ISSUE 79, FOODS OF FLORIDA, Part 3: A Northerner Looks at Florida Cookery 1900
A Northerner Looks at Florida Cookery 1900
When thinking about the cookery of a state, we tend to emphasize what distinguishes its food from that of other states. In Florida, tropicality is foregrounded, and the citrus, avocados, mangos, arrowroot, Seminole pumpkins, grove peppers, and datil peppers dominate discussions. Yet by the dawn of the twentieth century, the population of the state had become primarily Anglo-American, migrating from other parts of the eastern seaboard, particularly the South. In 1900 when a visitor from the Midwest commented on the food of Florida, what struck him was the typicality of its southern character.
When we read this March 22 article on “Florida Cookery” published in the Ohio Farmer, we must keep in mind an American national cookery that had beef, not pork, as the chief meat, wheat, not corn, as the chief grain, the potato, not the sweet potato and the boss tuber, lettuce, not collards, as the favored green, garden peas, not field peas as the prime pulse. Yes this author saw a lot of departure from his sense of American food in “Florida Cookery,” but we who have lived long in the South recognized this as the broad regional culinary dialect, not the specifically Floridian.
FLORIDA COOKERY
To the Northerner visiting Florida for the first time some of the food served on Southern tables is far from appetizing and different from that to which he is accustomed that some time is required to learn to like or even eat it. In place of the Irish potatoes seen on every table in the North, there is a dish of grits or hominy, as the very coarse corn mean or cracked corn is called. Instead of eating it with cream and sugar as the Northerner would, the Southern people cover it with fat, fried from fat salt pork or bacon, and eat the slice of bacon with it.
Baked sweet potatoes are always on hand, to be eaten hot or cold, often simply peeled and eaten from the hand “just so,” as they express it, meaning that they are eaten without anything on them. The sweet potatoes are sometimes boiled and simmered down in a little syrup, or fried, but the crowning dish is a sweet potato pone, made somewhat like a cake with eggs, syrup etc., and then baked until brown.
Corn bread is one of the essentials and is made of corn meal, water and salt, mixed with hand until rather stiff, spread in a frying pan and baked on top of the stove until brown on one side, then turned and browned on the other side. The corn bread made as in the North with soda and milk is not so well liked, but is made occasionally if a Northern guest is to be provided for, and is called muffin bread.
Yeast bread is never used except where the art of making it has been learned from some Northern friend, and it is not wo well liked as the hot biscuits, which are made the same as in the North, except that they are rolled and patted into shape in the hands instead of being cut on a bread board.
Rice is used as a vegetable with meat in place of the mashed potato of the North. Irish potatoes are not liked and so very few are raised.
‘Pillau,’ which is made of chicken boiled with rice sufficient to take up all of the broth, is a favorite dish. It is not an uncommon thing for the young people of a neighborhood to be invited to a ‘pillau’ party at night. There may be games and other amusements, but the chief attraction is the ‘pillau,’ and it is surprising to a Northerner to see what interest is evince in these gatherings, since the pillau is frequently served on the home table also.
In the summer, when there is not so much in the garden as at other times, cow peas from the field are in great demand. These are more like brown or spotted beans, growing in a long round pot eight to ten inches in length and are used as snaps or shelled peas. They have a rank, disagreeable taste when cooked with a ‘chunk of bacon’ (the Southern way), but if the shelled peas are first boiled in soda water a while, then changed to clear water and boiled until tender, and served with a dressing of cream and butter, they are very good. Garden peas are not liked.
‘Greens” of some kind are used nearly every day, the year around, and turnips, rutabagas, cabbages and collards are the kinds most commonly used. Okra, a long green pod grown from spring until frost, is well liked by Southerners, but is usually pronounced a slimy, disgusting mess by those not accustomed to it.
Perhaps the crowning dish for a Southern table is the much talked of ‘possum and taters.’ The cook must know her business or this great delicacy will be spoiled in the cooking. After the meat is nicely skinned and dressed it must stand in salted water twenty-four hours. It is then boiled until tender and browned off in the oven. Sweet potatoes are peeled and baked with the possum. A gravy is made in the pan.
‘Coon is also a favorite dish and turtle is unsurpassed. These are not the sea turtles but the smaller ones frequenting the lakes and swamps, a hard-shelled kind, called ‘cookers’ [cooters] and still another kind, which lives in deep holes in the ground, have hard shells and are called ‘gophers.” R. E. Merryman [p12].
Much of this account sounds familiar to any devotee of southern regional cookery. What is interesting is that dishes that certain southern states make particular claim over—Chicken pillau & South Caroina, Possum ‘n Taters & Georgia—are seen as Floridian and generically Southern. The comments on turtles put us in mind of the fact that the taste for turtle steak and stew and soup declined during the 20th century. But in the 21st the poaching of pond and river turtles by Asian foragers bringing them to market has brought populations perilously low for the Yellow Belly Slider and the classic Cooter.
The one observation I suspect concerns the method of making cornbread without soda. The buttermilk & soda formula is found all over Florida newspapers of the period. Maybe R. E. Merryman’s host was playing him—wringing the tail of a Yankee . . .
Photo Courtesy of the “Somewhere Down South” website: https://somewheredownsouth.com/vegetarian-purple-hull-pea-recipe/