The Food of a Younger Land (6 page)

In the larger towns and hotels and restaurants, however, the noon-time meal is lunch, and dinner comes in the evening, which is quite proper for office workers and professional people, who do not toil with their hands and their muscles.

The following story is said to illustrate a certain type of Vermont character. Homer Field has been spending his usual forenoon on the steps of the general store, sunning himself, talking and whittling wood. The town clock strikes twelve and Homer checks the time with his own thick watch, stirs lazily, sighs deeply, and gets slowly to his feet. “Waal, guess I’ll go home to dinner,” drawls Homer. “If it ain’t ready on the table I’m going to give my wife hell, and if it is ready I ain’t going to eat a damn thing.” But most Vermonters eat well and heartily.

As a rule Vermonters are not enthusiastic about salads or fish, favorites with the sophisticated, although Vermont gardens and Vermont lakes and streams offer a wealth of possibilities for both dishes. Fancy foods and frothy things are not popular in the state, whose people go for plain, solid, substantial foodstuffs.

Vermonters love spices and use them extensively and expertly, as indicated in their gingerbread and honey cake, ginger and caraway and cinnamon cookies, spiced pickles, fruits, cakes, pies, and puddings. Vermont housewives excel in the making of spiced tomatoes, piccalilli, celery chowder, pickled butternuts, chili sauce, catsup, vinegar, pickled pears, and innumerable other pickled and spiced preparations.

Griddle cakes and sausage constitute a typical Vermont breakfast, the cakes done to a brown turn and flooded with golden Vermont syrup. Maple sugaring, by the way, is so important in the state that business and professional men use the term “sugar off,” when they refer to closing some deal or transaction. “Well, Ed, it’s about time we sugar that off.” Vermont flapjacks, glorified griddle cakes, are sometimes eaten as a dessert, as well as for breakfast. Paper thin and plate-sized, the golden-brown flapjacks are spread thickly with butter, poured with amber maple syrup, and served piping hot.

Pickling time is a Vermont ritual in the fall, and the varieties produced are almost infinite: pickled pears, peaches, apples, plums, raspberries, cucumbers, red and green tomatoes, beets, and mustard pickles. There are others not so well known but equally delicious.

 

Lemon Pickle:
Pare thinly a half-dozen lemons, remove the white and the seeds, and cut the pulp into slices. Put pulp and peel into a quart (or larger) jar, and sprinkle with salt. Let stand three days. In a quart of vinegar boil two or three blades of mace, a half-dozen cloves, two shallots, and some crushed mustard seed. Pour, boiling hot, over the lemons in the jar. Allow vinegar to cool, then cover tightly with a cloth, and in a month or so strain, bottle the liquid, and use the lemon as a pickle. Both the liquid and the pickle are especially good with veal cutlets or minced veal. (Cora Moore)

 

Sweet Pumpkin Pickle:
Pumpkin is cut into squares of about two inches and placed in a preserving kettle with ten cups of cider vinegar, six cups of sugar, a teaspoonful of allspice, and three each of cinnamon, cloves and chopped ginger root. Boil two hours, adding a sliced lemon just before boiling point is reached. Scarcely known outside of the state, this is excellent with nearly any meat. (Cora Moore)

 

Spiced Pickled Apples:
Sweet apples are pared, cored and cut in half, then cooked in boiling vinegar along with a spice bag and six pounds of brown sugar. In the spice bag should be a tablespoonful of whole cloves and a quarter-pound of stick cinnamon broken up. (Cora Moore)

CORA A. MOORE

1.
Spiced Beef:
Eaten cold for breakfast or supper. A round of beef is salted down for a week, then washed well and black pepper and mace rubbed in, then put into a stone stewpan along with 3 or 4 onions, sliced and fried, a few cloves; covered with water and baked for 5 hours. When cold, sliced and eaten as wanted.

2.
Pickled Butternuts:
So far as can be learned this idea originated and has been exclusively used in Vermont. Recipe—Butternuts should be gathered last week of June. Pour over them a very strong salt and water brine and let the nuts lie in it for 12 days. Drain them and pour over them cold cider vinegar which has been boiled with some mustard seed, horseradish, cloves, allspice and peppercorns. Cover tightly and keep for a year before using.

