Of hothouse grapes, I find the large white grapes the best, Muscats of Alexandria.
Parch and grind your coffee the day you drink it. Always buy green coffee.
Never use the small timbales of pâté de foie gras, generally given one to each guest. Always have an entire foie gras, be it large or small, for in this way you are apt to get old foie gras thus worked up.
Always buy your foie gras from an A1 house, never from the butcher or fruiterer.
I here give as a recollection of the past the
MENU OF AN OLD-FASHIONED SOUTHERN DINNER.
Terrapin Soup and Oyster Soup, or Mock Turtle Soup,
Soft shell or Cylindrical nose Turtle.[A]
Boiled fresh water Trout (known with us at the North
as Chub).
Shad stuffed and baked (we broil it).
Boiled Turkey, Oyster sauce. A roast Peahen.
Boiled Southern Ham.
Escalloped oysters. Maccaroni with cheese. Prawn pie.
Crabs stuffed in shell.
Roast Ducks. A haunch of Venison.
Dessert.
Plum Pudding. Mince Pies. Trifle. Floating Island.
Blanc Mange. Jelly.
Ice Cream.
[A] This turtle is only found in the ditches of the rice fields, and is the most valued delicacy of the South. It is too delicate to transport to the North. I have made several attempts to do this, but invariably failed, the turtle dying before it could reach New York. Its shell is gelatinous, all of which is used in the soup. It is only caught in July and August, and even then it is very rare, and brings a high price.
On repeatedly visiting the West Indies, I found that two of the best Carolina and Georgia dishes, supposed always to have emanated from the African brain, were imported from these islands, and really had not even their origin there, but were brought from Bordeaux to the West Indies, and thence were carried to the South. I refer to the Crab à la Creole, and Les Aubergines farcies à la Bordelaise.
After the great revolution, when the Africans of Hayti drove from the island their former masters, good French cooking came with them to Baltimore, and other parts of the South. In talking of Southern dishes, I must not forget the Southern barnyard-fed turkey. They were fattened on small rice and were very fine. In discussing Southern dinners, I cannot omit making mention of the old Southern butler, quite an institution; devoted to his master, and taking as much pride in the family as the family took in itself. Among Southern household servants (all colored people), the man bore two names as well as the woman. The one he answered to as servant, the other was his title. Whenever, as a boy, I wanted particularly to gratify my father’s old butler, I would give him his title, which was “Major Brown.” He was commonly called Nat. I remember, on one occasion, a guest at my father’s table asking Major Brown to hand him the rice, whilst he was eating fish. The old gray-haired butler drew himself up with great dignity, and replied, “Massa, we don’t eat rice with fish in this house.”
Some features of the everyday Southern dinner were pilau, i.e. boiled chickens on a bed of rice, with a large piece of bacon between the chickens; “Hoppin John,” that is, cowpeas with bacon; okra soup, a staple dish; shrimp and prawn pie; crab salad; pompey head (a stuffed filet of veal); roast quail and snipe, and, during the winter, shad daily, boiled, broiled and baked.