Dishes & Beverages of the Old South Part 1

Dishes & Beverages of the Old South.

by Martha McCulloch Williams.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Grace before Meat_]

"Let me cook the dinners of a nation, and I shall not care who makes its laws." Women, if they did but know it, might well thus paraphrase a famous saying. Proper dinners mean so much--good blood, good health, good judgment, good conduct. The fact makes tragic a truth too little regarded; namely, that while bad cooking can ruin the very best of raw foodstuffs, all the arts of all the cooks in the world can do no more than palliate things stale, flat and unprofitable. To buy such things is waste, instead of economy. Food must satisfy the palate else it will never truly satisfy the stomach. An unsatisfied stomach, or one overworked by having to wrestle with food which has bulk out of all proportion to flavor, too often makes its vengeful protest in dyspepsia.

It is said underdone mutton cost Napoleon the battle of Leipsic, and eventually his crown. I wonder, now and then, if the prevalence of divorce has any connection with the decline of home cooking?

A far cry, and heretical, do you say, gentle reader? Not so far after all--these be sociologic days. I am but leading up to the theory with facts behind it, that it was through being the best fed people in the world, we of the South Country were able to put up the best fight in history, and after the ravages and ruin of civil war, come again to our own. We might have been utterly crushed but for our proud and pampered stomachs, which in turn gave the bone, brain and brawn for the conquests of peace. So here's to our Mammys--G.o.d bless them! G.o.d rest them! This imperfect chronicle of the nurture wherewith they fed us is inscribed with love to their memory.

Almost my earliest memory is of Mammy's kitchen. Permission to loiter there was a Reward of Merit--a sort of domestic Victoria Cross. If, when company came to spend the day, I made my manners prettily, I might see all the delightful hurley-burley of dinner-cooking. My seat was the biscuit block, a section of tree-trunk at least three feet across, and waist-high. Mammy set me upon it, but first covered it with her clean ap.r.o.n--it was almost the only use she ever made of the ap.r.o.n. The block stood well out of the way--next the meal barrel in the corner behind the door, and hard by the Short Shelf, sacred to cake and piemaking, as the Long Shelf beneath the window was given over to the three water buckets--cedar with bra.s.s hoops always s.h.i.+ning like gold--the piggin, also of cedar, the corn-bread tray, and the cup-noggin. Above, the log wall bristled with knives of varying edge, stuck in the cracks; with nails whereon hung flesh-forks, spoons, ladles, skimmers. These were for the most part hand-wrought, by the local blacksmith. The forks in particular were of a cla.s.sic grace--so much so that when, in looking through my big sister's mythology I came upon a picture of Neptune with his trident, I called it his flesh-fork, and asked if he were about to take up meat with it, from the waves boiling about his feet.

The kitchen proper would give Domestic Science heart failure, yet it must have been altogether sanitary. Nothing about it was tight enough to harbor a self-respecting germ. It was the rise of twenty feet square, built stoutly of hewn logs, with a sharply pitched board roof, a movable loft, a plank floor boasting inch-wide cracks, a door, two windows and a fireplace that took up a full half of one end. In front of the fireplace stretched a rough stone hearth, a yard in depth. Sundry and several cranes swung against the chimney-breast. When fully in commission they held pots enough to cook for a regiment. The pots themselves, of cast iron, with close-fitting tops, ran from two to ten gallons in capacity, had rounded bottoms with three pertly outstanding legs, and ears either side for the iron pot-hooks, which varied in size even as did the pots themselves.

Additionally there were ovens, deep and shallow, spiders, skillets, a couple of tea-kettles, a stew kettle, a broiler with a long spider-legged trivet to rest on, a hoe-baker, a biscuit-baker, and waffle-irons with legs like tongs. Each piece of hollow ware had its lid, with eye on top for lifting off with the hooks. Live coals, spread on hearth and lids, did the cooking. To furnish them there was a wrought iron shovel, so big and heavy n.o.body but Mammy herself could wield it properly. Emptied vessels were turned upside down on the floor under the Long Shelf--grease kept away rust. But before one was used it had to be scoured with soap and sand rock, rinsed and scalded. Periodically every piece was burned out--turned upside down over a roaring fire and left there until red hot, then slowly cooled. This burning out left a fine smooth surface after scouring. Cast iron, being in a degree porous, necessarily took up traces of food when it had been used for cooking a month or so.

