Chapter 12

Wedding salad is set forth in its proper chapter, but not the turkey hash that was to some minds the best of all the good eating. It was served for breakfast--there was always a crowd of kinfolk and faraway friends to stay all night--sleeping on pallets all over the floors, even those of parlor or ballroom, after they were deserted. The hash was made from all the left-over turkey--where a dozen birds have been roasted the leavings will be plenty. To it was added the whole array of giblets, cooked the day before, and cut small while still warm. They made heaps of rich gravy to add to that in the turkey pots--no real wedding ever contented itself with cooking solely on a range. Pots, big ones, set beside a log fire out of doors, with a little water in the bottom, and coals underneath and on the lids, turned out turkeys beautifully browned, tender and flavorous, to say nothing of the gravy. It set off the hash as nothing else could--but such setting off was not badly needed. Hash with hot biscuit, strong clear coffee, hot egg bread, and thin-sliced ham, made a breakfast one could depend on, even with a long drive cross-country in prospect.

Harking back to the supper table--syllabub, as nearly as I recall, was made of thick cream lightly reinforced with stiffly beaten white of egg--one egg-white to each pint--sweetened, well flavored with sherry or Madeira wine, then whipped very stiff, and piled in a big bowl, also in goblets to set about the bowl, just as snow balls were set a-row about the stacks and the bride's cake. Flecks of crimson jelly were dropped on the white cream--occasionally, there were crumbled cake, and cut up fruit underneath. Thus it approximated the trifle of the cook books. It had just one drawback--you could not eat it slowly--it went almost to nothing at the agitation of the spoon.

Far otherwise boiled custard--which was much higher in favor, being easier made, and quite as showy. For it you beat very light the yolks of twelve eggs with four cups white sugar, added them to a gallon of milk, and a quart of cream, in a brass kettle over the fire, stirred the mixture steadily, watching it close to remove it just as it was on the point of boiling, let it cool, then flavored it well, with either whiskey, brandy, or sweet wine. Meantime the egg-whites beaten with a little salt until they stuck to the dish, had been cooked by pouring quickly over them full-boiling water from a tea kettle. They hardly lost a bubble in the process--the water well drained away, the whites were ready to go on top of the custard in either bowls or goblets, and get themselves ornamented with crimson jelly, or flecks of cherry preserves. Like syllabub, boiled custard necessitated spoons--hence the borrowing of small silver was in most cases imperative. Plutocrats had not then been invented--but tradition tells of one high gentleman, who was self-sufficient. The fact stood him in good stead later--when he was darkly accused, she who had baked cakes for all his merry-makings said stoutly: "The Colonel do sech as that! Lord in heaven! Why, don't you know, in all the years I've knowed him, _he never had to borrow a single silver spoon_--and I've seen five hundred folks there for supper. I wouldn't believe them tales ef Angel Gabriel come down and told 'em to me."

Is anybody left, I wonder, who can cut oranges into lilies? Thus cut they surely looked pretty. The peel was divided evenly in six, the sections loosened, but not pulled free at the base. Instead the ends were curved backward after the manner of lily petals. The fruit, separated into eighths, hardly showed the divisions. These lilies sat flat upon the cloth, either in lines, as about square stacks, or around bigger things, or straight up and down the table center. They were not always in season--at their best around Christmas, but available until the end of winter.

Cheesecakes, baked in patty pans frosted with cocoanut frosting, also helped out the wedding richness. Indeed, guests gathered to eat the fat and the sweet, no less to drink it. Now, in a wider outlook, I wonder a little if there was significance in the fact that these wedding tables were so void of color--showing only green and white, with the tiniest sparks of red?