3.
Baked Indian Pudding:
Heat 4 cups of milk, add ¾ cup of dark molasses, ¼ cup of granulated sugar, teaspoon salt, ½ teaspoon each of cinnamon and nutmeg, 4 tablespoons butter, and ½ cup corn meal. Cook until the mixture thickens, pour into a baking dish, and add a cup of cold milk. Do not stir. Bake in a slow oven 3 hours without stirring. Serve while warm with butter, a hard sauce or cream.

4.
Greens:
Wash and boil until tender; drain and serve with hot vinegar and butter. Or wash and parboil for 10 minutes, then douse in cold water, drain thoroughly and chop fine. Put into a frying pan with 2 tablespoonfuls of butter, stirring constantly, add ¼ cup of broth in which a tablespoonful of flour has been smoothed with some bits of butter, and serve. Hard-boiled eggs, sliced, are used as a garnish. Vermonters are much more given to their “greens” cooked one way or another, than they are to salads. Even lettuce is perhaps oftener than not cooked as above. The greens, too, are oftentimes cooked with salt pork, a bit of bacon or a ham bone.

5.
Cider Plum Pudding:
A favorite Christmas dish but, unfortunately, will not keep very long, as it is moist and light. Two eggs are blended with ½ cup of cider; ½ cup flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, ½ teaspoon each of soda, cinnamon, salt, and nutmeg are sifted together, then turned into a large bowl; ¼ cup each of chopped raisins, dates, figs, butternut meats, citron are mixed in; and finally, ¼ cup each of bread crumbs, brown sugar, chopped suet and chopped apple are kneaded in with the fingers. Covered in a well-greased ring-mold or other dish, the pudding is ready for the steaming process.

6.
Boiled Dinner:
Controversy over the matter of cooking the vegetables separately, or with the meat, leaves Vermont housewives just as certain as ever that they should be cooked together, and they go right on doing so, just as their grandmothers and great grandmothers did before them. The meat is beef and the vegetables are beets, carrots, turnip, potatoes, onions and then a bag pudding are all cooked together. The bag pudding is made of Indian meal, a little flour, spiced to taste and seasoned, with a cup of milk. The mixture is turned into a cloth bag and dropped into the pot to cook. Done, it is slipped out of its bag to a serving plate, to be sliced and served with sweetened cream or maple syrup.

7.
Strawberry Shortcake:
A Vermont tradition that has been adopted by the other states. The strawberry shortcakes, first of all, are made of biscuit dough, two layers buttered and laid one atop the other to bake. When done they are separated, placed buttered sides up, but first more butter spread on the lower one, spread thickly with berries which have been slightly crushed in sugar. Then, the other layer placed above it is given the same treatment, put into the oven and eaten as soon as the cake is hot again. And, with cream. No heaping whipped cream on the cake, but cream served from a pitcher, plain cream with a little sugar in it.

8.
Sour Milk Doughnuts:
No native Vermonter goes without doughnuts for breakfast, even if mother has to get up before-hand to make them. The recipe?—2 cups of flour, ¾ teaspoon soda, 1 teaspoon of cream of tartar, ¾ teaspoon of salt, and a dash of nutmeg sifted together. Add a beaten egg, ½ cup sugar, tablespoon melted butter, and ½ cup sour milk. Knead on the board adding flour, if necessary; cut and fry in deep fat. For Sugared Doughnuts, when cool, shake in a bag with some confectioners’ sugar. Blueberry griddlecakes are a Vermont Sunday morning breakfast.

9.
Apple Pan Dowdy:
Have ready a baking dish lined with pie crust. Mix a quart of sliced apples, scant ½ cup sugar, and add a dash each of nutmeg, cinnamon and salt. Fill the baking dish, add ¼ cup dark molasses, dot with 3 tablespoonfuls butter cut in pieces, and two tablespoonfuls of water, and pour into the dish; cover with a punctured crust and bake. When the crust has browned and the apples are tender, chop with a silver knife, crust and all so that it is thoroughly mixed with the apples. Bake another hour or more. This recipe is direct from Aunt Hetty’s own “receipt” book and everyone in northern Vermont knows that Aunt Hetty’s pan dowdy was dee-licious. Served usually as a dinner dessert.

