In the preceding pages I have neglected no chance to expose our shortcomings, not with any muck-raking intentions but in order to show in how many ways we could profit by following the example set by European nations.
It is now time to raise our flag and do a little patriotic boasting. There is a gastronomic America as well as an ungastronomic America; we have unequaled opportunities for producing the best of nearly everything, and if we utilize those opportunities, recognizing the all-importance of Flavor in food, in its various stages from the field to the grill and the table, we can easily become, within a few decades, a leading—perhaps even the leading—gastronomic nation.
In the present chapter and the following one I purpose to dwell on some of the delicacies for the enjoyment of which at their best Europeans must come to America.
Probably the most characteristically American thing a summer visitor from Europe will see in our dining-rooms is the eating of green corn off the cob. To be sure, he might see the same thing in visiting the Hindoos or South Africans; but they are imitators, we the originators of this delectable habit.
In saying "we" I mean Americans in the broadest sense of the word, including the red Indians. It was they who first cultivated corn, in the central part of our hemisphere. From there it came north, and Columbus took it to Europe, whence it reached the other continents. They call it maize in Europe, mealies in South Africa. In England "corn" means wheat, in Scotland oats, those being their principal crops respectively. In America the main crop still is, as it was twenty centuries ago, Indian corn, which therefore is of all things edible the most thoroughly American. Three cheers for corn!
In Italy, two-thirds of the rural population subsist mainly on corn, which is, however, eaten nearly always as polenta (mush), alone or with cheese, fish, or meat; whereas we have on our tables an almost endless variety of corn and corn products.
The red man set the example. He ate green corn. He made a mush of ripe corn, pounding it, either parched or unparched, into a coarse meal. He mixed it diversely with pumpkins, nuts, berries, and other foods. Succotash is an Indian name which we borrowed from him, together with the dish it denotes—beans and unripe corn cooked together. The site of Montreal was once an Indian cornfield. In the "dreadful winter" of 1620-21 the colonists in Plymouth bought "eight hogsheads of corne and beanes" from the Indians, who taught them "bothe ye manner how to set it and after how to dress and tend it."
Yet the most imaginative Indian could never have dreamt of how amazingly their successors on the soil would multiply the uses of corn, for the table and for countless industrial uses. We now have cook books concerned solely with corn foods.
Mark Twain's appetizing list of the American dishes he missed in Europe, to which reference was made in the first chapter of this book, includes five made of corn: pone, hoe-cake, green corn on the ear, green corn cut from the ear and served with butter and pepper, and hominy. Among those he surely would have mentioned also, had he happened to recall their merits at the moment, are samp, gruel, hulled corn, or lye hominy, Indian pudding, hasty pudding, pop-corn, succotash, Boston brown bread, griddle cakes, johnnycake, mock oysters, cream of corn, Kentucky corn dodgers, and cornmeal gems.
Welcome as all these specialties and many others are on American tables—fried mush and hominy are particularly to be commended to those who know not how tasty they are for breakfast, or as a dinner course, occasionally, in place of the everlasting potatoes—none of them—not even genuine pone—is quite so luscious as green corn.
It may not be "elegant" to eat sweet corn off the cob, but that is the only way to get its full Flavor. There is delicious fragrance in the juicy cob, too, and in the bosom of your family it is permissible (and decidedly advisable) to suck it. Sugar cane and oranges are not the only things that are best when sucked.
American horticultural ingenuity has achieved wonders in developing varieties of sweet corn with new refinements of Flavor. A few years ago C. D. Keller, of Toledo, Ohio, originated a new kind which he called the "Howling Mob," which "peculiar but apt name," in the words of Mr. Burpee, "refers to the vociferous demand for the ears when Mr. Keller takes them to market."
Great, indeed, is the demand in American markets, homes, and hotels for green corn, and much ingenuity has further been expended in rearing early and late varieties so as to make the season as long as possible. Between the early Malakoff, from Siberia, and the late Country Gentleman, there are dozens of desirable varieties the characteristics of which are described in the catalogues of our seedsmen. The last-named has long been considered the sweetest of all kinds, but the new Golden Bantam is a formidable rival. Its color, which makes it look like ordinary field corn, is against it, but those who have once tasted it, sing its praises forevermore.
