THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 8, 1997 TAG: 9701070061
SECTION: FLAVOR PAGE: F1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL RUEHLMANN, SPECIAL TO FLAVOR
LENGTH: 230 lines
BEFORE KFC - shoot, before Col. Sanders was born - they cooked:
Boil a chicken with the giblets until tender.
Set aside until cold, then cut into pieces 1/2-inch square. Put into a stewpan with pepper, salt, 3 hard-boiled eggs chopped fine, a teacup of the broth the fowl boiled in, a coffee cup of cream and a piece of butter rolled in flour the size of an egg. Set on the fire and simmer for 10 minutes.
Then add a teacup of wine and serve.
That recipe, for Chicken Terrapin, is 150 years old. It doesn't date. It was a sure-fire finger-licker then and so it remains, one stubborn constant amid a century and a half of tumult.
The prose is pretty good, too.
Here's another, for Brandy Peaches:
Pick out the fairest peaches. Peel very thin and throw into cold water. One and 1/2 pints of water to 3 pounds of sugar will boil 8 pounds of peaches. When cold put into jars and fill the jars with whiskey or brandy.
If you don't like that one right off, have a second helping - you will.
Three's a charm:
One quart grated potato, 1/2 pint molasses, 10 ounces butter, 3 eggs. Cream butter and sugar, add eggs. Add grated potato gradually with molasses.
You have just prepared Sweet Potato Pone. You did good. And you won't find that stuff at the steam table in anybody's drive-by paper-napkin franchise buffet, either.
These enduring jewels are but three of a bright profusion provided in ``An Antebellum Plantation Household: Including the South Carolina Low Country Receipts and Remedies of Emily Wharton Sinkler'' by Anne Sinkler Whaley LeClercq (University of South Carolina Press, 181 pp., $16.95).
Yes, ``receipts.'' It's what they called them.
``Receipts'' is a low country variant of ``recipe.''
And name a household then or now that hasn't been up to its apron in receipts at one time or another.
``An Antebellum Plantation Household,'' as you may have guessed from the aforementioned names, is one relative's homage to another. Emily Wharton Sinkler (1823-1875) was a Philadelphia-born woman who fell in love with a United States Navy officer stationed there. She married him at 19 and moved 800 miles away to live on her husband's family homestead in swampy Upper St. John's Parish, S.C.
Blue-eyed, small-boned, straight-haired, a staunch 104 pounds soaking wet, Sinkler went on to raise five children and superintend the domestic side of a large cotton plantation before, during and after the Civil War.
She was tough and smart; so is her great-great-great granddaughter, Anne Sinkler Whaley LeClercq(1942- ). LeClercq inherited Sinkler's receipt book. LeClercq, who holds a master's degree in librarianship from Emory University, is currently library director at The Citadel in Charleston, S.C.
Librarians know gold when they see it, and when LeClercq encountered the receipt book, she struck the literary mother lode.
The rest was research.
Because the woman didn't just cook.
Wrote Sinkler:
The ladies of the church have certainly done very well in 1852 in the way of improvement.
They have added a large chancel, communion table, chairs, pulpit and reading desk, chancel carpet and coverings for the pulpit, a complete set of new pews, a Melodeon, a church carpet and the church entirely painted inside.
As I was one of the 9 or 10 ladies who did it all, it came pretty heavy as you can imagine.
I think it is a great pity that the same set of ladies cannot act as vestry men, for church matters would certainly prosper more.
Inarguable.
Wrote LeClercq:
The transcriptions of Emily's receipt book and the portrait of Emily from her letters were undertaken in the belief that they reveal much about the conditions of life on an antebellum plantation in low country South Carolina.
Also inarguable.
LeClercq had to work detectivelike from fragments that come together in this book as a rather poignant mosaic revealing a luminous life.
We discover the discomfort and determination of an urban jurist's daughter coming to terms with rural isolation. We look over her shoulder at the market, in the garden, about the grounds. We come to take the measure of her world.
