The Civil War’s Division of North and South is Reflected in Cookbooks

[demmiblue]

Source: Smithsonian

Cookbooks can be an overlooked source of history. They reflect not only the culinary values of an era but even the political. That’s exactly what the new book Food in the Civil War Era: The South, edited by food historian Helen Zoe Veit explores, reports Nina Martyris for NPR.

Any connoisseur of Southern cuisine is sure to be aware of how history has shaped the foods of the region. Many foods are the dishes slaves cooked that harkened back to the foods of West and Central Africa and make do with more meager ingredients. (Though some Southern dishes betray unexpected influences — fried green tomatoes, for example, might come from Jewish immigrants and are apparently a recent addition to the cuisine.)

But modern variation in dishes cooked in the Northern U.S. versus the South is the result of decades of influences, simmered and blended over time. To delve into the differences made stark by the Civil War, Veit looks to cookbooks written in that time. "Although direct references to the war were rare in Northern cookbooks," Viet told Martyris for NPR, "a close reading can help us glean hints of the turbulence churning outside the kitchen window."

"There was only one actual cookbook published in the South during the war — but recipes were printed in other forms, especially in periodicals," she says.

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/civil-wars-division-north-and-south-apparent-cookbooks-180955492/

[enlightenment]

1. My grandmother used to tell

a story about her grandmother, who was a widow with five children between 20 and 6 at the start of the war. They lived in Mississippi. Her eldest son went into the army in 1862, leaving her with a 100-pound sack of flour and the admonition that "it would have to last".

By 1864, all that was left of that sack of flour was the dust caught in the weave - and the same was true for most of the families in the area. Very little cornmeal left, either.

Still, those women tried to pretend things were okay, so when a young lady in the area accepted a marriage proposal, they were determined to make sure the couple had a wedding cake, even though they couldn't spare what little they had left. So they laid a sheet out on the grass and gathered all those empty flour and cornmeal sacks and beat them with rug beaters over the sheet. Between them, they managed to collect just enough to make a small cake.

But they didn't have any leavening or salt - and just a little sugar. They did have eggs and milk from a goat. So, they mixed together what they had and put it into a butter churn and beat it until it had incorporated enough air that it wouldn't just look like a pancake, then baked it - quickly.

Guess it worked - no idea how something like that tasted. It was the thought that counted, I guess.

I found the comment about "Tessie’s Wheaten Biscuit (From a Contraband)" interesting. Gran taught me how to make "beaten" biscuits when I was quite young - I still remember her beating the dough with a wooden spoon for the longest time. She was a tiny lady but had the most powerful arms of any woman I've ever known. No leavening in those biscuits - just beating the dough until it would rise on its own. She also said that when it started popping you knew it was ready.

[FSogol]

3. +1 n/t

[demmiblue]

4. Thank you for sharing your stories.

I think that history gleaned from the everyday is really fascinating and informative.

Sometimes, looking at the 'little' picture can be more informative and relatable than looking at the 'big' picture.

[enlightenment]

8. Absolutely agree.

The stories that my parents and grandparents told me are a big reason I chose history as a profession. My dad always said that history is like building a house. The foundation, the frame, the walls, roof, windows, and doors are the big picture - but the furnishings and the people that make it a home are the most important part and those are the little things.

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. That is an incredible piece of history

thanks for sharing

[enlightenment]

12. It just gets lost if we don't share, right?

You're an historian, too, so I know you know that! (and Granny was a hoot, anyway)

[nadinbrzezinski]

15. absolutely,

if you do not mind, will save it.

[enlightenment]

17. No problem with that at all.

Granny would be pleased someone outside the family finds it interesting.

[kentauros]

19. I absolutely agree!

I keep telling a Palestinian-American friend of mine to go ahead and share some of her mother's "old country" recipes with me so I can try them out. We've even had the conversation that sharing them keeps them alive. I haven't yet gotten any recipes, and wonder if I ever will. I'd love to try their recipe for rice baked with tahini sauce and almonds

[enlightenment]

21. Your friend might not know how to translate them to

a recipe. I'm very much a seat of the pants cook - very good results but I'm always in trouble when someone asks for the recipe. A bit of this, a little of that, a touch, a pinch, a dab, a knob, a handful, a palm full, a short pour . . .