It is related that the Rev. Sidney Smith's parishioners did not want him to visit America for fear that the allurements of canvasback duck might tempt him to remain. Sweet corn, also, might have alienated his patriotic affections. Covent Garden, to be sure, sometimes offers so-called green corn, but England has too cool nights and not enough sunshine to develop the Flavor of this vegetable.
Even in America, where it grows to perfection, pains must be taken if one wants to get that Flavor at its best. All who have lived in the country agree with Dr. Wiley's dictum that "there is only one way to eat Indian corn. That is to go out just before sun-up and harvest the ears, and have them boiled for early breakfast. To people in cities who have never eaten freshly harvested Indian corn, such an experience would be a revelation."
Not only do corn cobs that are kept a day or two before eating lose much of their precious fragrance, but, as the same eminent chemist informs us, "corn which is perfectly sweet and delicious at the moment of harvest, has been found to lose half of its sugar within twenty-four hours."
Those who find sweet corn indigestible do not know how to eat it. If a sharp knife is pressed on each row of kernels the skin—which is the indigestible part—is cut and remains on the cob.
While the demand for sweet corn is ever on the increase and fortunes are made by those who grow or handle the best—that is, the most agreeably flavored—sorts, the foods made of ripe dried corn are not eaten so generally as they ought to be, at least in the Northern States.
It is desirable that everybody should know the interesting reason for the fact, known to all, that the South is more addicted than the North to the eating of dishes made of corn.
That reason is very simple: corn bread in the South is made of meal which has more Flavor than the meal sold in the Northern States, and is therefore more appetizing and wholesome.
Why is its Flavor better? Because it is made of ground corn from which only the indigestible hulls have been removed by bolting, whereas in the making of meal for Northern markets, the millers remove also the germ which contains the fat and most of the Flavor of corn, besides its most important mineral contents. They have contrived a diabolical machine known as the "degerminator" for the special purpose of bolting out the germs, that is, the very heart and soul, of the corn.
If I add that, in the words of Dr. Charles D. Woods, Director of the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station "from the manufacturer's standpoint the removal of the germ does not represent a loss, as it is used for the manufacture of gluten feeds—so important for live stock—and corn oil, which has many industrial uses and is used to some extent as a salad oil and as a culinary fat"—the reader will begin to suspect one reason why the millers market cornmeal from which its most valuable constituent has been removed.
But there is another reason for this dastardly crime and that is that "the germ lowers the keeping quality of the meal because its abundant fat easily becomes rancid."
In other words cornmeal made for sale in the North is denatured deliberately in order that the miller and the grocer may not run the risk of having a few sacks of it spoil on their hands occasionally! The consumer is not considered at all.
Ungastronomic America has meekly submitted to this outrage, largely because the facts of the case are not generally known. Gastronomic Americans, whose numbers are increasing rapidly, will insist on their rights, refusing to buy cornmeal from which most of the Flavor has been eliminated, and the North will in time eat as much corn bread as the South.
Personally, I agree with those who think it even more tasty than wheat bread. The only advantage wheat has is that, with yeast or baking powder, it can be made into a lighter and more porous loaf; but this advantage can be neutralized by baking the corn bread in thin cakes; and corn bread thus made is far more digestible than loaves of wheat bread as ordinarily made in America. A good quality of it is also much more easily and more quickly made at home. Soldiers and campers prefer it, partly for this reason. "It has been said," writes Dr. Woods, "that johnny cake is a corruption of journey cake, and that corn bread was so called because it could be so easily prepared on the road."[1]
Our breakfasts, more than other meals, are made delectable by diverse corn dishes. Corn flakes, properly made are more flavorful than any others, and of all the varieties of griddle cakes, so dear to the American palate, none quite equals those made of corn. If these are at present seen less frequently on bills of fare than are wheat, rice, or buckwheat cakes, it is because of the way in which cornmeal is usually deprived of what most appeals to the palate.
Griddle cakes made of wheat are widely known as flannel cakes. I have never eaten any woolen stuff, but I imagine it might taste a good deal like the average "flannel" cake, though it would be much lighter. The French and German pancakes are far superior to our wheat cakes; but even to these I prefer the American corn griddle cakes, for which the whites of egg have been beaten stiff and added gradually; and I bask in the proud consciousness that my preference is thoroughly patriotic.