And it was, no bones about it, a slave world. Slaves did the hard work that sustained the plantation and prospered the owners. Sinkler squirmed at some of the realities.
I wish I could do what Frank says with regard to the black children or frogs as he calls them, but it is impossible.
It is entirely forbidden by the laws of South Carolina, and it would be very wrong for me to attempt to instruct them, especially as Mr. Sinkler entirely disapproves of it.
Still in this context there was a surface amity on the plantation. Black children and white played together. Sinkler praises her servants and expresses concern for them.
She was in charge. Responsible for everyone's medical welfare, Sinkler also provided remedies in her receipt book. Here's the one for ``Sea Sickness'':
Generally allow the stomach to discharge its contents once or twice, and then if there is no organic disease give 5 drops of Chloroform in a little water, and if necessary repeat the dose in 4 to 6 hours. Let the patient sleep and he will awake well.
Especially if he finds himself safe ashore.
And how about that ``Hair Wash''?
Take 1 oz. Castor Oil; mix thoroughly with 1 pt. alcohol; add 1/2 oz. tincture cantharides. (fashioned from a beetle traditionally employed as an aphrodisiac). Brush the hair briskly with a hard brush; apply the lotion with a sponge. Wash the hair again.
But it's the grub that most fascinates in this account. Meals on the plantation came - deliberately and sumptuously - thrice daily. Sinkler of the North was sparing from habit, but self-denial was hardly customary in her husband's Deep South digs.
They ate then the way folks do now. On cruises.
Mr. Sinkler, five mornings out of seven, gets up at four or five and mounts a horse and goes off to shoot English wild ducks or deer or foxes. All the family assemble at nine thirty for family prayers. There is a great variety of hot cakes, waffles, biscuits.
I don't take to all these vanities, however, and always eat toast for breakfast and supper.
They make excellent wheat bread and toast it nicely by the coals.
Hominy is a most favourite dish. They eat it at all their meals. It is what is called grits in Philadelphia.
We take breakfast in the hall and sit there all morning.
Then they ride, read and sew. Whew. Breakfast wears off. Time for ``dinner'':
We dine between three and four. Eliza is an excellent housekeeper, and the ice cream here is really the best I ever tasted. We have supper at half past eight, which is very much like breakfast except we have cold meat and, after the cloth is removed, wine and cordials.
Subsequent to that, music. No gramophone back then, no cable. They played piano and guitar.
In those days before antibiotics or vaccines, disease was rampant. Sinkler lost one infant child. Then came the war.
No more entries in the receipt book.
Sherman marched through, 25 miles to the northwest. A Union brigade ransacked the place. A son, Wharton, enlisted at 16 and was evidently captured unhurt.
The world was different and daunting after the conflict.
Returning from a funeral, Sinkler died in a carriage accident in 1875 at the age of 52.
From 1856 until her death, only one letter survives by her hand, dated Apr. 4, 1865.
It ends thus, inclusively:
Ah, when will all these sore and dreadful troubles be over? If we are not to see the end we still, thank God, have the blessed hope of a renewed Earth, whose only law will be that of Love. May each of us be partakers in its happiness. MEMO: A SELECTION OF ``RECEIPTS''
From ``An Antebellum Plantation Household'':
Stewed beef, Mrs. Scott
Take 6 lbs. of the round of beef and put water enough in the pot to
cover the beef barely; season with salt and pepper and boil until the
meat is tender and then skim off the fat. Then put in onions, tomatoes,
potatoes of both kinds, etc. When the vegetables are sufficiently
cooked, thicken the gravy and serve the meat in a large dish with the
vegetables and gravy around it.
Croquettes, Mrs. Sitgreaves
Mince up very fine any kind of cold meat. For every 3 cups full put 1
oz. boiled bread and milk. Add parsley, onions chopped very fine, lemon
rind grated, 1 teaspoon made mustard and a piece butter the size of a
walnut. Shape with a jelly glass. Cover with yolks of egg and then with
powdered cracker and fry.
