Rice Field Turkey
No game dish had more mystique in the Lowcountry. From 1895 to 1930 it was the invariable centerpiece of a holiday feast. Archibald Rutledge, the South’s foremost writer of hunting tales, during the early decades of the 20th century, rhapsodized about its flavor in the pages of Field and Stream: “if there is any better wild game than a rice-field wild turkey, stuffed with peanuts, circled with browned sweet potatoes, and fragrant with rich gravy that plantation cooks know how to make, I’ll follow you to it” [“The Twenty-Five Pound Gobbler,” Field & Forest, Classic Hunting Stories (Stephen J. Bodio, ed), p42.] The flavor of these turkeys distinguished them from the feed lot product that began to flood American grocers in the late 1920s. Their flesh was inflected by a peculiar mix of ingredients that sprang up in the abandoned rice fields left after the crash of the Carolina rice planting world on the eve of World War 1. Rutledge notes—“Here on the Carolina coast, along the great delta of the Santee, fast areas of former rice-lands are overgrown to white marsh, duck oats, wampee, wild rice, smartweed, and other aquatic foods. In almost impenetrable cover like this most of our turkeys spend the day” [“The Wrong Gobbler,” America’s Greatest Game Bird (James A. Casada, ed.), p192]. Volunteer rice that grew up until it naturalized fattened the birds. The rice field turkey came into being feeding on the carcass of the southern rice industry. It would last only until the biological succession that operates automatically in the coastal zone turned the watery fields into a forested swamp or coastal bog. Maybe 30 years.
The rice world was sputtering at the turn of the 20th century, and plantation after plantation ceased cultivation for financial reasons, storms, or the deaths of old planters. So it is, perhaps, not surprising to find the dish first listed on a public event menu in 1906. The heyday of its cult was the 1920s when a Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Years Feast could not command respect without one on the bill of fare. By the mid 1930s it was a rarity. Heavier, plumper birds were being shipped in from out of state. In a 1936 newspaper lament, “The Price of the Gobbler,” a news writer observes, “Charlestonians and other South Carolinians will eat for Thanksgiving dinner many turkeys which come from other states, for South Carolina does not produce enough turkeys for its own demand . . . Other things being equal, it is much better for the South Carolinian to buy a South Carolina turkey. If he can get a “rice field” turkey, he will come into a bird of superior flavor, but few are the ‘rice field’ turkeys notwithstanding the emphasis in some places.” Indeed one would not be advertised in the Charleston, Savannah, or Wilmington markets after the Thanksgiving of 1936. It would recede into the realm of legend—tasted only by those select few who kept home rice growing on private fields. And such rarities were never sold to strangers.
A Thanksgiving Menu from the Charleston Hotel 1920
Canape Caviar -- Bull Bay Oysters
Celery -- Salted Almonds -- Olives
Mock Turtle, aux Quenelles -- Consommé, Royal
Boiled Kennebec, Salmon, Hollandaise Sauce -- Potatoes Natural
Boiled Leg of Mutton, Caper Sauce -- Compote or Rice, with Peaches
Braised Suckling Pig, Green Apple Sauce
Pineapple Punch
Prime Ribs of Western Beef, a la Anglaise
Roast Rice Field Turkey, Stuffed Oyster Dressing
Cranberry Sauce
Candied Yams -- Mashed Potatoes -- Steamed Rice -- Cauliflower au Gratin
New Butter Beans -- Green Pease
Neopolitan Fruit Jelly, Cream Dressing -- Layer Raisins -- Mixed Nuts
Pulled Figs -- English Plum Pudding, Old Fashion Sauce
Diplomatic Pudding, Cardinal Sauce
Apple Pie -- Mince Pie -- Pumpkin Pie
Pound Cake -- Fruit Cake -- Macaroons
Orange Sherbet -- Assorted Cakes -- Peach Ice Cream
[Charleston Evening Post, November 24, 1920), 12]