Party suppers had no such limitations--often the table was gay with autumn leaves, the center piece a riot of small ragged red chrysanthemums, or raggeder pink or yellow ones, with candles glaring from gorgeous pumpkin jack-o'-lanterns down the middle, or from the walls either side. There were frosted cakes--loaves trimmed gaily with red and white candies, or maybe the frosting itself was tinted. In place of syllabub or boiled custard, there were bowls of ambrosia--oranges in sections, freed of skin and seed, and smothered in grated fresh cocoanut and sugar. Often the bowl-tops were ornamented with leaves cut deftly from the skin of deep red apples, and alternating, other leaves shaped from orange peel. Christmas party suppers had touches of holly and cedar, but there was no attempt to match the elaborate wedding tables. Hog's foot jelly, red with the reddest wine, came in handily for them--since almost every plantation had a special small hog-killing, after the middle of December, so there might be fresh backbones, spare ribs, sausage and souse to help make Christmas cheer. Ham, spiced and sliced wafer thin, was staple for such suppers--chicken and turkey appeared oftenest as salad, hot coffee, hot breads in variety, crisp celery, and plenteous pickle, came before the sweets. Punch, not very heady, hardly more than a fortified pink lemonade, came with the sweets many times. Grandfather's punch was held sacred to very late suppers, hot and hearty, set for gentlemen who had played whist or euchre until cock-crow.

These are but indications. Fare varied even as did households and occasions. But everywhere there was kinship of the underlying spirit--which was the concrete expression of hospitality in good cheer. There was little luxury--rather we lived amid a spare abundance, eating up what had no market--I recall clearly times when you could hardly give away fresh eggs, or frying-size chickens, other times when eggs fetched five cents for two dozen--provided the seller would "take it in trade." Chickens then, broiling size, were forty to fifty cents the dozen--with often an extra one thrown in for good measure. For then chicken cholera had not been invented--at least not down in the Tennessee blue grass country. Neither had hog cholera--nor railroads. All three fell upon us a very little before the era of the Civil War. Steamboats ran almost half the year, but the flat boat traffic had been taken away by the peopling prairies, which could raise so much more corn, derivatively so many more hogs, to the man's work. Money came through wheat and tobacco--not lavishly, yet enough for our needs. All this is set forth in hope of explaining in some measure, the cookery I have tried to write down faithfully--with so much of everything in hand, stinting would have been sinful.

There was barbecue, and again there were barbecues. The viand is said to get its name from the French phrase _a barbe d' ecu_, from tail to head, signifying that the carcass was cooked whole. The derivation may be an early example of making the punishment fit the crime. As to that I do not know. What I do know is that lambs, pigs, and kids, when barbecued, are split in half along the backbone. The animals, butchered at sundown, and cooled of animal heat, after washing down well, are laid upon clean, split sticks of green wood over a trench two feet deep, and a little wider, and as long as need be, in which green wood has previously been burned to coals. There the meat stays twelve hours--from midnight to noon next day, usually. It is basted steadily with salt water, applied with a clean mop, and turned over once only. Live coals are added as needed from the log fire kept burning a little way off. All this sounds simple, dead-easy. Try it--it is really an art. The plantation barbecuer was a person of consequence--moreover, few plantations could show a master of the art. Such an one could give himself lordly airs--the loan of him was an act of special friendship--profitable always to the personage lent. Then as now there were free barbecuers, mostly white--but somehow their handiwork lacked a little of perfection. For one thing, they never found out the exact secret of "dipney," the sauce that savored the meat when it was crisply tender, brown all over, but free from the least scorching.

Daddy made it thus: Two pounds sweet lard, melted in a brass kettle, with one pound beaten, not ground, black pepper, a pint of small fiery red peppers, nubbed and stewed soft in water to barely cover, a spoonful of herbs in powder--he would never tell what they were,--and a quart and pint of the strongest apple vinegar, with a little salt. These were simmered together for half an hour, as the barbecue was getting done. Then a fresh, clean mop was dabbed lightly in the mixture, and as lightly smeared over the upper sides of the carcasses. Not a drop was permitted to fall on the coals--it would have sent up smoke, and films of light ashes. Then, tables being set, the meat was laid, hissing hot, within clean, tight wooden trays, deeply gashed upon the side that had been next the fire, and deluged with the sauce, which the mop-man smeared fully over it.

