Southern cooking and northern appetites! To the uninitiated this may seem rather a trivial and dull theme. To one; however, who all her life has known southern cooking and in the last few years has learned something of the northern appetites it is a most important and interesting subject

Brown, Linda Spence

English

Southern cooking and northern appetites! To the uninitiated this may seem rather a trivial and dull theme. To one; however, who all her life has known southern cooking and in the last few years has learned something of the northern appetites it is a most important and interesting subject.</p

Brown, Linda

Digital Repository @ Iowa State University (ISU)

THE IOWA HOMEMAKER Southern Cooking and Northern Appetites By LINDA SPENCE BROWN Associate Professor of Institutional Administration S OUTHERN cooking and northern appetites! To the unhl.itiated this may seem rather a trivial and dull theme. To one; however, who all her life has known southern cooking and in the last few years has learned something of the northern appetites it is a most important and interesting subject. Born and brought up in the south the only cooking I knew until I was grown was what we southerners fond-ly call "Old fashioned southern cook-ing." For the past several years my work has been catering to northern appetites. I have thus been given many opportunities to observe how far and in what particulars southern cook-ing and northern appetites can live happily together. Personally, I feel I have come far in my education regarding my friends north of the Mason and Dixon line. My grandfather was a fire-eating southerner and from him I learned the term Dam Yankee as one word-in fact I was almost grown before I realized that the two words were not one-and that in the minds of many intelligent people they did not go to-gether at all. My life in the North has utterly swept away any prejudice I may have had regarding Yankees, and has given me a ·splendid appreciaion of their ability, their energy and their many other fine qualities. I must confess to one thing however, and that is to a feeling of pity for the inability of the average northerner to enjoy many of our most delicate southern dishes. I do not blame him for this nor hold it against him. Our northern friends were born, in my opinion, under a handicap, through no fault of their own; and owing to the chance of fate which rules our destiny, they missed growing up on southern cookery. It is a well known fact that we like best and enjoy most those foods which we have known in our youth. Those are in a sense, our natural tastes, while tastes cultivated later are ac-quired. True many of our northern friends attempt to make up what they have lost in their youth by travel in the South and cultivating southern cookery. What they have missed, however, can never be made up to them fully. Men may overcome the obstacles of poverty, illness or many other un-fortunate circumstances of their youth. Witness the rise of James E. Hill, the railroad magnate from the poverty of his early years. The successful struggle which Theodore Roosevelt waged against the ill bealth of his youth. The victory of Edward Bok against his ignorance of American customs and the English language. But can you imagine Calvin Coolidge so far over-coming the misfortune of his New England bringing up as to be able to really enjoy mustard and turnip greens cooked together on cornmeal spoon bread? Our northern friends probably won-der what it is about this southern cooking that makes it, in our opinion, at least, the most delectaole in the world. In answer to such a question I should say the same old factors that always determine quality in food pro-ducts-raw materials and the manner of using and combining these mater-ials. In the matter of raw materials we admit that the Creator favored the Southland when he gave us climate and soil with which we could raise rice, sweet potatoes, okra, black eyed peas, turnip and mustard greens. He was partial when he put into our southern waters oysters, shrimp, crab, pompano and terrapins and the many other delicacies which abound from Baltimore to New Orleans. The climate of the south has always been favorable to the production of dairy products and of poultry. Mild winters and green forage all year makes it cheaper to produce milk and eggs than in the north. One does not have to be in the restaurant business to know that much milk, cream and butter and many eggs produce the best results in cooking. Southern cooking was developed during a period when all these ingredients were plenti-ful and cheap. I have in my posses-sion a cook book which my grand-mother brought out from Virginia to Texas. H is called "Domestic Cookery" by Elizabeth E. Sea and was publish-ed in Baltimore in 1851. In looking over the recipes in it I find no cake that calls for less than one pound of butter and 10 - 12 eggs. Most of the desserts required whipped cream, and all vegetables were cooked with large amounts of butter. Southern cookery, however, does not owe all its charm to natural resources. We would respectfully remind our northern appetites that we southerners have used imagination and discrimina-tion in utilizing our food material which grows better in many parts of the north than in the south. We r e-fer, of course, to corn .. You well know, that Iowa is "The state where the tall corn grows." We watch our corn crop as attentatively as the south watches its cotton. It is our money crop- if the corn fails we are as poor and as down hearted as we are in Mississippi and Texas if the boll weevil or the flea gets the cotton. In spite of the splendid quality of the