The Food of a Younger Land (11 page)
Read The Food of a Younger Land Online
Authors: Mark Kurlansky
The first task of the sugar-maker is to get all the buckets and utensils out of storage. These, with the evaporator and storage tank, are scrubbed and scalded to gleaming cleanliness. Then the trees are tapped, bit and bitstock being used to bore the holes about breast-high. Metal spouts, or spiles, small pipes with a hook underneath, are driven into the holes, and buckets are hung on the hooks. Now it is up to the weather-man to make the sap flow.
The informal beauty and grace of the maple is enough to make it seem incongruous that such a lovely tree should also be so utilitarian. But the rare quality of the product is in keeping with the appearance of the tree. There are nearly seventy varieties of the maple, the following six of which are found in Vermont: sugar (or rock) maple; black; silver; red; mountain; and box-alder (or ash-leafed) maple. The sugar and black are the best sugar trees, and Vermont is particularly adapted to the sugar maple. It is estimated that about 5,000,000, or 62%, of the available trees are tapped annually, producing some 10,000,000 pounds of sugar. The maple is a long-lived tree, seldom suitable for tapping until forty years old, and a better producer at twice that age. Some of the sugar bushes in the state were undoubtedly growing when the Pilgrims docked at Plymouth in 1620. The tree is comparatively slow-growing, but is strong and sturdy and easily-propagated.
The sugar content depends largely upon the leaf development and the amount of sunshine absorbed during the previous summer, the leaves under the sun’s rays storing up starch and sugar. After the leaves flare into their dying colors and fall, the maple starts accumulating water, and by enzyme action changes starch and other insoluble carbohydrates to soluble sugars. Just before the leaves bud in the spring the roots draw up larger quantities of water from the earth, and the maple contains its greatest amount of liquid. This is the period when the sap flow is best. Tapping, when properly done, has no detrimental effects on the tree.
Sugaring-offs are traditional events. No self-respecting sugar-maker lets a season pass without inviting all-comers into the woods to enjoy his new-made sugar-on-snow, and his pride in his product is matched by the pleasure of the participants. Word passes quickly around the farms and villages. “Ed Stearns is sugaring-off tomorrow.” “There’s a sugaring at Old Man Hyde’s Saturday.” “The best sugaring-off to go to is up on Bailey’s Bluff.” In many cases these affairs mark the one instance of the year in which the practical-minded Yankee owners “give something away for nothing.” And the curious thing is that even the most hard-shelled of them seem to actually enjoy it.
There’s something about a sugaring-off party that makes people loosen up, drop the barriers, relax into jovial spirits and easy friendliness. A sugaring-off brings out the better side of folks. The brisk mountain air, smelling of fresh earth, cool snow, burning wood, boiling syrup, and pine boughs, whets the appetite to an incredible degree. The men and women and children swarming around the sugarplace share a common hunger, with the delightful means of satisfying it close at hand and free as the March breeze. The rigid winter is broken and gone, the feel of spring is in the air, and people grow mellow in the sunshine. Old feuds are forgotten for the time and good-fellowship prevails. Everything is natural, comfortable and pleasant. It is difficult to hate, or even dislike anyone at a Vermont sugaring-off.
The children romp and rollick about the woods, playing games, throwing snowballs, shouting with laughter. Perhaps they play Indians, remembering the Indian legend about the discovery of maple sugar. It was quite accidental. While Woksis, the mighty hunter, was after game, his squaw Moqua embroidered moccasins for him and boiled moose steak in the sweet water from the maple tree. She became so engrossed in fashioning a bear on the moccasins that she forgot to watch the kettle, and the water boiled away to a thick brown syrup, encrusting the meat. Moqua feared the wrath of Woksis, but it was too late to remedy her error. Woksis came back, hungry from the hunt, and after some complaining about the appearance of the meat, fell to eating it. Surprise and delight showed on his coppery face as he chewed. This new dish was a gift from the Great Spirit. Woksis boasted to his tribe that Kose-kus-beh, an emissary from the Happy Hunting Grounds, had shown his squaw how to prepare a delicious food by boiling the juice of the maple tree.