The liking for buckwheat cakes is to me a mystery and always has been, although as a boy I used to eat them with rich sausage gravy, which made them palatable. Buckwheat cakes are not eaten so much as they used to be, so maybe I am not alone in disliking them. For the gratification of those who do like them I quote from the New York "Sun" a characteristically American communication from "Middle Aged":
I saw in a store window to-day a sign "New Buckwheat," so I know people still eat buckwheat; but I doubt if it is as much eaten as it was in years back, say in the days when I was a youngster.
We always had buckwheat cakes for breakfast. Mother, sometimes father, used to stir the batter the night before in a curious tall, round, straight sided, brown earthenware pot with a handle on it, which was sacredly reserved for that purpose. I have never seen anywhere at any time another pot just like that one; and then it was set in just the right spot by the kitchen stove, for the batter to rise through the night.
In the morning they thinned this batter out just a little with water and then they fried the cakes; in our house on a long double griddle that covered two stove holes and on which you could cook two or three cakes at a time.
Every morning in winter we had those buckwheat cakes, light as a feather, and with them we always had sausages or pork chops; and such sausages and pork chops I have never seen since. Sausages, not as you see them nowadays as big around as a cigar and filled with some sort of pasty material, but big sausages stuffed with meat chopped coarse and that burst open when you fried them as if anxious to reveal to you their delightful, savory richness—I hope it is given to you to be able to recall such sausages; and pork chops from pigs country raised on nearby farms, a delight to the taste and always tender.
Whichever we had that morning, whether sausages or pork chops, we ate the sausage or the pork chop gravy on the cakes. Really the recollection moves me. My smiling mother—Heaven bless her!—never stinted me on the cakes; she gave me all I could eat. My father when I asked him for another sausage would sometimes ask me good-naturedly if I didn't think I had had enough; but he always handed over the sausage. And now, if you won't think I am quite a pig, I would like to say that I used to eat the last plate not with gravy but with butter and molasses on them; later we came to have syrup. And this sort of breakfast never did me any harm. There is a popular delusion that the ostrich has the hardiest of all stomachs, but really his would not for a moment bear comparison with that of the growing, outdoors boy.
The serving of sausages and pork chops with griddle cakes is not so customary as it used to be; usually the cakes, whether wheat, buckwheat, rice, or corn, are now eaten with some kind of syrup.
The syrup served with our griddle cakes is as characteristically American as the cakes themselves, or as the endless variety of cereal breakfast foods, one or the other of which nearly every American eats daily, with cream and sugar, and which foreigners know nothing about.[20]
Strictly speaking, a syrup is "the direct product of the evaporation of the juice of a sugar-yielding plant or tree without the removal of any of the sugar," whereas molasses is "the saccharine product which is separated from sugar in the process of manufacture." Commercial "syrup" is usually a mixture of syrup, molasses (of which there are many grades) and other things. Much of it is injurious to health, and housewives who wish to see nothing unwholesome on their breakfast tables should read what Dr. Wiley has to say on this subject, on pp. 472-482 of his "Foods and Their Adulteration."
The sap of sugar cane and sorghum is usually good and safe, besides being American. Even more so is the sap of the maple.
George Washington and Bret Harte were not more thoroughly and exclusively American than is the Acer saccharinum, or sugar maple tree. Europe nor any other continent has aught to match it. The sugar made from its sap is one of the delicacies discovered by the American Indian. The early white settlers learned from him how to make it, and for many years it was the only sugar they had. It was "dark and ill-tasting" compared with the best modern product.
In their appeal to the sense of taste all sweet syrups are alike. It is their fragrance, their Flavor, that makes us prefer some kinds to others. The Flavor of maple syrup has been much improved, and is still being improved, by perfecting the methods of tapping the tree, gathering the sap, boiling it, and storing the sweet product.
Uncle Sam has not neglected this important branch of national gastronomic industry. His chemists have been at work to ascertain the causes of the souring of the sap under certain conditions, and to explain why the later runs do not have so pleasant a Flavor as the earlier ones. They have found it in the action of micro-organisms.
While I was writing this chapter I received from Washington Farmers' Bulletin 516, a brochure of 46 pages in which the making of maple syrup and sugar is fully discussed, with detailed directions for securing the best-flavored product.[21] As in the making of butter, many things have to be done and many avoided to get the best results, but they are worth the trouble.
The demand for genuine maple sugar is great, and would be much greater still if adulteration were not so much practised. In 1910, according to the U. S. Census Reports, the maple syrup production of the country was 4,106,418 gallons, and in addition to this there were made over 14,000,000 pounds of maple sugar.