If you do get that recipe, though, please share. It sounds delish!

[kentauros]

23. I don't think it's a translation issue

(she and her brothers all speak Arabic) but of "keeping it in the family" sort of thing. Plus, she has spoken of her mother never either sharing or writing down recipes as you say for your technique. I think too many cooks and bakers do that, and so much then gets lost.

I need to talk to one of her cousins as she was trying to make these S-shaped cookies that are a kind of shortbread. I'm thinking her failures may have been due to the higher humidity we've been having lately. I believe the recipe she used is from my friend's mother's recipe collection.

And if I get the baked-rice recipe, I'll share it in the C&B group

[enlightenment]

24. That's understandable.

Wanting to keep it in the family . . . but I'll keep an eye out for the rice dish!

[merrily]

26. Translating a dish into a recipe does not refer to language.

Allow me to illustrate from my own experience:

Mom, how do you make that stuffing?

With rice and meat.

How much rice?

According to the meat.

How much meat?

According to how many people.

At all times, we were speaking the same language, yet there was no way I could translate that dish into a recipe.


Someone would show her how to make something and she'd make it better than her teacher. But, no recipes ever entered into it. You want to know how she makes something? Stand beside her while she makes it. Watch closely, though. She's very quick.

[kentauros]

30. I realized that after I posted,

and just left it as I alluded to that kind of "translation" in the post

Also, as their parents were from Palestine, some of the recipes would be in Arabic

[merrily]

32. Yes, if the recipes exist at all, some of them would probably be in Arabic.

But, do any exist?

From my story, I omitted the fact that, of course, rice and meat were not the only two ingredients anyway, only the main ones. And I certainly did not need my mother to tell me her stuffing was mainly rice and meat. That was perfectly obvious to the eye and/or the mouth. It was everything else about the dish that I needed to know. And, she was not even trying to be cagey. To the contrary, she was trying to help me out.

[kentauros]

34. I'm not trying to argue about this.

Yes, recipes do exist. Some were also not written down, and my friend also laments not getting her mother to do that before she was gone. Still, of the recipes that do exist (and I've seen the recipe scrapbook) she still won't share them. As stated above, she's protective of them and to "keep them in the family." As good a friend as I am with her and her brothers (and having readily shared mine and other family recipes) I'm still not their family. It took her a while just to share that cookie recipe with her cousin to try out...

[merrily]

36. ? I wasn't arguing.

[kentauros]

37. Okay.

Maybe you just missed or skipped over the part above where I pointed out my friend's cousin used a recipe from the mother's recipe collection. Easy enough to skip if reading too fast

[Lilith Rising]

31. That's the way I do it too!

I taught myself how to cook from old cookbooks and have come to the "just feel it" stage over the years but I have to make a conscious effort to try to slow down and go through the steps so that my daughter can learn to cook by working with me.

[merrily]

33. My mother told me a story of visiting her sister and deciding to make some

pastries while her sister was out. Trying to be of assistance, her brother in law took out the scale, which, as you probably know, is what is used to measure old school Europe. My mother told him she didn't use a scale. He asked her how she measured then. She replied, "My hand is the scale."

Dubious, he asked her to measure out each ingredient into a separate bowl. She complied. He then weighed each one. The proportions were perfect. Her brother in law should have known better. Everything she made was delicious.

She was a natural. A phenom. And when that is what you are, who needs recipes, scales or measuring cups?

She was very young when she married. Also being second youngest of 8 girls, she had not learned to cook from her mother. Her older sisters were all the kitchen help my grandmother had needed. The way my mom learned to cook--family by family, various friends and relatives on my dad invited the newlyweds to dinner. Whenever my mother had something especially delicious, she asked the cook if she could return for a lesson. So, we got the best of the entire clan's dishes.

[merrily]

27. Thank you for that wonderful story. I love that kind of story so much.

[enlightenment]

28. Happy you enjoyed it!

And I agree about 'translation' - though I wasn't very clear in my comment (so your translation helped a lot!)