Ah me! What savors, what flavors came out of the pots! Years on years I was laughed at for maintaining that no range ever turned out things to equal open-hearth cookery. But it took paper bags to prove beyond cavil the truth of my contention. Even paper-bagging does not quite match the open-hearth process, though there is the same secret of superiority, namely, cooking things in their own essence by the agency of hot air.

The sealed and loaded bag needs must be laid on a grate-shelf in a hot oven--touch of solid hot iron is fatal to it.

Iron vessels set above smoothly spread coals got hot, but not red-hot--red heat belonged to the lids. They were swung over the fire and heated before setting them in place--then the blanket of coals and embers held in heat which, radiating downward, made the cooking even.

Scorching of course was possible unless the cook knew her business, and minded it well. Our Mammys not only knew their business but loved it--often with a devotion that raised it to the rank of Art. Add the palate of a _gourmet_ born, a free hand at the fat, the sweet, strong waters and high flavors--what wonder it is to envy those of us they fed!

My individual Mammy was in figure an oblate spheroid--she stood five feet, one inch high, weighed two hundred and fifty pounds, had a head so flat buckets sat on it as of right, was as light on her feet, in number twelve shoes, as the slimmest of her children and foster children, could shame the best man on the place at lifting with the hand-stick, or chop him to a standstill--if her axe exactly suited her. She loved her work, her mistress, her children black and white--even me, though I was something of a trial--her garden and her G.o.d. All these she served fondly, faithfully, with rare good humor and the nicest judgment. Fall soft upon her, rain and snow! Suns.h.i.+ne and green gra.s.s, make happy always the slope where she rests!

She put on a clean white frock every morning--by breakfast time it was a sickly gray along the front--the thick of the dinner-battle was writ large on it in black smudges. She herself explained: "I ain't sech er dirty 'ooman--hit's dest I'se so big, dirt ketches me comin' and gwine."

Air and more air she would have, regardless of weather. The big board-window had its shutter up all day long--the gla.s.s window was a vexation, since it opened only halfway. By way of evening things, daubing and c.h.i.n.king got knocked out of at least half the cracks between the wall logs as sure as Easter came--not to be replaced until the week before Christmas. I doubt if they would have been put back even then, but that Mammy dreaded criticism, from maids and carriage drivers visiting kinfolk brought with them. Big yawning cracks in cold weather were in a way the hall-mark of poor-white cabins. It would have half broken Mammy's heart to give anybody room to say she belonged to less than real quality.

She was autocratic; a benevolent despot; withal severe. If I displeased her by meddling, putting small grimy fingers into pies they should not touch, she set me to sh.e.l.ling black-eyed peas--a task my soul loathed, likewise the meddlesome fingers--still I knew better than to sulk or whine over it. For that I would have been sent back into the house. The kitchen stood thirty yards away from the back door, with a branchy oak in front of it, and another, even branchier, shading the log foot-way between. The house offered only grown-up talk, which rarely interested me. In the kitchen I caught sc.r.a.ps of Brer Rabbit's history, pithily applied, other sc.r.a.ps of song--Mammy always "gave out" the words to herself before singing them--proverbs and sayings such as "Cow want her tail agin in fly-time" applied to an ingrate, or: "Dat's er high kick fer er low horse," by way of setting properly in place a pretender.

Best of all, I got the latest news of the countryside for ten miles around. Wireless has little on the way things ran about among the plantations. It was a point of honor among the black men to have wives or sweethearts away from home. This meant running about nightly--consequently cross-currents of gossip lively enough to make the yellowest journal turn green with envy. Mammy was a trifle apologetic over having a husband no further off than the next neighbor's. To make up for it, however, the husbands who came to his house lived from three to five miles away--and one of them worked at the mill, hence was a veritable human chronicle. Thus Mammy was able to hold her head up with Susan, her sister, who milked and washed.