In that year Ohio led all the States in the production of maple syrup, followed by New York, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire. In many other States it can be made in paying quantities. Farmers are advised to attend to this industry as a source of extra income. In the Bulletin just referred to, attention is called to two important economic considerations: "The season of production comes at a time of the year when little or no other work can be done on the farm, thus allowing the aid of the family and farm help for the boiling and manufacture. Moreover, since the sugar bushes as a general rule are situated on hilly country that would not be suitable for any other crop, these two items could hardly be placed at a high value in a table of costs."
Every farmer who lives in a State and region where the sugar maple prospers should secure Bulletin 516 through his representative in Washington. By attending strictly to the matter of delicate Flavor, not only can the industry be enormously increased at home but foreign markets can easily be won. Adulteration must, however, be severely curbed. Under present conditions American epicures do not put their faith in grocers but get their annual supplies early every year direct from the producer. It is best when freshly made, and unless put in cans and sealed while still hot it gradually loses its Flavor. Syrup made of dissolved maple sugar is often used, but it is less delicately flavored than that which is made at once from the sap.
The sugar bush.
Many a time have I thanked Heaven that I was brought up in the country. How I pity those persons who, in the days of their youth, had no chance to kneel before an Acer saccharinum, as I did in my Missouri days (only a few miles from Mark Twain's birthplace, by the way) and drink in the nectar as it trickled through the spout into my mouth. It was more glorious even than it was some years later to suck fresh Oregon cider from a barrel through a straw.
Is pie as thoroughly American as maple syrup, griddle cakes, and corn bread?
An American is likely to answer "Yes," while an Englishman might say "No."
In the English "Who's Who" the "recreations" of most of the eminent men and women of the time in Europe and America are referred to. Had Théophile Gautier lived to be included in that volume, he would have probably named among his favorite recreations "reading the dictionary," to which he is said to have been much addicted. I could never quite see the fun of this diversion till I made the acquaintance of Murray's wonderful Oxford dictionary, which traces the meaning and history of every word back through the centuries.
Nothing, surely, could be more interesting, for instance, than to read in this work that the first reference to apple pie, so far as known, was as far back as 1590, when Greene, in his "Arcadia," wrote the line: "Thy breath is like the steame of apple-pyes"—thus proving himself, as I may add, an epicure as well as a poet and a lover.
On another page we read: "The pie appears to have been at first of meat or fish; doubtful or undefined uses appear in 16th century; fruit pies (also called, especially in the north of England and Ireland, in Scotland, and often in the United States, tarts) appear before 1600, the earliest being Apple-Pie."
Were these apple pyes the same as the American apple pie of our day? I doubt it. If they had been, the Britons of our time certainly would make the same kind, but they don't. Their substitute for our fruit pie is the tart, which has only one crust and is otherwise different.
Even if it could be proved that we got our fruit pie from England, shape, contents, and all, I still would claim it as a national American dish—American by right of conquest, improvement, and countrywide use. Millions of American families eat it daily, at lunch or at dinner. The poet Emerson even ate it at breakfast, and when a guest refused it, he was surprised and exclaimed: "What is pie for?"
You can make a fruit pie in the American style in Great Britain or on the Continent, but you cannot duplicate its excellence, for the simple reason that European fruit is rarely as tasty as American fruit.
It must be admitted that in the making of a light, digestible crust most American cooks could learn a lesson from foreign pastry cooks, who would advise them, among other things, to partly bake the lower crust or glaze it with white of egg before the fruit is put in. But, after all, the Flavor of the fruit is the all-important thing, and in that the American pie is supreme.
The Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, in his eloquent sermon on apple pie, exclaimed: "But, oh! be careful of the paste! Let it be not like putty, nor rush to the other extreme and make it so flaky that one holds his breath while eating, for fear of blowing it away. Let it not be plain as bread, yet not rich like cake."
Has ever an English divine paid such attention to pie? No; the apple pie is ours, as much as our flag.
But alack and alas, the apple pie is often insulted and maltreated in its own bailiwick by being over-seasoned. Beecher called attention to the fact that "it will accept almost every flavor of every spice," and he mentioned nutmeg, cinnamon, and lemon as among those which it is permissible to use.