[FSogol]

2. Interesting. Thanks for posting. n/t

[enlightenment]

14. You're welcome.

[Sam I Am]

5. /

Written in broken English to mimic the speech of a slave, the short recipe used a touch of black comedy, unsavory to our modern ears, to evoke the cruelty of plantation life: It directed readers to "beat the dough 'till it begins to go pop, pop, pop, — it'll crack mos' like a whip, — then you know it's done."

Veit notes that while the other women in the book were referred to respectfully as Mrs. or Miss — such as Mrs. Faben's Economy Cakes or Miss Pindar's Dyspepsia Bread — contraband Tessie was denied that dignity.

Quite simply, the south was racist and still is racist. People talk about California leaving the country? Pfft. I say jettison Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. And maybe some other areas too. I have never seen so many high and might whites thinking they are better than other races.

[demmiblue]

6. Oh my, aren't you a peach?!

[Sam I Am]

47. Huh?

[pangaia]

55. Good one... :>)

[Sam I Am]

57. Eh, not very original.

[csziggy]

7. The quote you used was from a NORTHERN cookbook, not the one Southern one

Published during the Civil War.

The part you skipped is here:

Veit did point out a rare reference to slavery in a Northern cookbook that demonstrates how racist undercurrents still ran strong in the north where African Americans were free. Mrs. S.G. Knight's Tit-Bits; Or, How to Prepare a Nice Dish at a Moderate Expense includes a recipe for "Tessie’s Wheaten Biscuit (From a Contraband)." Here, the term contraband is used to refer to slaves who had escaped across Union lines. Martyris writes:

Racism was and still is endemic all over this country, not just in the South.

[Major Nikon]

18. ...

[1939]

42. Contraband

When the first slaves began to escape into Union lines, their owners demanded their return under the Fugitive Slave Laws still on the books in the US. A Union General (I believe Ben Butler) refused on the legal basis that their labor contributed to the Confederate war effort and that the slaves could be kept by the Union as legal "contraband of war". This led to the Union soldiers referring to the escaped slaves as "contrabands".

[Sam I Am]

48. /

The book pointed out the reference in the northern cookbook was "rare." So, much more common in the south.

[Sam I Am]

49. /

I did not write the article. They are making the point that racism is reflected in various cultural forms, including books like cookbooks.

[csziggy]

56. You are the one who smeared the modern South by using a 150 year old quote

From a Northern source.

The article did NOT do that - it pointed out the racism throughout the country at the time in the context of the cookbooks published during the Civil War.

YOU are the one who said. "Quite simply, the south was racist and still is racist." While using a quote that was not from the South, so your comment was both inaccurate and inappropriate.

Sticking by your inappropriate smear of one part of our country is as prejudiced as racial hatred is. Liberals should work to bring everyone together, not to split us up and create divisions.

[Sam I Am]

58. /

You're telling me that the north was just as racist as the south when it was the north that fought to free the slaves? Don't forget history:

South = for slavery

North = against slavery

Lincoln = freed the slaves

Lee and Davis = enslaved blacks

[csziggy]

60. Yes, the North was and still is as racist as the South

Many in the North, even those who supported abolition of slavery, still did not regard blacks as being equal to whites. A predominant attitude in the North was that if slavery were abolished, the blacks should be sent back to Africa, specifically to Liberia. They did not want to share the rights of white men with blacks or even allow them to remain in this country even as they advocated elimination of slavery.

Excerpt: 'The Fiery Trial'
October 11, 201011:00 AM ET
Eric Foner

Hostility to slavery did not preclude deep prejudices against blacks. The early settlers wanted Indiana and Illinois to be free of any black presence. John Woods, an English farmer who settled in Illinois, wrote in 1819 of his neighbors: "Though now living in a free state, they retain many of the prejudices they imbibed in infancy, and still hold negroes in the utmost contempt." Like Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois did everything they could to discourage the growth of a free black population. The constitutions under which they entered the Union offered liberal voting rights to whites but barred blacks from suffrage. Laws in both states prohibited blacks from marrying whites or testifying in court against them, and made it a crime to harbor a fugitive slave or servant or to bring black persons into the state with the intent of freeing them, as Governor Coles had done. The public schools excluded black children.

