonder Dishes (New York: General Foods Corp., 1930), 14.