Susan might have been called a widow of degrees--she had had three husbands, but only two were living. The last parting was always threatening to end in meeting over again--still that did not hinder her cabin from being the rendezvous of all the likeliest fellows within easy walking range. Naturally she had things to tell--worth hearing whether or no they were true. So also had Phoebe, who was a sort of scullion, fetching in wood and water, gathering vegetables, picking chickens, scouring all things from the big pot to the floor. Shelves were scoured daily, the floor three times a week. This had to be a matter of faith after an hour or so--it certainly did not look it. Sweeping, done three times a day, was largely a matter of form. Phoebe went conscientiously over the uncluttered s.p.a.ces, and even reached the nose of her broom between pots and ovens, but only coa.r.s.e trash gathered before the broom--all the rest went through the cracks.

Mammy said Phoebe's news could be believed. "De gal don't know no mo'n ter tell dest whut she done heard." She truly was slow-witted and slow-spoken, but Isham, her step-father, was cook to the Gresham brothers, the beaux of the neighborhood, who kept bachelor's hall. His mother had been their Mammy--hence his inherited privilege of knowing rather more about his young masters than they knew themselves.

Little pitchers have big ears. Set it to the credit of the black folk, they always had regard for the innocence of childhood. Scandal was merely breathed--not even so hinted as to arouse curiosity. Foul speech I never heard from them nor a trace of profanity. What I did hear was a liberal education in the humanities--as time pa.s.ses I rate more and more highly the sense of values it fixed in a plastic mind. I think it must have been because our Mammys saw all things from the elemental angle, they were critics so illuminating of manners and morals.

Here ends reminiscence, set down in hope it may breed understanding. All I actually learned from Mammy and her cooking was--how things ought to taste. The which is essential. It has been the pole-star of my career as a cook. Followed faithfully along the Way of Many Failures, through a Country of Tribulations, it has brought me into the haven of knowledge absolute. If the testimony of empty plates and smiling guests can establish a fact, then I am a good cook--though limited. I profess only to cook the things I care to cook well. Hence I have set my hand to this, a real cook's book. Most cook books are written by folk who cook by hearsay--it is the fewest number of real cooks who can write so as not to bewilder the common or garden variety of mind. The bulk of what follows has an old-time Southern foundation, with such frillings as experience approves. To it there will be added somewhat of Creole cookery, learned and proved here in New York town by grace of Milly, the very queen of New Orleans cooks, temporarily transplanted. Also sundry and several delectable dishes of alien origins--some as made in France or Germany, some from the far Philippines, but all proved before record.

In each case the source is indicated in the t.i.tle. Things my very own, evolved from my inner consciousness, my outer opportunity and environment, I shall likewise mark personal.

Lastly, but far from leastly, let me make protest against over-elaboration, alike in food and the serving thereof. The very best decoration for a table is something good in the plates. This is not saying one should not plan to please the eye no less than the palate.

But ribbon on sandwiches is an anachronism--so is all the flummery of silk and laces, doilies and doo-dads that so often bewilder us. They are unfair to the food--as hard to live up to as anybody's blue china. I smile even yet, remembering my husband's chuckles, after we had come home from eating delicatessen chicken off ten-dollar plates, by help of antique silver. Somehow the viands and the service seemed "out of drawing."

Quoth Heine the cynic: "Woman, woman! Much must be forgiven thee! Thou hast loved much--and many." Edibly I love much rather than many. Enough of one thoroughly good thing, with proper accessories, is more satisfying than seven courses--each worse than the last. Also cheaper, also much less trouble. If time has any value, the economy of it in dishwas.h.i.+ng alone is worth considering. In these piping days of rising prices, economy sounds good, even in the abstract. Add the concrete fact that you save money as well as trouble, and the world of cooks may well sit up and take notice.