Hot! After eating it one wanted to lie down at the spring-side and let the water of it flow down the mouth. But of a flavor, a savor, a tastiness, nothing else earthly approaches. Not food for the gods, perhaps, but certainly meat for _men_. Women loved it no less--witness the way they begged for a quarter of lamb or shoat or kid to take home. The proper accompaniments to barbecue are sliced cucumbers in strong vinegar, sliced tomatoes, a great plenty of salt-rising light bread--and a greater plenty of cool ripe watermelons, by way of dessert.

So much for barbecue edible. Barbecue, the occasion, has yet to be set forth. Its First Cause was commonly political--the old south loved oratory even better than the new. Newspapers were none so plenty--withal of scant circulation. Besides, reading them was work--also tedious and tasteless. So the great and the would-be great, rode up and down, and roundabout, mixing with the sovereigns, and enlightening the world. Each party felt honor bound to gather the sovereigns so they might listen in comfort. Besides--they wanted amusement--a real big barbecue was a sort of social exchange, drawing together half of three counties, and letting you hear and tell, things new, strange, and startling. Furthermore, it was no trouble to get carcasses--fifty to a hundred was not uncommon. Men, women, children, everybody, indeed, came. The women brought bread and tablecloths, and commonly much beside. There was a speaker's stand, flag draped--my infant eyes first saw the Stars and Stripes floating above portraits--alleged--of Filmore and Buchanan, in the campaign of '56. That meant the barbecue was a joint affair--Whigs and Democrats getting it up, and both eagerly ready to whoop it up for their own speakers. Naturally in that latitude, Fremont was not even named. No court costume with a tail three yards long, could to-day make me feel one-half so fine as the white jaconet, and green sash then sported.

It was said there were a thousand at the barbecue. The cheering, at its loudest, was heard two miles away. To me it seemed as though all the folk in the world had gathered in that shady grove--I remember wondering if there could possibly be so many watermelons, some would be left for the children. Four big wagon loads lay bobbing in the coolth of the spring branch. It was a very cold spring with mint growing beside it, as is common with springs thereabout. Early settlers planted it thus hard by the water--they built their houses high, and water got warm in carrying it up hill. Lacking ice houses, to have cool juleps, they had to be mixed right at the well-head. Sugar, spoons, goblets, and the jug, were easily carried down there.

Juleps were not mixed openly that day--but the speakers had pitchers full of something that seemed to refresh their eloquence, no less than themselves. They hammered each other lustily, cheered to the echo by uproarious partisans, from nine in the morning until six in the afternoon. Luckily for them, there were four of them, thus they could "spell" each other--and the audience. I did not mind them--not in the least. How should I--when right in front of me sat a lady with the most gorgeous flowers upon her white chip bonnet, and one beside me, who insisted upon my wearing, until time to go home, her watch and chain?

The watermelons held out--we took two big ones home to Mother, also a lot of splendid Indian peaches, and a fore-quarter of lamb. Mother rarely went out, being an invalid--so folk vied with each other in sending her things. I mention it, only by way of showing there were things to be sent, even after feeding the multitude. The black people went away full fed, and full handed--nobody who carried a basket had much relish for taking home again any part of its contents.

Our countryside's cooking came to its full flower for the bran-dances--which came into being, I think, because the pioneers liked to shake limber heels, but had not floors big enough for the shaking. So in green shade, at some springside they built an arbor of green boughs, leveled the earth underneath, pounded it hard and smooth, then covered it an inch deep with clean wheat bran, put up seats roundabout it, also a fiddlers' stand, got the fiddlers, printed invitations which went far and wide to women young and old, saw to a sufficiency of barbecue, depended on the Lord and the ladies for other things--and prepared to dance, dance from nine in the morning until two next morning. Men were not specifically invited--anybody in good standing with a clean shirt, dancing shoes, a good horse and a pedigree, was heartily welcome. The solid men, whose names appeared as managers, paid scot for everything--they left the actual arrangements to the lads. But they came in shoals to the bran-dances, and were audacious enough often to take away from some youth fathoms deep in love, his favorite partner. Sometimes, too, a lot of them pre-empted all the prettiest girls, and danced a special set with them. Thus were they delivered into the hands of the oppressed--the lads made treaty with the fiddlers and prompter to play fast and furious--to call figures that kept the oldsters wheeling and whirling. It was an endurance contest--but victory did not always perch with the youths. Plenty of pursy gentlemen were still light enough on their feet, clear enough in their wind, to dance through Money Musk double, Chicken in the Bread Tray, and the Arkansaw Traveller, no matter what the time.