"Permissible," yes, but most inadvisable. You may say it is a matter of taste, and that you have a right to put as much nutmeg, cinnamon, or lemon extract into your pie or your apple sauce as you please. If you make it for yourself and your family, yes; but not if you make it for a restaurant. The spices named are penetrating and monopolistic; even in small quantities they obliterate the natural Flavor of the apple, or at least modify it in a way obnoxious to those true epicures who like their fruit dishes au naturel, just as they like prime cuts of butcher's meats without obtrusive sauces, and sausage mild-flavored, without the screaming sage or too much pepper.
Nutmeg is the spice with which our apple pie is most frequently alloyed. An alloy is defined as "anything that reduces purity or excellence." If you put nutmeg into apple pie or sauce, you make it taste always the same, be it made of European or American fruit or of this or that variety of apples. Now, to an epicure the best thing about apple pie or sauce is that when served without spice it retains the peculiar Flavor of the kind of apple it is made from.
To go to your grocer and buy "cooking apples" is almost as bad as to ask for "cooking butter." The best butter and the best apples should always be used in the kitchen—if you can afford to buy them. If you cannot, eat oatmeal and prunes.
To those who have refined palates it makes a world of difference whether their apple pie and sauce are made of "cooking apples" or of Gravensteins, Red Astrachans, Newtown Pippins, or Spitzenbergs. Each variety—and dozens of others might be named—has its own special charm; and the same is true of pies and sauces made of other fruits.
In the baking of pumpkin pie, which, next to that made of apples, is perhaps the most characteristically American pie, mace (which is derived from the covering of the nutmeg seed) or some other spice, is not only permissible but commendable; while mince pie, which we borrowed from the English but eat probably oftener than they do, is such a jumble of condiments—sugar, raisins, currants, almonds, apples, lemon and orange juice and peel, molasses, suet, quince jelly, and other things ad libitum—that it makes little difference what you add in the way of mace, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, or other spices within reason. Time was when caraway seeds, saffron, rosewater, ambergris, and other impossible things were added. As made now, mince pie is as agreeable to most palates as it is indigestible. I am told it can be made so as to be easily digestible, but I "hae ma doots."
Some years ago mince pie was dignified by being made the subject of a political squabble in Washington. Dr. Wiley wanted a definition of "normal mincemeat," and thirty manufacturers were summoned to testify. Evidently some of these manufacturers were making mincemeat without the chopped meat which is an essential ingredient of the best home-made article, for they engaged a trained lexicographer, Prof. C. D. Childs, of the University of Pennsylvania, to prepare a treatise on mince pie, in which it was demonstrated that mincemeat does not necessarily contain meat.
The definition in Murray's Oxford Dictionary is "a mixture made of currants, raisins, sugar, suet, apples, almonds, candied peel, etc., and sometimes meat chopped small; used in mince pies"; which shows that in England, also, meat is not always an ingredient. It is only fair to consumers, however, that the law should compel the manufacturers to print the ingredients in each case on the label. Mince pie with meat is certainly better than mince pie without.
Perhaps I erred in saying that pumpkin pie is, next to apple pie, the most characteristic American pastry dish. It certainly is not more so than cranberry pie.
The cranberry is not exclusively American, like maple syrup, terrapin, and canvasback duck, for it grows in some parts of Europe; but it remained for American epicures to discover its rare gastronomic merits. It took genius to do this, for in its natural wild state the berry is excessively astringent and acid. But it had a Flavor that made an irresistible appeal and invited further cultivation. Particularly agreeable is the Oxycoccus erythrocarpus, a variety which grows in the mountains of Virginia and Georgia. The European berries, though they used to be abundant in England, were neglected because of their inferior Flavor, and England now imports cranberries in large quantities from the United States, as do France, Italy, and Germany, chiefly for tarts.
Cape Cod is now the chief camping ground of the cranberry. It has been doubled in size by cultivation, and its Flavor improved by enriching and draining the soil, and in other ways. The annual production is about three million bushels. Thanks to the growing demand for them, bog lands which were worth $5 an acre now sell at $300 to $700 per acre.
The darker the berry the richer the flavor. Once upon a time I wrote a book on Romantic Love and Personal Beauty in which I tried to prove that brunettes are more beautiful than blondes. I am not sure that I succeeded—there are certainly some ravishing exceptions!—but in the matter of foods there can be no doubt that as a rule the dark are finer than the light colored.