Boys and girls stroll around or bask in the sun, talking of school and parties and dances, basketball tournaments, the coming baseball season, the long summer vacation.
The men smoke their pipes and discuss the sugar season, Town Meeting, spring plowing and planting, milk prices, local and national politics, the War in Europe.
Women talk of children and families, marriages and clothes, swap gossip and recipes, and tell of the many ways maple sugar may contribute to culinary success. They use it to sweeten pickles and fruits, evolve maple cream puddings and sauces, make maple butternut candy and fudge, flavor baked beans, brown bread, gingerbread, cookies, tapioca, baked apples, fruit cobblers, and scores of other dishes. And what are corn fritters or flapjacks without hot golden Vermont maple syrup?
Inside the sugarhouse the owner supervises the final process over the “sugaring-off rig,” a smaller arch and pan used to thicken the boiling syrup to the required consistency for sugar-on-snow. Other farmers and townsmen crowd in to watch this procedure and comment on improvements and innovations in the sugar-making business. Outside boys gather clean snow from hollows and ravines, packing it into pails and pans, bowls and boilers and tubs. The womenfolk busy themselves setting rough tables and benches with plates of fresh brown doughnuts and sour dill pickles. The outdoor air is electric with excitement and anticipation.
At last it is ready. The hot sugar is ladled onto the snow in fantastic patterns, quickly cooling and hardening into brittle amber pools against the white. The sugar is taken up with forks, wound about the tines, and lifted to the mouth. The taste is indescribable. It is rich and smooth and pleasing, delicate and pure. It is not sickish-sweet, yet sweet enough to need the sour bitterness of pickles to re-sharpen the appetite from time to time. The snow that clings to the sugar makes it cool and mellow. Crisp plain doughnuts help temper the sweetness, and strong hot coffee tops off the feast.
It is over all too soon. The most avaricious appetites are sated, and the people sit back to take their ease. Even the kids are too full of maple sugar to start playing immediately. Withdrawing a little from their elders, they stretch and pat their stomachs and brag about how much they consumed. The men loosen their belts and light pipes, cigars or cigarettes. The ladies sigh and lavish praises upon the sugar, the doughnuts, the pickles, the coffee.
There may be a fiddle in the crowd, and there’s certain to be a harmonica or two. Music will be forthcoming as soon as the sugar is settled a bit. The music begins and voices join in, shy and hesitant at first but gradually gaining confidence and volume—“The Long Trail,” “Jingle Bells,” “Seeing Nellie Home,” “Smile the While,” “Put on Your Old Gray Bonnet,” “Dinah,” “There’ll Be a Hot Time,” “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain,” “Oh, Susanna,” “Swanee River,” “Working on the Railroad,” “Alice Blue Gown,” “When You Wore a Tulip,” “Down by the Old Mill Stream,” “Home Sweet Home” . . . The grown-ups are wistful, remembering other sugaring-offs in the past. The youngsters are wistful, dreaming about what they’ll do when they grow up.
The sun sinks toward the mountains on the western horizon, and the sky is a wilderness of purple and red, lavender and rose and gray. Dusk still comes early. The warmth fades from the air, the cutting edge comes back on the wind rustling through naked branches. Lights show in the scattered farms and a twinkling cluster marks the village at the end of the valley. It is suddenly cold as good-byes are said and people straggle homeward.
There is still work at the sugarhouse but spirits are high. It is going to be another cold night. Tomorrow, when the sun comes up to warm and brighten the March world, the sap will run again.