northern corn and notwithstanding the delicious dishes which can be made from ground corn products, there is little used in northern cooking as compared with the amou"nt used in the south where climatic and soil condi-tions produce neither the quality nor quantity of the northern corn. In Iowa last year all sorts of experiments were tried to use corn syrup and corn sugar to take up the surplus corn crop. If the people of Iowa would eat corn bread, corn muffins, grits and corn mush as we do in the south, they wouldn't have any surplus corn. Good material is the first pre-re-quisite for good cooking-proper use of these materials is the second. In this respect the south has been pe-culiarly fortunate. Here help has al-ways been plentiful, comparatively speaking. In the Southern homes where Southern cookery was develop-ed to a high state of perfection there was one servant who did nothing but cook. The cleaning and preparation of fruits, vegetables and meat was done by other servants and the dining .room work by still another. Under such conditions the cook devoted herself en-tirely to her cooking. The mistress of the house did a great deal of enter-taining and devoted much time and at-tention to the dishes which appeared on her table. The result of such a social and economic system was that the South became famous for such dishes as beaten biscuit, Virginia ham, waffles, sun cooked preserves and many elaborate cakes and puddings. I can remember the big colored woman who presided over my grand-mother's kitchen beating dough for thirty minutes. My grandmother was famous for her watermelon rind pre-serves. It took two colored maids to get the rind ready-then the pieces were put into a syrup boiled a short time and set in the sun all afternoon. This performance was r epeated four days in succession. The resulting pro-duct was marvellous-a lovely amber in color and with a delicate but a very distinctive flavor. But can you imagine any housewife now taking the time of two servants and consuming four days in making one gallon of any kind or preserves on earth? In my grandfather's house the kitchen was a separate room from the other part of the house, about thirty or forty feet away-so built, I think, as a precaution in case of fire. All the food had to be brought across this open space. I have a vivid recollection of a long legged colored girl running back and forth between the kitchen and the dining room holding an um-brella over the hot cakes in rainy weather. It was always a matter of much dis-pute in the family as to which corn cake on the plate was the hottest when they arrived at the table, the ones on top of the pile or those on the bottom. Some members of the family contend-(Continued on page 11) THE IOWA HOMEMAKER 11 Southern Dishes Tempt Northerners (Continued from page 5) ed that the cakes on top were the hottest because they were the last to leave the griddle. Others held that the top cakes kept the bottom ones warm, therefore the bottom cakes were hotter. My grandfather died at the age of seventy-five without ever having settled this momentous question. These memories of the methods pur-sued in southern cooking give you an idea of the time and energy which was devoted to those southern dishes which are still well known. The best and most varied of raw materials, plenty of help to prepare these ma-terials, a manner of living which had leisure for much entertaining, and a social system which placed hospitality at the table first among the virtues of well bred people; all these I consider the factors which have given us the many justly famous southern dishes and have made "old fashioned south-ern cooking" a phrase to conjure with. In the matter of beverages I have noticed a great difference in taste among northern people. In the South we like our coffee strong. Your Louisiana people drink french or drip coffee which almost stands alone. Our neighbors in the north want coffee about the color of strong tea. In the South we serve ice tea with much ice, in the north they put in one piece about as big as a half dollar. In my experience more buttermilk is drunk in the South than in the North. Of the beverages that cheer, I hesitate to speak since the 18th Ammendment was passed shortly af-ter I moved north. I will say in pass< ing, however, that people I know seem to know very little about those won-ders of the South, mint julip, slow gin rickeys, toddies and horses necks. Another dish the average Northern-er seems to have little appreciation for is rice. One reason for, I think, is that many northern cooks have never learned that rice should be cooked so that it is dry and the grains stand apart. Where we serve rice and gravy with meat, they serve potatoes and gravy. Rice in combination with other vegetables than tomatoes is rare-ly served. That historic southern dish known as "Hoping John" I have never seen served. This is a mixture com-bination of rice and beans with either red beans or black eyed peas. Rice griddle cakes, muffins and waffles are seldom used. They seem to know rice pudding because it appears on many menus. After rice the greatest lack of ap-preciation comes for corn products. Some hominy is used, but practically no grits or corn meal mush. They will eat corn muffins occasionally and corn sticks. But our famous Virginia spoon bread they refuse. Corn cakes I seldom see on menus. Southerners have made many im-portant contributions to meat cookery. These are Virg:nia ham, chicken a la Maryland and Brunswick stew. The first two are universally popular in the North. Brunswick stew which came originally from Brunswick coun-ty, Virginia, should be used more. It is a