The one-piece dinner is as convenient and comfortable as the one-piece frock. There are, of course, occasions to which it is unsuited.

One-piece must be understood to mean the _piece de resistance_--the backbone of subsistence as it were. A bowl of rich soup or chowder, with crackers on the side, a generous helping of well-cooked meat, with bread or potatoes, and the simplest relishes, or a royally fat pudding overrun with brandy sauce; each or either can put it all over a splash of this, a dab of that, a slab of something else, set lonesomely on a separate plate and reckoned a meal--in courses. Courses are all well enough--they have my warm heart when they come "in the picture." But when they are mostly "The substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen," then I would trade them, and gladly, for as much good bread and b.u.t.ter as appet.i.te called for.

By way of postscript: being a strict and ardent advocate of temperance, I refused to consider writing this book unless I had full liberty to advise the use of wine, brandy, cordials, liquors, where good cooking demands them. Any earthly thing can be abused--to teach right use is the best preventive of abuse. Liquors, like everything else, must be good.

"Cooking sherry" is as much an abomination as "cooking b.u.t.ter," or "cooking apples." You will never get out of pot or pan anything fundamentally better than what went into it. Cooking is not alchemy; there is no magic in the pot. The whole art and mystery of it is to apply heat and seasoning in such fas.h.i.+on as to make the best, and the most, of such food supplies as your purse permits. Tough meat cannot be cooked tender; tainted meat cannot be cooked sound. It is the same with stale fish, specked or soured fruit, withered vegetables. It pays to educate tradesfolk into understanding that you want the best and only the best of what you buy. If the thing you want, in perfect condition, is beyond your means, take, instead of a lower grade of it, the highest grade of something cheaper. So shall you escape waste of time, effort and substance. Never mind sneers at your simple fare. Remember it was Solomon the Wise who wrote: "Better a dinner of herbs and contentment than a stalled ox, and contention therewith." Paraphrase the last clause into "spoiled ox and ptomaines therewith," and you may keep not only self-respect, but that of the neighbors.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Staff of Life_]

Bread, more than almost any other foodstuff, can not be better than what it is made of. Here as elsewhere a bungler can ruin the very best of flour or meal. But the queen of cooks can not make good a fundamental deficiency.

Hence in buying flour look for these things: a slightly creamy cast--dazzling whiteness shows bleaching, as a gray-white, or black specks mean grinding from spoiled grain. The feel should be velvety, with no trace of roughness--roughness means, commonly, mixture with corn. A handful tightly gripped should keep the shape of the hand, and show to a degree the markings of the palm. A pinch wet rather stiff, and stretched between thumb and finger, will show by the length of the thread it spins richness or poverty in gluten--one of the most valuable food elements.

The cornmeal of commerce will not be satisfactory in any receipt here given. It has been bolted and kiln-dried out of all natural flavor. Take the trouble to get meal water-ground, from white flint corn, and fresh from the mill. Then you will have something worth spending time and effort upon--spending them hopefully. Why, the wisest man can not tell--but steam-ground meal is of a flavor wholly unlike that water-ground. The grinding should be neither too fine nor too coa.r.s.e.

Bran left in, and sifted out as needed, helps to save from musting, and to preserve the delicate natural flavor. Fresh meal, in clean bright tin or gla.s.s, or in a stout paper sack, where it is dry, cool and airy will keep two months. Hence buy it judiciously, in proportion to your family's corn-cake appet.i.te.

It is impossible to give exactly the amount of liquid for any sort of bread-making because the condition of flour and meal varies with weather and keeping. This applies also to sugar--hence the need for intelligence in the use of receipts. In damp muggy weather moisture is absorbed from the atmosphere. Upon a dry day especially if there is much wind, drying out is inevitable. Anything that feels clammy, or that clots, should be dried in a warm, not hot, oven. Heating flour before mixing it, taking care not to scorch it in the least, is one small secret of light bread, biscuit and cake. Flour in a bag may be laid in the sun with advantage.

Use judgment in mixing. Note the appearance of what you are making closely--when it turns out extra good, set up that first condition as a standard.