An Editorial Memorandum on Clams
JAMES FRANCIS DAVIS
James Francis Davis, or J. Frank Davis, as he was known to the FWP, was born in the fishing port of New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1870. In the early twentieth century he worked in a variety of jobs for leading Boston newspapers, including theater critic, political writer, city editor, and managing editor. In 1910 he retired as a result of an injury and moved to San Antonio, Texas. From there he became a playwright and had several successes, including
Gold in the Hills
and
The Ladder,
which ran on Broadway from 1926 to 1927. He also wrote short stories and magazine serialized stories, most of which were set in Texas, for which he was made an honorary Texas Ranger. He became the state supervisor for the Texas Writers’ Project. But when he heard that the state writers’ project for his home state, Massachusetts, was disintegrating and might not be contributing to
America Eats,
he sent a memo on what he saw as the two essential New England foods: clams and beans.
Gold in the Hills
and
The Ladder,
which ran on Broadway from 1926 to 1927. He also wrote short stories and magazine serialized stories, most of which were set in Texas, for which he was made an honorary Texas Ranger. He became the state supervisor for the Texas Writers’ Project. But when he heard that the state writers’ project for his home state, Massachusetts, was disintegrating and might not be contributing to
America Eats,
he sent a memo on what he saw as the two essential New England foods: clams and beans.
Davis died of a heart attack in May 1942, on the same day that the Federal Writers’ Project officially ended.
The one food that most defines New England and sets it apart from the rest of North America is clams. It is the only place on the Atlantic coast of North America where clams are more valued than oysters. And this has been so since long before those first Pilgrims scratched at the sand for bivalves because they didn’t know how to fish. Most of the Indians who lived on the North Atlantic coast, not only in New England, ate clams and collected the shells of the ones New Englanders call quahogs, which they valued for their splash of purple and used to make purple-and-white beads, strung together in different lengths for different values and called “wampum.” The currency was so sound that European settlers continued to trade in wampum and even produced it. In fact, clamshell wampum became easier to produce with the introduction of the European drill.
The European settlers also ate clams. William Brad-ford, governor of the Plymouth colony, described in his journal starving men in 1623 scratching at the sand trying to find clams to eat. One died of starvation while looking for clams.
There are two types of clams commonly eaten in New England:
Mya arenaria
and
Mercenaria mercenaria. Mya arenaria,
the soft-shell clam, is by far the more important in New England, though of lesser importance most other places. It is found as far north as the Arctic and as far south as Cape Hatteras, but nowhere is it as loved as in New England, and New Englanders find it hard to believe that a good one can be found anywhere else. It is sometimes called an Ipswich clam for the bay on the northern coast of Cape Ann, which is where some of the best are found. They are frequently called steamers because steaming and then following a near ritual of rolling the black membrane off the neck, washing the individual clam in clam broth, and finally dipping it in butter, all done with a thumb and index finger, is the popular way of eating them. As popular are fried steamers, which is one of the rare traditional New England dishes involving frying. Steamers are also the traditional clam of New England clam chowder. All three dishes have remained as popular as they were in the time of
America Eats,
though frozen food and fast food companies have introduced an atrocity called the clam strip for fried clams. Often made of squid, the clam strip has no belly, the soft central part of the clam, the size and plumpness of which is key to rating the quality of a good clam.
Mya arenaria
and
Mercenaria mercenaria. Mya arenaria,
the soft-shell clam, is by far the more important in New England, though of lesser importance most other places. It is found as far north as the Arctic and as far south as Cape Hatteras, but nowhere is it as loved as in New England, and New Englanders find it hard to believe that a good one can be found anywhere else. It is sometimes called an Ipswich clam for the bay on the northern coast of Cape Ann, which is where some of the best are found. They are frequently called steamers because steaming and then following a near ritual of rolling the black membrane off the neck, washing the individual clam in clam broth, and finally dipping it in butter, all done with a thumb and index finger, is the popular way of eating them. As popular are fried steamers, which is one of the rare traditional New England dishes involving frying. Steamers are also the traditional clam of New England clam chowder. All three dishes have remained as popular as they were in the time of
America Eats,
though frozen food and fast food companies have introduced an atrocity called the clam strip for fried clams. Often made of squid, the clam strip has no belly, the soft central part of the clam, the size and plumpness of which is key to rating the quality of a good clam.