Does not Boston, the center of American culture, give its name to brown bread, and does not Boston prefer dark eggs to the anemic white ones favored in New York? Does any one who has had the good sense to buy "rusty" oranges and grapefruit deny that they are sweeter and more fragrant than the light yellow ones? Ask any epicure if he does not think the second joint of a fowl is more savory than the white meat. Bread which has a deep brown crust is more tasty than pale crumb. Crackers toasted brown are more appetizing than crackers untoasted. English rusks, German zwieback, Italian breadsticks, are they not all brunettes? Do not all vegetables, fruits, and berries darken as they ripen and develop their flavor?
The darkest cranberries therefore are the ones you want to buy. And be sure that your cook in preparing cranberry sauce or jelly presses the pulp through a sieve to remove the indigestible skins. It is only when they are cooked whole and candied with an equal weight of sugar that the skins may be left on them.
Cranberry sauce is in America associated inseparably with turkey, and the turkey is another of our gastronomic specialties.
Benjamin Franklin argued that the turkey—which is surely a finer bird than the eagle, less vicious, and infinitely more useful—should have been adopted as the emblem of the United States, for it is a truly indigenous and national bird. In Franklin's day "the log cabin of the pioneer was surrounded by these birds, saluting each other in the early morning from the treetops."
Those were gala times for hunters and epicures, when wild turkeys used to fly in flocks of hundreds!
They owe their name to the notion, once current, that they came to Europe from Asia. But it is now established beyond doubt that they are aboriginal Americans. It did not take the Spaniards long to find out their value, for, little more than a quarter of a century after Columbus discovered this Continent, they took some of the birds across the sea to their own country and thence the turkey soon made its way to other parts of Europe. Records show that in England, in 1541, the turkey was enumerated among the dainties, while in 1573 it had become the customary fare of the farmer.
"The turkey is beyond doubt one of the finest presents the New World has made the Old," wrote the best-known of French epicures, Brillat-Savarin; and in his "Physiologie du Gout" he has a chapter in which he proudly relates how he shot one of these birds. It was in 1794; he was visiting a friend at Hartford, Connecticut, who took him out hunting one day, after having treated him on the previous evening to a dinner one course of which consisted of the entirely American corned beef, which the eminent epicure found "splendid."
They shot some fat tender partridges and seven gray squirrels, "which are highly esteemed in this country"; then he had his chance at the turkey, bagged it, took it back to Hartford and had it cooked for some guests who kept exclaiming: "Very good! Exceedingly good! Oh, dear sir, what a glorious bit."
BRILLAT-SAVARIN
Though he had a high opinion of his own judgment in matters gastronomic, Brillat-Savarin was much pleased when a friend of his, M. Bose, who lived in Carolina, contributed to the "Annales d'Agriculture" of Feb. 28, 1821, an article which confirmed his own judgment as to the superiority of the American turkey to the bird as reared in France, attributing this superiority to the fact that the American turkey roamed the woods freely and thus gained a finer Flavor than the domesticated bird has.
Unfortunately, it took American poultry raisers several generations to realize the full significance of this fact. All was well so long as there were plenty of wild turkeys, the flesh of which was of perfect savor, especially during the autumn, when they lived largely on pecan nuts. All was well, too, so long as the farms were few and scattered, and there was interbreeding of wild and domesticated birds. But the time came when the turkeys degenerated, owing to excessive inbreeding and too close confinement. It is only within a few years that farmers have begun to heed the advice that "it is better to send a thousand miles for a new male than to risk the chances of inbreeding," and to restore to the turkey his forest freedom.
"While our present-day turkeys are classed as 'domestic fowls, they are rather semi-domestic when compared with other poultry," writes T. F. McGrew.[22]
It is this semi-game quality of the best turkeys that make them so dear to the epicure. Brillat-Savarin's verdict is that the turkey, "though not the most tender, is the most tasty of all the farm fowls,"—and few will disagree with him.
For the benefit of the rapidly growing number of farmers who increase their income by raising turkeys, I will cite the words of an expert which sum up the philosophy of the subject:
The flavor of all turkeys raised by careful farmers within five or six years is much finer than in the run down stock raised by old fogy farmers. The improvement in flavor has also been accompanied by an increase in size and tenderness. This is due to the admixture of the strain from wild turkeys from Canada and the South and the Southwest and to the modern system of keeping the birds out of doors as much as possible and giving them opportunities for getting plenty of mast and the seeds of wild and cultivated plants and pure water from brooks and streams kept clear from noxious plants and sewage.
