The Food of a Younger Land (14 page)

By vowing to be “careful and painstaking,” by following the generations-proven formula faithfully, by using down-state ground, white, bolted meal, along with milk, sugar, and water, a culinary masterpiece of satisfaction can be achieved.

In preparation, meal may or may not be scalded with hot water or hot milk in accordance to preference. After mixing meal with water or milk it is dropped on a smoking hot spider set atop a stove into cakes about 3” × 3” × ½” in size. The secret of cooking jonny cakes is to watch them closely and keep them supplied with enough sausage or bacon fat so they will become brown and crisp, and not burn. Cook slowly for half an hour, turn occasionally, and when done serve with plenty of butter; steak, sausages, or sausage meat make admirable side dishes.

It should be stressed that jonny cakes must be piping hot to be enjoyed. The distance between stove and table should not be great so as to insure this condition, and though grace be omitted before eating Rhode Island jonny cakes, there’ll surely be an added note of thankfullness in the prayer when rendered after the repast.

Shepard Tom was remiss in but one detail in his self-appointed role as nineteenth century exponent and press agent of the jonny cakes. When cold, Rhode Island jonny cakes resemble in taste synthetic rubber.

JAMES FRANCIS DAVIS

I
n many New England homes, to this day, baked beans—usually with brown bread—are a Saturday night ritual. The custom once was, and still is in some Yankee households, to serve them for both Saturday night supper and Sunday morning breakfast, and the reason for it was primarily religious.

All labor on Sunday was forbidden by the Puritans as Sabbath-breaking, and among the strict disciples of the Massachusetts Bay theocracy cooking was tabu; even the building of fires except when necessary for warmth was proscribed. What food was eaten on Sunday must have been wholly prepared on a weekday. On Saturday, in the great ovens built into the kitchen fireplaces, enough food was baked to last into the following week. This almost invariably included baked beans, which lost nothing in flavor by not being served immediately and by some are held to be even better when warmed over, and baked beans logically became the Saturday night and Sunday morning menu.

With the growth of relative liberalism came some slight modification of the rules as to Sunday domestic labor, but members of all the Evangelical churches continued, until late in the nineteenth century, to interpret the matter of Sabbath-breaking strictly. From this developed a system of Saturday and Sunday meals which provided satisfactory food throughout the day of rest within the requirements of the householders’ religious scruples.

Dinner at noon on Saturday was a roast or—most commonly—a corned beef “boiled dinner,” and in either case enough vegetables were cooked to supply two hearty meals. Saturday supper was baked beans and brown bread—the kind that now is usually called “Boston brown bread” outside of New England (what people of some other sections call “Boston brown bread” is “graham bread” in Yankeeland). Indian pudding was also cooked on many Saturdays, especially in the winter when a banked fire would be left in the kitchen range overnight, and this only needs to be kept warm to be at its best in the morning.

Sunday breakfast was warmed over baked beans, brown bread, and perhaps Indian pudding. Sunday dinner was more of yesterday’s roast or corned beef, cold, with the remaining vegetables heated up. Supper was cold meat, bread and butter, cake, cookies, and preserves. For these fully adequate and appetizing meals no cooking whatever had to be done on Sunday. The only domestic labor was heating up food, making coffee and tea, and washing dishes.

There are many recipes for baked beans, which have been handed down for generations, and the judgment of most New Englanders as to how they ought to be prepared is likely to be influenced importantly by what kind mother used to make. A majority of families have preferred pea beans (quite commonly called “California pea beans”), while others have used kidney beans or yellow-eyed beans—their choice in the beginning probably having been based on the kind that they found it easiest to raise. Mother’s recipe, which her mother used, calls for sugar sweetening. Aunt Emily’s—she is father’s sister and got her rule from that side of the house—calls for molasses. Cousin Walter’s wife combines both sugar and molasses. None of them would think of adding any onion flavor, but a branch of grandfather’s family always buries a whole onion in the bean pot contents. Opinions also vary as to precisely what cut of salt pork should be nearly submerged at the top of the pot, its rind left clear so that it will be brown and crisp, a majority of cooks leaning toward the kind that they describe as “a streak o’ lean and a streak o’ fat.”