Before the Civil War, Illinois was notorious for its harsh Black Laws, "repugnant to our political institutions," said Governor Coles, who tried unsuccessfully to have the legislature modify them. One law declared that young apprentices must be taught reading, writing, and arithmetic "except when such apprentice is a negro or mulatto." Another required any black person who entered Illinois to post a $1,000 bond. "In consequence of these salutary arrangements," a periodical devoted to attracting investment and immigration to the state proudly declared, Illinois "has not become a retreat for runaway slaves, or free negroes." Later, the 1848 constitutional convention authorized a referendum on a provision empowering the legislature to bar all free black persons from entering the state. It received 70 percent of the vote, and five years later the lawmakers enacted a "Negro exclusion" law. Although the legislature eventually restricted the use of indentures, in the 1830s and 1840s it remained legal to bring blacks under the age of fifteen into Illinois as servants and then to sell them. "Illinois," declared the abolitionist weekly The Liberator in 1840, "is, to all intents and purposes, a slaveholding state."

http://www.npr.org/2010/10/11/130489804/lincolns-evolving-thoughts-on-slavery-and-freedom

The concept that the North was prejudice free is absurd. Many Northern states had similar bars to settlement by blacks as Illinois did and few if any were openly welcoming to blacks and freed slaves. Even after the Civil War, states and communities in the North as well as those in the South and West added more bars to block settlement by blacks. Red lining existed in the North as much or more than it did in the South. (If you don't know what red lining is, research it here on DU - there are plenty of examples, among them: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014885998 about red lining in Buffalo, New York in this century.)

Again, you are smearing an entire section of our country - and using ignorance to justify those smears. Stop embarrassing yourself and learn some facts.

[lpbk2713]

10. It's a cook book fer crisakes.

Read into it what you will.

[Sam I Am]

50. /

I'm not reading anything into it. The author made a pretty clear point.

[Recursion]

25. You're calling the south racist because of a northern cookbook?

[merrily]

35. A Civil War cookbook.

[Sam I Am]

51. /

Right. Already they are twisting this. The book is about a reflection of racism. Also, by the way, a war started by people who were deeply racist and greedy.

[quickesst]

38. and what do so many...

....."classy" white people from the north do as soon as they retire? They beat their ass down here so fast you would think their pants are on fire.
Why would anyone from the north retire to the only region in the country that has racists? Here's a news flash. It's not because they want to pick up the torch and fight the good fight for equality. Just take a tour through any walled and guarded community that is populated by a vast majority of people from the north who have moved here. The only black faces you will see are those with tools in their hands, and a pass in their pockets giving them permission to work in the community. But do carry on if it makes you feel superior because you can throw a broader blanket than anyone else.

[Sam I Am]

52. /

I never used the word "classy," so don't know why you put that in quotes. Are you saying southerners don't live in gated communities?

[quickesst]

53. ok....

I used the quotation marks inappropriately. I was trying to imitate the finger thingy people use to emphasize a word or remark. Guess it doesn't translate too well with the written word. You got me. As for the rest of your response, it seems the point is completely lost to you. But hey, one out of two ain't bad.
I remain one of many resident democrats of a southern state you would like not to be a part of America.

[Sam I Am]

59. /

Not sure what point is lost on me.

[enlightenment]

11. demmiblue, if you're interested

in interesting old recipes and cookbooks, check out the Internet Archives. They have quite a few digitized.

This link is for the fourth edition (1910) of the Times-Picayune Creole Cookbook. The book has been through many editions over time - The first was 1901, and even then a lot of the recipes were handed down from the mid-19th century and before. The newspaper had a weekly recipe round-up (I think it still does) and collected the recipes in book form.

As you read the recipes, you get a lot of social history - makes for fascinating stuff. Do keep in mind that the writing reflects the period (not to mention that rather shudder-worthy frontispiece).
https://archive.org/details/cu31924073878708

This link to a general listing of the cookbooks digitized on the site.
https://archive.org/details/cbk

[demmiblue]

13. Thank you for the links... bookmarked!

[enlightenment]

16. My pleasure.

As you may have gathered, I find old cookbooks fascinating!