All dances were square--quadrilles and cotillions. The Basket Cotillion was indeed, looked upon as rather daring. You see, at the last, the ring of men linked by hand-hold outside a ring of their partners, lifted locked arms over their partners' heads, and thus interwoven, the circle balanced before breaking up. Other times, other dances--ours is now the day of the trot and the tango. But they lack the life, the verve of the old dances, the old tunes. To this day when I hear them, my feet patter in spite of me. You could not dance to them steadily, with soft airs blowing all about, leaves flittering in sunshine, and water rippling near, without getting an appetite commensurate to the feasts in wait for you.

One basket from a plantation sufficed for bran-dances ending at sundown--those running on past midnight demanded two. It would never do to offer snippets and fragments for supper. Barbecue, if there were barbecue--was merely a concomitant of the feeding, not the whole thing. Part of it was left untouched to help out with supper. So were part of the melons, and much of the fruit. Apples, pears and peaches were plenty in good years--the near plantations sent them by wagon loads--as they also sent ice cream by freezerfuls, and boilers to make coffee. These were dispensed more than generously--but nobody would have helped himself to them uninvited, any more readily than he would have helped himself to money in the pocket. All that was in the baskets was spread on the general tables, but no man thought of eating thereof, until all women and children had been served. Old men came next--the women generally forcing upon them the best of everything.

Such a best! Broiled chicken, fried chicken, in quantity, whole hams simply entreating to be sliced, barbecue, pickle in great variety, drained and sliced for eating, beaten biscuit, soda biscuit, egg bread, salt-rising bread, or rolls raised with hop-yeast--only a few attempted them--every manner of pie, tart, and tartlet that did not drip and mess things, all the cakes in the calendar of good housewifery--with, now and then, new ones specially invented. Even more than a wedding, a bran-dance showed and proved your quality as a cake-maker. Cakes were looked at in broad daylight, eaten not with cloyed finicky appetites, but with true zest. Woe and double woe to you if a loaf of pride showed at cutting a "sad" streak, not quite done. Joy untold if you were a raw young housekeeper, to have your cake acclaimed by eaters and critics.

Mammy, and other Mammies, moved proudly about, each a sort of oracle to the friends of her household. They kept sharp eyes on things returnable--plates, platters, knives, spoons, and tablecloths--in any doubtful case, arising from the fact of similarity in pattern, they were the court of last resort. Spoons and so on are unmistakable--but one sprigged saucer is very like other saucers sprigged the same. It was the Mammies rather than the masters and mistresses, who ordered carriage drivers and horse boys imperiously about. But nobody minded the imperiousness--it was no day for quarrelling or unwisdom. And it would surely have been unwise to fret those who were the Keepers of the Baskets, at the very last.

After dinner one went to the dressing-room, a wide roofless space enclosed with green boughs massed on end, and furnished plentifully with water in buckets, towels, basins, pin cushions, combs and brushes, face powder, even needles and thread. Thence one emerged after half an hour quite fresh--to dance on and on, till the fiddlers played a fast finale, and went to their supper. Then came an interval of talk and laughing, of making new friends or stabbing delicately old enemies. Also and further much primping in the dressing-room. Dancing steadily through a temperature of 98 in the shade plays hob with some sorts of prettiness. But as dew fell and lighted lanterns went up about the arbor and throughout the grove, supper was very welcome. There was hot coffee for everybody, likewise milk, likewise lemonade, with buttered biscuit, chicken, ham, and barbecue. Chicken-loaf was particularly good for such uses. To make it, several plump, tender, full-grown pullets were simmered in water to barely cover them, with a few pepper corns, half a dozen cloves, and a blade of mace, until very, very tender. Then the meat was picked from the bones, cut up while still hot, packed down in something deep, seasoning it to taste with salt, as it was packed, and dusting in more pepper if needed, then the liquor which had been kept at a brisk boil was poured over, and left to cool. No bother about skimming off fat--we liked our loaf rich as well as high-flavored. It came out a fine mottled solid that could be sliced thin, and eaten delicately between the halves of a buttered biscuit. Sandwiches were known--but only in books. Which was well--they would have dried out so badly, for this was before the era of wax paper. Since everything was packed in the baskets whole, there was much work for mothers and Mammies at the unpacking and table-setting.