10.
Apples and Red Cabbage:
A small red cabbage and about 5 apples, pared and quartered in a pan with a piece of butter, salt, pepper, a clove or two, and water enough to cover, placed over a slow fire to cook until tender. Then the cabbage and apples are removed to a platter, a sauce of a tablespoonful of currant jelly and another of vinegar is poured over, and the whole served very hot. Often served as a supper dish with hot biscuits or as a vegetable for dinner. Again, in place of a salad which Vermonters have never taken to very kindly. Cabbage salad is an exception.

11.
Vegetable Hash:
A supper dish. Made with about equal quantities of leftover vegetables, a bit of butter, seasoned as desired, and served with ketchup.

12.
Baked Beans:
A typical Saturday night dish. The beans must be put to soak in cold water the night before and in the morning placed in a kettle and covered with boiling water to which ½ teaspoon of dry mustard has been added for each pint of beans. They should then cook until soft but not mushy. When nearly done, add a piece of salt pork to the kettle to cook with the beans. Next pour the beans into a “bean pot” and add 2 tablespoons of sugar or molasses according to the individual taste, as some prefer the beans a rich golden color which the molasses gives, moisten with liquid in which the beans were cooked, place pork on top of beans, cover and bake for 2 hours in a slow oven.

13.
Spiced Currants and Horseradish Relishes:
Much liked with meat. For the former, 3 lbs. currants, 2¼ [lbs.] brown sugar, and a cup of vinegar are required. A stick of cinnamon and a dozen cloves are tied in a muslin bag and all cooked for about an hour then turned into jam pots or glass jars. Well worth the trouble. The horseradish relish is made nowadays by adding a little pectin to the readymade radish and boiling for a couple of minutes.

14.
Mush & Milk:
Breakfast dish. Corn meal added to boiling salted water and stirred constantly.

15.
Apple Dumplings:
Made like apple bird’s nests—a square of biscuit dough with sliced apples, the four corners of the dough brought together in the center, and cooked in a steamer or baked. Eaten with cream, maple syrup or hard sauce.

16.
Salt Salmon:
Boiled or broiled and served with cream or a cream sauce.

17.
Codfish Cakes:
A breakfast, dinner or supper dish in Vermont. Salt codfish that has been boiled the day before is minced and mixed with warm mashed potatoes, and a beaten egg added; made into inch-thick cakes about the size of a tea-cup top and fried in butter or other shortening.

18.
Hot Pot:
A favorite farm dish. Cut about 2 lbs. lamb chuck into 2-inch pieces, add a pound of dried beans that have been soaked overnight, cover with hot water, season with salt and pepper, and cook about 2 hours or until the meat is tender.

WALTER HACKETT

A
lthough not altogether indigenous to the state, nevertheless the May Breakfast had its greatest development in Rhode Island. As an institution it rivals the older clam bake. The credit for the local May Breakfast goes to one woman who believed that in the spring people turn to thoughts of food.

As nearly as may be ascertained, the first May Breakfast was given on May 1, 1867, by Searle’s Corner Benevolent Society of the Oaklawn Baptist Church. Since then dozens of other societies have imitated the Oaklawn innovators. Mrs. Roby King Wilbur was president of Searle’s Corner Benevolent Society of the Oaklawn Baptist Church. She was also familiar with English May Day customs. With scant reverence for the well-known poetical fantasy, she paraphrased it to fit her revival of the old English customs “In May a person’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of food.”

The English, incidentally, got the idea from the Romans, who in elaborate fashion paid tribute to Flora, goddess of flowers, in hope of obtaining protection of the blossoms. The English, carrying on the custom, added to it by raising a May Pole and having a picnic that lasted the entire day.

When Mrs. Wilbur became head of the church society at Oaklawn, one of her immediate tasks was to raise money to either repair or build a new church. Therefore, she hit upon the idea of the May Breakfast. Gathering around her the other girls from the local society, she immediately laid plans for the early morning spread.