[merrily]

29. An old recipe for a pork dish begins, "First, catch a pig."

I can't remember where I came across that, but it makes me smile every time I think of it.

[enlightenment]

39. I used to have a very old copy

of the Larousse Gastronomique (one of my sisters "borrowed" - then loaned it to a friend . . . you know the story). I think it was the first English edition, because each page of the outrageously large tome was divided - French in the first column, English in the second. Have a newer version now, but it's just not the same.

Anyway - in that book there was a recipe for Boar's Head - and it indeed started with "After the boar is killed . . ."

I seem to recall seeing your phrase somewhere, though. Was it one of the Foxfire books (do you remember those - fascinating books)?

[merrily]

40. Someone taught me never to lend a book. Either make a gift of it or hang on to it for dear life.

After receiving that wisdom, I deviated from it twice. The first time I lost two books to the same borrower. The second time, I lost a book a family member had authored. Luckily, she had extra copies.

I just googled my phrase, but all I got was a recipe of Harper Lee's for cracklings. I am very sure that was not the context in which I first encountered this phrase, but I can't think of the circumstances.

I am not familiar with the Foxfire books.

[enlightenment]

43. I was young.

I am older and wiser now (well, older anyway).

Foxfire books are a compilation of Appalachian folklore, wisdom, and recipes - you'll love them. Hard to find, but look in your local library. This site (the Foxfire non-profit cooperative learning organization) sells the books through their shop, but they are a bit pricey. http://www.foxfire.org/

[merrily]

44. Thank you!

I once buy a cookbook that supposedly was the first African American cookbook ever published. It contains recipes of a former slave woman. I bought it new, online, but I don't remember which website. It was some mass bookseller. The title is What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Southern Cooking. It was first published in 1880 or 1881. At least, that's what the blurb said. I never researched to see if it was the truth.

[enlightenment]

45. I am familiar with that one!

Here's a link that gives some more information about Mrs. Fisher.

http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/cookbooks/html/books/book_35.cfm

[oneshooter]

20. I have family recipes and stories from both sides of the name

My Grandmother, on Dads side, stepped off of the boat from Ireland in 1910. She was ten years old. In 1920 she married my Grandfather, who was a Mississippi cotton farmer. She did not know how to cook. She was taught how to cook by her Mother-in-Law. She lived a long, and good, life until her death in 1985. I spent a lot of time with her and learned many of the recipes that she was taught. I put these together in a booklet that I gave to any family member that wanted it, there is also several hours of film I made of her cooking.

I look in older bookshops for recipe books, and especially "church pamphlets", these are collections of home recipes that church members put together to sell, the funds used to support the church. These are a treasure trove of original recipes, although some will need to be translated from Dutch, German, or whatever language was prevalent.

[enlightenment]

22. Lucky you!

It's great you put the recipes together - but the film! What a treasure. I wish I had film of my granny making her biscuits - or her fudge - or her chicken. I've never been able to replicate a one of them.

[merrily]

41. You can get some old cookbooks on ebay, but they're not always inexpensive.

[oneshooter]

46. The last three church recipie booklets I got cost me $3, total. n/t

[JonLP24]

54. Reminds of the scene in The Sunset Limited

Where Samuel Jackson explains the ingredients behind the food he served saying poor people have to innovate, that he learned to cook what he did right here in NYC rather than the South where's from. I'm paraphrasing the exchange but the example used before to explain the comparison was with the upscale rich restaurants with the exotic dishes and poor with what to do they do to make due with what they have? -- innovate.

The article makes a lot of sense.

[Sam I Am]

61. People are trying to sell me the South isn't racist.

Pffft. Look at Dylan Roof.

[Sam I Am]

62. /

The ONLY solution here is too ban all guns. Do you get it now? The militant "liberty" people have shown they are not responsible with firearms. They are abusing the privilege and the 2nd amendment. It has a different meaning, so repeal it.
Practically all white Southerners are racist. They bombed churches in the 1960s and the Roof shooting proves that nothing has changed. I can't stand a redneck.