Tarts, especially if filled with cheesecake or jelly custard, held high place among the sweets. Especially with the men, young and old. One, a manager, who had been here, there, everywhere, since eight o'clock in the morning, asked Mammy at suppertime to: "Please save him one more dozen of them little pies." In truth the little pies made no more than a mouthful for noble appetites. Pies, full-grown, did not go begging--and were seldom cut in less than quarters. Frosted cake--which the lads denominated "white-washed," was commonly saved over for the supper baskets. It kept moist, whereas without the frosting a long summer day might make it hard.

After the supper elderly men drove home--unless they had daughters among the dancers without other chaperons. Generally, some aunt or cousin stood ready with such good offices. The chaperons themselves danced now and then--youths specially anxious for favor with their charges, all but forced them upon the floor. Set it to their credit, they footed it almost as lightly as the youngest. Occasionally you might see, mother and daughter, even a granddaughter of tender years, wheeling and balancing in the same set. And so the fiddles played, the stars shone, the waters babbled, until the lanterns flared and sputtered out, and the banjo-picker held up fingers raw and bleeding. Then with a last final swing and flourish, everybody scattered for homeward ways, glad of the day's pleasure--and tired enough to be glad also it was ended.

The most special of occasions was a dining. Not upon any high day or holiday, such as Christmas, New Year, Jackson's Day--the eighth of January--Easter nor Whit-Monday, but as Mammy said: "A dinin' des, dry so." Commonly pride of housewifery incited to it--therefore it must be a triumph. The hour was two o'clock, but guests came around eleven or twelve--and spent the day. They sat down to tables that well might have groaned, even howled, such was the weight they carried. Twelve was a favorite guest-number--few tables could be stretched to hold more than twelve plates. There were but two courses--dinner and dessert--unless in very cold weather, some person who would nowadays be said to be fond of putting on frills, set before her guests, plates of steaming soup. It had to smell very good, else it was no more than tasted--folk did not care to dull the edge of appetite needlessly, with so much before them. For the table was fully set--a stuffed ham at one end, a chicken or partridge pie at the other, side dishes of smothered rabbit, or broiled chicken, at least four kinds of sweet pickle, as many of jelly and sour pickle, a castor full of catsups, tomato and walnut, plain vinegar, pepper vinegar, red and black pepper, and made mustard, all the vegetables in season--I have seen corn pudding, candied sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, mashed and baked, black-eyed peas, baked peaches, apples baked in sugar and cloves, cabbage boiled with bacon, okra, stewed tomatoes, sliced raw tomatoes, cucumbers cut up with young onions, beets boiled and buttered, and string beans, otherwise snaps, all at one spread.

Only epicures dressed their lettuce at table. One cranky old family friend had it served to him in a water bucket, set beside him on the floor. He shook it free of water, cut it, without bruising, to wide ribbons, covered them thickly with hard-boiled egg-yolk mashed fine, then poured upon it clear ham gravy, and strong vinegar, added salt and pepper, black and red--then ate his fill. But, of course, he did not do that at dinings. For then, if lettuce appeared, it was cut up, dressed with vinegar, salt, sugar, and pepper, but guiltless of oil, garnished with rings of hard-boiled egg--and very generally, and justly, neglected. Still the hostess had the satisfaction of feeling she had offered it--that she had indeed offered more than could have been reasonably expected.