ISSUE 65, COLONIAL COOKING, Part 2: Charleston Discovers Culinary Antiquity
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Charleston Discover Culinary AntiquityFoodlore & More is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. We tend to think of Charleston as a bastion of culinary antiquarianism, with a Moonlight and Magnolias nostalgia about the old ways and the old foods. But that sensibility developed only after the turn of the twentieth century. For one thing the culinary apogee of Lowcountry cuisine developed only after the Civil War when truck farming on the Charleston Neck gave rise to a plentitude of vegetables that made variety available to even the poorest consumer. The idea of a signature Charleston food besides rice did not even arise until 1906 when Owen Wister’s novel Lady Baltimore created a mystique around Lady Baltimore Cake. A White Cake with nuts served by Charleston’s Christian Women’s Exchange in the 1890s, it became, improbably, a central character in Wister’s romance about a male cosmopolite who visits the atavistic southern city of Kings Port (Charleston thinly veiled) and falls in love with the cake and its maker.. The hero’s aunt Carola and her “Colonial Society” had invited him to learn of the anti-modern manners and tastes of Kings Port. The cake puts him under the spell of never- never land.
ISSUE 65, COLONIAL COOKING, Part 2: Charleston Discovers Culinary Antiquity
ISSUE 65, COLONIAL COOKING, Part 2…
ISSUE 65, COLONIAL COOKING, Part 2: Charleston Discovers Culinary Antiquity
Charleston Discover Culinary AntiquityFoodlore & More is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. We tend to think of Charleston as a bastion of culinary antiquarianism, with a Moonlight and Magnolias nostalgia about the old ways and the old foods. But that sensibility developed only after the turn of the twentieth century. For one thing the culinary apogee of Lowcountry cuisine developed only after the Civil War when truck farming on the Charleston Neck gave rise to a plentitude of vegetables that made variety available to even the poorest consumer. The idea of a signature Charleston food besides rice did not even arise until 1906 when Owen Wister’s novel Lady Baltimore created a mystique around Lady Baltimore Cake. A White Cake with nuts served by Charleston’s Christian Women’s Exchange in the 1890s, it became, improbably, a central character in Wister’s romance about a male cosmopolite who visits the atavistic southern city of Kings Port (Charleston thinly veiled) and falls in love with the cake and its maker.. The hero’s aunt Carola and her “Colonial Society” had invited him to learn of the anti-modern manners and tastes of Kings Port. The cake puts him under the spell of never- never land.