The
Mercenaria mercenaria,
the hard-shell clam, is mostly eaten raw. It comes in three sizes. The smallest are littlenecks. Long Islanders irritate New Englanders by insisting that the name comes from Littleneck Bay, Long Island. New Englanders, who tend to regard Long Island and most of New York in much the same way that the Romans viewed the tribes to the north, argue with logic that it is unlikely that they would have accepted a Long Island name for one of their traditional foods. They point out that littlenecks are found in a part of Ipswich Bay known as “Little Neck.” Middle-sized hard-shells, also usually eaten raw, are called cherrystones and no one seems annoyed that this may come from Cherry-stone Creek, Virginia. The largest ones, not generally eaten raw but thrown into chowder, are the quahogs, an authentic name from the Narragansett,
poquaûhock,
and in common English language usage in New England since at least the mid-eighteenth century.
Mercenaria mercenaria,
the hard-shell clam, is mostly eaten raw. It comes in three sizes. The smallest are littlenecks. Long Islanders irritate New Englanders by insisting that the name comes from Littleneck Bay, Long Island. New Englanders, who tend to regard Long Island and most of New York in much the same way that the Romans viewed the tribes to the north, argue with logic that it is unlikely that they would have accepted a Long Island name for one of their traditional foods. They point out that littlenecks are found in a part of Ipswich Bay known as “Little Neck.” Middle-sized hard-shells, also usually eaten raw, are called cherrystones and no one seems annoyed that this may come from Cherry-stone Creek, Virginia. The largest ones, not generally eaten raw but thrown into chowder, are the quahogs, an authentic name from the Narragansett,
poquaûhock,
and in common English language usage in New England since at least the mid-eighteenth century.
T
he clambake, as prepared at its best, has almost vanished; only a few experts now make them, for private parties and at considerable expense (the last one I had, a dozen years ago, cost about $12 per person for about a hundred guests, I was told, and doubtless would cost more today).
he clambake, as prepared at its best, has almost vanished; only a few experts now make them, for private parties and at considerable expense (the last one I had, a dozen years ago, cost about $12 per person for about a hundred guests, I was told, and doubtless would cost more today).
The very earliest bakes contained nothing but clams, but as they developed, especially in Rhode Island, other contents were added. At Massachusetts shore resorts the clams are likely to be steamed; at Rhode Island resorts they probably will come out of a bake; but even at the Rhode Island places all the shore dinner “fixin’s” except the clams are cooked on kitchen ranges, and have been for at least fifty years—the complete bake has never been practical for the feeding of great numbers.
In a proper Rhode Island clambake nothing comes off a stove but the clam chowder for the first course. The most elaborate one I ever ate included clams, quahogs, oysters, fish, lobsters, crabs, sweet potatoes, sweet corn, chicken, sausages, and tripe. As everything has to come out done at exactly the same moment, and as the time necessary for cooking the different contents varied very greatly, a high degree of skill and experience went into the timing of when each article was added.
Your story, I imagine, will go into the Rhode Island clambake as it used to be, and occasionally is now: The hole in the ground with stones covering the bottom; the wood fire burned on top of the stones until they are so hot that they will crackle at the sprinkling of water; the embers brushed off; a layer of wet seaweed; the clams; more wet seaweed covered with a tarpaulin or canvas spiked down all around to keep in the steam; quick openings and closings to put in other ingredients, the fish, chicken and similar contents sewed into cheesecloth so as not to be touched by seaweed or ashes, the sweet corn in its husks; the final triumphant opening with everything properly cooked and ready to serve. (The chowder—absent of course when no stove is handy—is served about ten minutes before the bake is opened. The traditional dessert is watermelon.)
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