delicious combination of chicken or other meats with salt pork, onion, potatoes, butter beans, green corn and tomatoes and is best served in a soup plate. Chicken or fowl with a com-bination of meat and rice is a popular dish in the South which seems little known in the North. In connection with meat cookery one cannot but mention the lack of ap-preciation in the North for gravy. Rice and gravy is seldom used and in many public eating places meats appear without any gravy, something we southerners cannot understand. Several distinctive southern vege-tables should be mentioned here. The first is okra. Of all southern dishes I believe okra is the most universally disliked in the north. Fried okra, okra and tomatoes, gumbo, all these are delicacies for which our northern friends as a rule have only contempt. Sweet potatoes are used quite gener-ally in the North, although from a southerner's view point the northern sweep potato is poor. As far as I can discover the northern people like a sweet potato which is as much like an Irish potato as possible, white and dry. They have little appreciation of pure orange colored yams which are high in sugar content. Sweet potatoes are usually candied in the North-rarely baked in the skins as we like them. Black eyed peas are another vege-table little used in the North. Also turnip mustard greens and collards. Much spinach is used but for that rare combination of ours, turnip and mus-tard greens cooked together, they have little respect. Butter· beans, as we know them in the south are not much used in the North. Their nearest neighbor the small lima bean is used as a substitute. In the matter of hot breads our northern friends seem to have de-veloped along certain lines but are extremely backward along others. Waffles were originated in the South, and seem to be quite as popular among northern appetites as in the South. l have never gotten a Northerner how-ever, to admit that he likes beaten biscuit. He calls it hard tack or dog biscuit. That famous bread of ours, Federal bread, from ·worcester county Mary-land, is little known in the North. Our delectable Sally Lunn seems to go un-noticed and unsung. Our Northern friends seem to prefer bread to hot biscuit, a fact which is not surprising when we see some of the atrocities which are perpetrated in the name of biscuit. In the matter of desserts it has been my observation that the North likes our dishes rather generally. It is a fact, I believe, that more pie is consumed per capita in the North than in the South. Two of the favorite southern pies, however, rarely appear on Northern menus. I refer to our delicious molasses pie and our sweet potato pie. The sweet potato pudding or potato pone which is so popular in the South I have never seen on North-ern tables .. In my opmwn, the three great con-tributions of the South to cake baking . are, Pound Cake, Lady Baltimore Cake, and white fruit cake. Our Northern friends seem to enjoy these as much as we do, but their cooks do not make them so often. There are some southern relishes and pickles which should be mentioned in this Hall of Fame for southern cookery. Stuffed mangoes should be mentioned among the first, tomato pickle both green and red and peach pickle. A preserve which we always used at home I have mentioned before, water melon rind. I see this delight-ful dish very rarely on northern tables. Blackberry jam, jelly and cordial are well known southern pro-ducts which the north uses compara-tively, due to the fact that blackberries do not grow so abundantly in the North. To many people southern cooking means creole cooking. Creole cooking is so distinctive in flavor and combina-tions that we may class it as foreign cookery, because it is the combination of French and Spanish influenced by the Southern Indians. As is true with much foreign cooking, a taste for creole dishes must often be cultivated by those unfortunates who have not been brought up on it. To those of us who have known it, since childhood there is no greater delicacy than shrimp, crab or chicken gumbo. Few northern cooks are even familiar with the powdered sassafras called file which goes in to all gumbo, and which is for sale in all stores on the southern coast. There are too many creole dishes to attempt to list them, but I cannot pass over that mysterious concoction called Jambo-laya. This may be shrimp, crab, or chicken and its charm lies in the com-plete mixture of onions, garlic, bay · leaf, chili powder, rice and tomatoes with the meat. We have but made a beginning in discussing the superiority and charm of southern cooking, but it is largely a question of where one was brought up. However, Northerners are open minded and I have faith that with more people who know southern cook-ing catering to northern appetities, we may in time lead them gently into those Elysian fields of rice and gravy, sweet potato pie and spoon corn bread. Marie Dorothy Young, H. Ec. '16, is teaching in the Junior College of the Idaho State Technical Institute at Pocatello, Idaho. Ida E. McKinney, H. Ec. '22, is teach-ing Sewing and Millinery in Hackley Manual Training School at Muskegon, Mich. Elizabeth D. Fogg, H. Ec. '24, who is dietitian at the California Lutheran Hospital in Los Angeles, is actively in-terested in the Western Dietitian Magazine, which may be found in the Iowa State College Library, and she also had a part in the compilation of a book which has been put out by California dietitians. 

Southern Cooking and Northern Appetites

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Southern Cooking and Northern Appetites

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