As there is nothing approaching agreement among New Englanders themselves as to which of these different-tasting preparations is the best, and the individual who enthuses over one may find little to praise in any of the others, what wonder that visitors from afar, prepared to judge all baked beans by the first serving they get, gain widely divergent views as to whether the dish is what it has been cracked up to be.

In large hotels it is seldom notable; such homely fare is unlikely to have been given much attention in the training of expensive chefs. In large city restaurants the baked beans have probably come out of the five-gallon cans of national manufacturers, the restaurateur’s sound argument in favor of this being that customers who like his beans will return to order them and be disappointed if they find any difference in style and taste—and that as he has to change cooks from time to time and no two cooks are sure to bake beans the same way, it is better to use a brand that will not vary.

The stranger fortunate enough to be invited to eat Saturday night beans in a household whose feminine head is a good cook will not then and there learn how all home-cooked baked beans in New England taste, but if the recipe is one that he likes, he will like it very much indeed.

MABEL G. HALL

B
aked Beans—Beans are picked over every Friday night and set on the back of the stove to parboil. Before breakfast on Saturday morning the earthen bean pot is brought from the pantry, the beans are given a final rinse then put in the pot; a tablespoon of molasses, a teaspoon each of salt and dry mustard are added and nearly a quarter-pound of fat salt pork is partially submerged in the beans and the pot is filled with water. A hot fire is kept, water is added from time to time until 2 o’clock and after 3 the fire is allowed to die down.

DONALD McCORMICK

R
ural Maine has never recovered from the widespread reaction to the excessive drinking of the early days of the district and the state. The temperance movements of the latter half of the eighteenth century, the influence of New Deal and others, put liquor in disrepute. State-controlled liquor has been voted back, but this has had no effect on many residents.

As a result, there is little group or ceremonial drinking in Maine homesteads. It is often the case that the men of the household refrain from drinking at home as a wife, mother, or grandmother objects to alcohol. For traditional Maine drinks one must go back to the days when wines, liquors, and punches were part of most social affairs.

Hard cider is fairly common today. There are a dozen recipes for obtaining the best product; the introduction of raisins or beefsteak into the aging cider is advocated by some. Another time-honored practice is to place a barrel of hard cider in the barnyard and allow it to freeze; the remaining liquor that is drained off is applejack, a remarkably powerful fluid. Of course, there are legal technicalities concerning mere possession of such un-taxed beverages.

Kenneth Roberts, Maine author of historical novels, has brought the Maine pioneer favorite, hot buttered rum, to some recent popularity through description in his works. His recipe is as follows:

A good deal of beer and ale is consumed in Maine today. This is partially due to the strictness of state requirements in the licensing of cocktail rooms.

In any event, it must be admitted that no state traditions of convivial elbow-bending are sufficiently widespread today to merit mention.

LOUISIANA—
responsible for the region and the overall project
DELAWARE
MARYLAND
WASHINGTON, D.C.
VIRGINIA
WEST VIRGINIA
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SOUTH CAROLINA
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S
outherners, along with New Englanders, are the most tenacious of Americans in terms of clinging to regional traditions. Yet, while many of the food traditions have been maintained, there is no part of the country that has changed as much since the time of
America Eats
as the South, which was impoverished, segregated, and clinging to a war that was two and three generations behind them. It is significant that the South is usually defined by that war, a grouping of the states that comprised the Confederate States of America. But the U.S. Census Bureau did not see it that way, and so the FWP did not either. By a happy coincidence the Census Bureau’s grouping makes perfect sense from a gastronomic point of view. By leaving off Texas, which has many southern cultural characteristics, they removed a state whose food more closely resembles the Southwest. And by including the border states, they brought in states that had sided with the Union but whose food traditions, and many other traditions, are clearly southern.