February 27, 2009

HOME DINNER FOR WINTER.

Oysters on Half Shell.

Turtle Soup.

Boiled Fish and Creamed Potatoes.
Fillet of Beef and Mushrooms. French Peas. Macaroni.

Lettuce Salad. Crackers and Cheese.

Cardinal Richelieu Pudding. Fruit. Coffee.

Serve Claret and Appolinaris.

–Mrs. Charles H. Gibson’s Maryland and Virginia Cook Book. Baltimore: John Murphy & Company, 1894.

February 14, 2009

As noted in the earlier post, the diet of slaves varied widely depending on where they lived, the type of plantation they lived on, and even the years they lived. Here are some excerpts from books written by former slaves detailing their diets.

“The food of the slave is this: Every Saturday night they receive two pounds of bacon, and one peck and a half of corn meal, to last the men through the week. The women have one half pound of meat, and one peck of meal, and the children one half peck each. When this is gone, they can have no more till the end of the week. This is very little food for the slaves. They have to beg when they can; when they cannot, they must suffer. They are not allowed to go off the plantation; if they do, and are caught, they are whipped very severely, and what they have begged is taken from them.”
—Peter Randolph, Sketches Of Slave Life: Or,Illustrations
Of The ‘Peculiar Institution.’ Boston: published for the author, 1855.

“Slaves every Monday morning have a certain quantity of Indian corn handed out to them; this they grind with a handmill, and boil or use the meal as they like. The adult slaves have one salt herring allowed for breakfast, during the winter time. The breakfast hour is usually from ten to eleven o’clock. The dinner consists generally of black-eyed peas soup, as it is called. About a quart of peas is boiled in a large pan, and a small piece of meat, just to flavour the soup, is put into the pan. The next day it would be bean soup, and another day it would be Indian meal broth. The dinner hour is about two or three o’clock; the soup being served out to the men and women in bowls; but the children feed like pigs out of troughs, and being supplied sparingly, invariably fight and quarrel with one another over their meals.”
—Francis Fredric, Slave Life in Virginia and Kentucky; or, Fifty Years of Slavery in the Southern States of America. London: Wertheim, Macintosh, and Hunt, 1863.

“The supply of food given out to the slaves, was one peck of corn a week, or some equivalent, and nothing besides. They must grind their own corn, after the work of the day was performed, at a mill which stood on the plantation. We had to eat our coarse bread without meat, or butter, or milk. Severe labor alone gave us an appetite for our scanty and unpalatable fare. Many of the slaves were so hungry after their excessive toil, that they were compelled to steal food in addition to this allowance.
During the planting and harvest season, we had to work early and late. The men and women were called at three o’clock in the morning, and were worked on the plantation till it was dark at night. After that they must prepare their food for supper and for the breakfast of the next day, and attend to other duties of their own dear homes. Parents would often have to work for their children at home, aftereach day’s protracted toil, till the middle of the night, and then snatch a few hours’ sleep, to get strength for the heavy burdens of the next day. “
—Thomas H. Jones, The Experience Of Thomas H. Jones, Who Was A Slave For Forty-three Years. Boston: Bazin & Chandler, 1862.

“The slaves got their allowance every Monday night of molasses, meat, corn meal, and a kind of flour called “dredgings” or “shorts.” Perhaps this allowance would be gone before the next Monday night, in which case the slaves would steal hogs and chickens. Then would come the whipping-post. Master himself never whipped his slaves; this was left to the overseer.

We children had no supper, and only a little piece of bread or something of the kind in the morning. Our dishes consisted of one wooden bowl, and oyster shells were our spoons. This bowl served for about fifteen children, and often the dogs and the ducks and the peafowl had a dip in it. Sometimes we had buttermilk and bread in our bowl, sometimes greens or bones.”
—Annie L. Burton, Memories of Childhood’s Slavery Days. Boston: Ross Publishing Company, 1909.

February 10, 2009

“Kill your hogs when the wind is from the north-west. The night before you salt the meat take a string of red pepper and make a strong tea. (Let it remain on the stove over night.) Put in the tea 2 heaping tablespoons of saltpetre to every 2 gallons. Take this strong tea and pour on the salt. Salt the meat lightly the first time to run off the blood. Let the meat lie packed 3 days–longer, if the weather is very cold. Then overhaul the meat and put 1 teaspoon of pulverized saltpetre on the flesh side of each ham and rub in well. Then rub with molasses mixed with salt. Pack close for 10 days. After this overhaul again, rubbing each piece, and pack close again. Hang the meat in 3 weeks from the time the hogs were killed. Before hanging, wash each piece in warm water, and while wet roll in hickory ashes. Then smoke with green hickory wood, and tie up in cotton bags in February.”

—Minerva C. Fox, The Blue Grass Cook Book. New York: Fox, Duffield & Company, 1904

February 9, 2009

2 cups corn meal
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon flour
1 whole egg
l /2 teaspoon baking powder
4 tablespoons onion, (grated fine)

Mix all dry ingredients, add onion, then enough buttermilk
to make a stiff dough, add the egg, mix well then drop by spoonsfull in hot deep fat, when done they will float, lay on paper and serve with fried fish.
In Florida they fry the Hush Puppies in the grease in which
they have just fried the fish. Mrs. Jessie E. Lawson
—The American Legion Auxiliary, Beppo Arnold Knowles Post No. 32 (Greenville, MS). The Delta’s Best Cook Book. Greenville, MS, privately published. ND, probably late 1940s-early 1950s.

February 7, 2009

By 1864, inflation had rendered Confederate currency worthless, leading to desperation among Southerners living in cities, who depended on money to buy food. Judith McGuire wrote about wartime food prices in Diary of a Southern Refugee During the War by a Lady of Virginia, “Coffee is $4 per pound, and good tea from $18 to $20; butter ranges from $1.50 to $2 per pound; lard 50 cents; corn $15 per barrel; and wheat $4.50 per bushel.”

There were at least thirteen food riots in the Confederacy during the later years of the war. Jefferson Davis tried to stop a bread riot in Richmond by offering a mob of rampaging housewives money from his own pockets. His money was as worthless as theirs, and the angry mob only dispersed after Davis threatened that hastily assembled troops would open fire if they didn’t go back home.

The more wealth a family had, the less impact the food shortages had on their daily lives. Mary Boykin Chesnut, a Charleston socialite whose husband James was an advisor to Jefferson Davis, recorded the menu of a “luncheon to ladies only” given by Mrs. Davis in late January, 1864: “Gumbo, ducks and olives, chickens in jelly, oysters, lettuce salad, chocolate cream, jelly cake, claret, champagne, etc., were the good things set before us.”