SOUTH***


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DISHES & BEVERAGES OF THE OLD SOUTH

by

Martha McCulloch-Williams

Author of "Field Farings," "Two of a Trade," "Milre," "Next to the
Ground," etc.

Decorations by Russel Crofoot







[Illustration]


New York
McBride Nast & Company
1913

Copyright, 1913, by
Mcbride, Nast & Co.

Published, October, 1913




CONTENTS

                                                    PAGE

    GRACE BEFORE MEAT                                  9

    THE STAFF OF LIFE                                 26

    SAVING YOUR BACON                                 39

    HAMS AND OTHER HAMS                               59

    FOR THIRSTY SOULS                                 72

    PASTE, PIES, PUDDINGS                             90

    CREOLE COOKERY                                   118

    CAKES, GREAT AND SMALL                           136

    MEAT, POULTRY, GAME, EGGS                        158

    SOUPS, SALADS, RELISHES                          185

    VEGETABLES, FRUIT DESSERTS, SANDWICHES           202

    PICKLES, PRESERVES, COFFEE, TEA, CHOCOLATE       220

    WHEN THE ORCHARDS "HIT"                          239

    UPON OCCASIONS                                   257

    SOAP AND CANDLES                                 292




Dishes & Beverages

of the

Old South




[Illustration: _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--God bless them! God 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
apron--it was almost the only use she ever made of the apron. 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 brass hoops always shining 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 classic 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