Birds thus reared bring fancy prices—a point to which I shall recur in the next chapter under "Feeding Flavor Into Food."
It has been customary for a long time for patriotic persons to send to the President of the United States choice turkeys for the Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. Woodrow Wilson received one in December, 1912, from Kentucky which weighed forty-three pounds and had been nurtured "as befits a King Gobbler," on sweet chestnuts, with celery and pepper to improve its Flavor.
The Guinea fowl is another bird which must roam wild to do well, and which consequently has a gamy Flavor, like the semi-domestic turkey. Though not an aboriginal American, it has become acclimated. It is an African cousin of the turkey.
In his useful treatise on "The Guinea Fowl and Its Use as Food" (Farmers' Bulletin No. 234), Dr. Langworthy states that in Jamaica and some other regions the Guinea birds "have gone back to their wild state and are hunted in their season as game birds. They are also well known as game birds in England, where large flocks are sometimes kept in game preserves."
On the continent they are more domesticated and are raised in large numbers for the markets of France, Austria, and Germany. What we want in our markets, however, is not the domesticated Guinea fowl so much as the half-wild. We have plenty of other good barnyard birds, including the savory squab, but we are woefully short of game, and the Guinea fowl, more than the turkey, comes to the rescue. While the mature bird has its own gamy Flavor, the chicks resemble young quail, and the eggs are a good deal like the highly valued plover eggs. Even the domesticated birds retain a surprising number of their wild traits and on this bird, therefore, we may have to depend largely for our game of the future.
To the deplorable condition of our present game market I referred briefly in the chapter on Germany, where they do things so much better. In New York, quail (so abundant until a few years ago) are now imported from far-away Egypt, and grouse from Scotland, while prices have gone up like rockets.
In Louisiana alone it was computed that over 4,265,000 game birds were killed in the season 1909-1910. Mrs. Russell Sage's generous gift of $150,000 secured Marsh Island as a refuge for the wild fowl. Others have helped the cause, and the Government's efforts are thus summed up in Circular No. 87 of the Bureau of Biological Survey:
For purposes of administration the bird reservations are grouped in six districts: (1) The Gulf district, including 10 reservations in Florida, 4 in Louisiana, and 1 in Porto Rico; (2) the Lake district, including 2 in Michigan, 2 in North Dakota, and 1 in Wisconsin; (3) the Mountain district, including 12 in the Rocky Mountain States, South Dakota, and Nebraska; (4) the Pacific district, including 3 in California, 4 in Oregon, and 8 in Washington; (5) the Alaska district, including 8 reservations; and (6) the Hawaiian district, including 1 reservation. Wardens are stationed on the more important reservations and the National Association of Audubon Societies ... coöperates actively with the Department of Agriculture in protecting the birds.
There is a special periodical, the "Gamebreeders' Magazine," devoted to the task of replenishing our stock of wild animals, which was for so many generations one of the chief assets of Gastronomic America. There are also Breeders' Associations which are planning to make American game, feathered and unfeathered, abundant once more. No one can ever bring back the large flocks of wild turkeys, the pigeons that darkened the skies, the herds of countless buffaloes; but we can at least bring back in part our former abundance of some kinds of game by following European methods.
The Government is also ready to help by supplying, without charge, birds to be liberated and allowed to multiply in various places. Our native birds are, of course, best adapted for this purpose, but what can be done with imported birds is shown in Farmers' Bulletin No. 390, in which Henry Oldys of the Biological Survey tells the interesting story of how the Chinese and English pheasants have been made to feel at home in Oregon and in other States, where they have become permanent additions to the game list.
"Deer Farming in the United States" is another valuable Farmers' Bulletin (No. 330), by D. E. Lantz. Its object is thus summed up:
As a result of the growing scarcity of game animals in this country the supply of venison is wholly inadequate to the demand, and the time seems opportune for developing the industry of deer farming, which may be made profitable alike to the State and the individuals engaged therein. The raising of venison for market is as legitimate a business as the growing of beef and mutton, and State laws, when prohibitory, as many of them are, should be so modified as to encourage the industry. Furthermore, deer and elk may be raised to advantage in forests and on rough, brushy ground unfitted for either agriculture or stock raising, thus utilizing for profit much land that is now waste. An added advantage is that the business is well adapted to landowners of small means.