_Beaten Biscuit_: (Old Style.) Sift a quart of flour into a bowl or tray, add half a teaspoon salt, then cut small into it a teacup of very cold lard. Wet with cold water--ice water is best--into a very stiff dough. Lay on a floured block, or marble slab, and give one hundred strokes with a mallet or rolling pin. Fold afresh as the dough beats thin, dredging in flour if it begins to stick. The end of beating is to distribute air well through the ma.s.s, which, expanding by the heat of baking, makes the biscuit light. The dough should be firm, but smooth and very elastic. Roll to half-inch thickness, cut out with a small round cutter, p.r.i.c.k lightly all over the top, and bake in steady heat to a delicate brown. Too hot an oven will scorch and blister, too cold an one make the biscuit hard and clammy. Aim for the Irishman's "middle exthrame."

There are sundry machines which do away with beating. It is possible also to avoid it by running the dough, after mixing, several times through a food-chopper. Also beaten biscuit can be closely imitated by making good puff paste, rolling, cutting out, p.r.i.c.king and baking--but rather more quickly than the real thing. All these are expedients for those who live in apartments, where the noise of beating might be held against good neighborhood. Householders, and especially suburban ones, should indulge in the luxury of a block or stone or marble slab--and live happy ever after, if they can but get cooks able and willing to make proper use of it.

_Soda Biscuit_: (Old Style.) Sift a quart of flour with a heaping teaspoonful of baking soda. Add a good pinch of salt, rub well through lard or b.u.t.ter the size of the fist, then wet with sour milk to a moderately soft dough, roll out, working quickly, cut with small round cutter, set in hot pans, leaving room to swell, and bake in a quick oven just below scorching heat. Handle as lightly as possible all through--this makes flaky biscuit.

By way of variety, roll out thin--less than a half-inch, cut with three-inch cutter, grease lightly on top, and fold along the middle. Let rise on top a hot stove several minutes before putting to bake. By adding an egg, beaten light, with a heaping tablespoonful of sugar to the dough in mixing, these doubled biscuit will be quite unlike the usual sort.

_Salt Rising Bread_: (As Mammy Made It.) Scald a tablespoonful of sifted cornmeal, and a teaspoonful--heaped--of salt with a pint of boiling water, let stand ten minutes, then stir in, taking care to mix smooth, enough dried and sifted flour to make a thick batter. Damp flour will not rise. The batter should be almost thick enough to hold the mixing spoon upright--but not quite thick enough. Set the mixture in warm water--just as hot as you can bear your hand in. Keep up the heat steadily, but never make too hot--scalding ruins everything. Keep lightly covered, and away from draughts. Look in after an hour--if water has risen on top, stir in more flour. Watch close--in six hours the yeast should be foamy-light. Have ready three quarts of dry sifted flour, make a hole in the center of it, pour in the yeast, add a trifle more salt, a tablespoonful sugar, and half a cup of lard. Work all together to a smooth dough, rinsing out the vessel that has held the yeast, with warm not hot water to finish the mixing. Divide into loaves, put in greased pans, grease lightly over the top, and set to rise, in gentle heat. When risen bake with steady quick heat. Take from pans hot, and cool between folds of clean cloth, spread upon a rack, or else turn the loaves edgewise upon a clean board, and cover with cheese cloth.

To make supper-rolls, shape some of the dough into b.a.l.l.s, brush over with melted b.u.t.ter, set in a deep pan, just so they do not touch, raise and bake the same as bread. Dough can be saved over for breakfast rolls, by keeping it very cold, and working in at morning, a tiny pinch of soda before shaping the b.a.l.l.s.

_Sweet Potato Biscuit_: (Old Style.) Boil soft two large or four small sweet potatoes, mash smooth while very hot, free of strings and eyes, add a pinch of salt, then rub well through three cups of sifted flour.

Rub in also a generous handful of shortening, then wet up soft with two eggs beaten very light, and sweet milk. A little sugar also if you have a sweet tooth--but only a little. Roll to half-inch thickness, cut out with small cutter, lay in warm pan, and bake brown in a quick oven.