Mr. Lantz is convinced that, with favorable legislation, "this excellent and nutritious meat, instead of being denied to 99 per cent. of the population of the country, may become as common and as cheap in our markets as mutton."
Every inch an American is the Homarus Americanus. There are not so many inches of him as there used to be, but that makes him none the less precious. The Pilgrim lobsters "five or six feet long," ascribed to New York Bay in the days of Olaus Magnus, are now classed as a myth, but four-foot lobsters (measured from the tip of the claws to the end of the tail) have been caught. Such a giant weighs about thirty-four pounds.
The American lobster was originally found only on the eastern coast of North America. These lobster grounds some seven thousand miles, including the curves of the shore, were the finest the world has ever seen. In Canada alone a hundred million lobsters have been captured in a year.
In one respect the lobster differs strangely from other creatures of sea and land. Like the eel, he is a scavenger of the deep, but while the eel is often offensive to the taste because of this feeding habit, the lobster is always sweet. "Nothing could be more offensive to the human nostril," writes Dr. Francis Hobart Herrick,[23] "than the netted balls of slack-salted, semi-decomposing herring, which are commonly used as bait on the coast and islands of Maine, but by the wonderful chemical processes which are continually going on in the laboratory of its body, the lobster is able to transmute such products of organic decay into the most delicate and palatable flesh."
Were it not for this alchemistic marvel the most plutocratic restaurants in the United States, especially those which cater to the persons who sup after the theater, would never have become known as Lobster Palaces. The lobster served in these places, plain boiled, broiled, à la Newburg, and in other ways, is one of those characteristic American foods which foreign epicures not only envy but enjoy, though they cannot have our crustaceans as fresh as we do.
It has been well said that "the story of the lobster in its progress from the fisherman's pots on the Maine coast to the grills and silver chafing-dishes on Broadway is the whole story in miniature of the high cost of living under an artificial economic condition." The lobsterman gets a little over ten cents a pound. "The wholesaler doubles the price, the retailer trebles it, and in the end the restaurant-keeper marks it up 1,000 per cent. above the first cost, charging patrons $1.50 a portion for what the lobsterman was paid a tenth of that sum."
To this extortion I, for one, refuse to submit. In the market you can buy a lobster for one quarter to one-third the price charged in most restaurants. You can make sure he is alive—never buy a dead lobster, though they say he is safe to eat if his tail is curled and springs back when pulled. To kill him by plunging him in boiling water may seem cruel, but is no more so than other ways, and is certainly infinitely less so than the usual way—which should be forbidden—of letting him perish slowly in a barrel, or on ice.
Canned lobster is a food a wise man avoids, though, to be sure, he runs perhaps no greater risk in eating it than in consuming many other things, tinned or untinned. Millions of dollars' worth of canned lobsters, crabs, and salmon are eaten every year.
A new American delicacy hails from Canada: lobster rarebit, a compound of certain parts of the lobster which had previously been thrown away as waste by the canners. The annual output of canned lobster by the Eastern Provinces of Canada now amounts to about ten million cans, worth about $3,000,000. Lobster rarebit, which is said to be a highly appetizing delicacy, easily digested and nourishing may, it is believed, in time equal the money value of canned lobsters. Consul Frank Deedmeyer, of Charlottetown, gave these details at the time when lobster rarebit was first introduced:
Canned lobster, as known to the trade, consists of the meat taken from the claws and the tail. The whole of the body proper is now rejected by the packers, and it has heretofore been used in the maritime Provinces of Canada as a fertilizer. In the rejected portion is found a crescent-shaped meaty layer to which the tail is attached and the liver. Lobster rarebit is a compound of this meaty layer, of the liver, and of the roe, to which some spice is added. The first named of the components used is the fattest part of the crustacean; the liver, glandular, is large and retains a high percentage of bile. The number of eggs found in a lobster is estimated from 5,000 to 40,000, according to size. The three ingredients are mixed in these proportions: Six-tenths meat, three-tenths liver, and one-tenth roe.
While the efforts to propagate the Atlantic lobster have met with scant success on the Pacific Coast there are other marine delicacies to console those who dwell on the shore from Southern California to Washington and British Columbia; among them the abalone of Catalina, which makes delicious soup, the razor clam and monster specimens of other clams in Washington waters, oysters, huge crabs, and above all, crawfish.