Soda and b.u.t.termilk can take the place of eggs and sweet milk--in which case the sugar is advisable. Mix the soda with the milk--enough to make it foamy, but no more.

_Waffles_: (Mammy's.) Separate three eggs. Beat yolks and whites very light. Add to the yolks alternately a pint of very rich sweet milk, and handfuls of sifted flour. Enough to make a batter rather thicker than cream. Put in also half a teaspoon--scant--of salt, and half a cup of lard, or lard and b.u.t.ter, melted so it will barely run. Mix well, then add the beaten whites of egg. Have the waffle irons hot but not scorching--grease well with melted lard--the salt in b.u.t.ter will make the batter stick. Cook quickly but take care not to burn. Lay on hot plate--have a pitcher of melted b.u.t.ter to pour on. Lay the second waffle upon the first, b.u.t.ter, and keep hot. It is not safe to begin serving without at least six waffles in plate. This, of course, provided you have several eaters with genuine appet.i.tes. Syrup can be pa.s.sed with the waffles--but it is profanation to drench them with it--strong clear coffee, and broiled chicken are the proper accompaniments at breakfast.

_Plain Corn Bread_: (The Best.) Sift sound fresh white cornmeal, wet with cold water to a fairly soft dough, shape it by tossing from hand to hand into small pones, and lay them as made into a hot pan well sprinkled with dry meal. The pan should be hot enough to brown the meal without burning it. Make the pones about an inch thick, four inches long, and two and a half broad. Bake quickly, taking care not to scorch, until there is a brown crust top and bottom. For hoe-cakes make the dough a trifle softer, lay it by handfuls upon a hot-meal-sprinkled griddle, taking care the handfuls do not touch. Flatten to half an inch, let brown underneath, then turn, press down and brown the upper side. Do not let yourself be seduced into adding salt--the delight of plain corn-bread is its affinity for fresh b.u.t.ter. It should be eaten drenched with b.u.t.ter of its own melting--the b.u.t.ter laid in the heart of it after splitting pone or hoe-cake. Salt destroys this fine affinity. It however savors somewhat bread to be eaten b.u.t.terless. Therefore Mammy always said: "Salt in corn-bread hit does taste so po' white-folks'y."

She had little patience with those neighbors of ours who perforce had no b.u.t.ter to their bread.

_Egg Bread_: (Mammy's.) Beat two eggs very light with a pinch of salt, add two cups sifted cornmeal, then wet with a pint of b.u.t.termilk in which a teaspoonful of soda has been dissolved. Stir in a spoonful of shortening, barely melted, mix well, and pour into well greased pans or skillets, cook quickly, till the crust is a good brown, and serve immediately. Or bake in m.u.f.fin moulds. For delicate stomachs the shortening can be left out, but pans or moulds must be greased extra well. If milk is very sour, make it one-third water--this is better than putting in more soda.

_Batter Cakes_: (Old Style.) Sift together half-cup flour, cup and a half meal, add pinch of salt, scald with boiling water, stir smooth, then add two eggs well beaten, and thin with sweet milk--it will take about half a pint. Bake by spoonfuls on a hot, well-greased griddle--the batter must run very freely. Serve very hot with fresh sausage, or fried pigs' feet if you would know just how good batter cakes can be.

_Ash Cake_: (Pioneer.) This is possible only with wood fires--to campers or millionaires. Make dough as for plain bread, but add the least trifle of salt, sweep the hot hearth very clean, pile the dough on it in a flattish mound, cover with big leaves--cabbage leaves will do at a pinch, or even thick clean paper, then pile on embers with coals over them and leave for an hour or more, according to size. Take up, brush off ashes, and break away any cindery bits. Serve with new b.u.t.ter and fresh b.u.t.termilk. This was sometimes the sole summer supper of very great families in the old time. Beyond a doubt, ash cake properly cooked has a savory sweetness possible to no other sort of corn bread.