Home cured hams
To 100 pounds of meat use 4 quarts of salt, 4 lbs. brown sugar and 3
ounces of saltpeter well mixed. When meat is cold rub with 2/3 of this
mixture and pack meat away in a box or keg. Next day rub in the rest,
then pack away again, reversing the pieces. Let remain 3 weeks,
reversing pieces once a week. At the end of this time wash in warm
water, wipe dry and smoke.
Green tomato soy
Two gallons green tomatoes peeled and sliced; 5 tablespoons mustard.
3 gills mustard seed; 2 1/2 tablespoons black pepper ground fine, 2 oz.
allspice, 2 of cloves all pounded, 1 gill salt, 4 or 5 onions chopped
fine, 2 qts. brown sugar, 2 1/2 qts. vinegar. Boil all to the
consistency of marmalade.
Vinegar
Take one quart of blackberries and three quarts of water and two
spoonsful of sugar or molasses, put in a demijohn and set it in the sun
for about two weeks, and you will have excellent vinegar.
Corn fritters, Mrs. Duane
Take 12 small ears of corn, cut the grains down the center and scrape
all the grains and milk off the cob. Add about 2 tablespoons of flour;
beat 2 eggs, add pepper and salt to your taste and mix the whole
together. Put a tablespoonful at a time in a frying pan with hot butter;
when brown, turn and serve hot. If the corn is large it will require 3
eggs; if milky a little extra flour should be added. Should be rather
thicker than pancake batter. Will cook in 5 minutes.
Scalloped tomatoes
Peel full ripe tomatoes; slice in thin slices and put a layer in
bottom of dish, season with salt, pepper and sugar. Cover with bread
crumbs and small pieces of butter. Add more layers of the same until
dish is full. Let the top layer be bread crumbs and bake a nice brown.
Okra a la Maulie
With 2 tablespoons of butter, fry in a pot 3 slices of ham, 3 sliced
onions, until onions are brown. Add 1 quart of young okra, 12 ripe
tomatoes from which extract the juice and seeds. Add now the juice and a
tumbler of water. Simmer over a slow fire for 3 hours. Thicken with
flour and season with salt and pepper.
Mincemeat
One lb. raisins seeded and cut fine, 1 lb. apples chopped fine, 1 lb.
sugar, 1/2 lb. butter, 1 tablespoon powdered cinnamon, 1 nutmeg, 2 wine
glasses of brandy or three of wine. In mixing melt the butter and pour
it in. Bake in paste.
Thin ginger cake
One-half pt. molasses, 2 eggs, 1 tablespoon ginger, 1 teaspoon salt,
1/2 lb. sugar, 1/2 lb. butter, 1 tablespoon cinnamon, 1 dessert spoon
cloves. Rub up sugar and butter, add eggs and other ingredients. Put
enough plain flour to make thick enough to spread real thin and bake in
a medium oven. Cut in squares while hot, for it is very crisp when cold.
Jumbles
Three-fourths lb. flour, 1/2 lb. sugar, 1/4 lb. butter, 2 egg
whites, 1/2 nutmeg, 1 glass peach water. Cream butter and sugar, add
flour and nutmeg gradually with peach water. Fold in whites beaten
stiffly. Roll them in sugar and bake on tin sheets. Shape in finger
lengths by hand and join so as to make a circle. (A pound of flour
equals 3 1/4 cups of flour.)
Trifle
Fill the bottom of a large dish with cake broken into small pieces
and moisten with a little wine. Put 1 quart of cream into a deep bowl
and sweeten to taste with very fine sugar. Beat the whites of 2 eggs
very stiff in another vessel and add to the cream. Then churn to stiff
froth which, as it rises, skim off and put on cake. It must be beaten in
a cool place. ILLUSTRATION: Pictures courtesy of University of South Carolina
Press
Anne Sinkler Whaley LeClercq inherited Sinkler's receipt book. The
rest was research.
The book is a poignant mosaic that reveals a luminous life. But it's
the grub that most fascinates.
Emily Wharton Sinkler (1823-1875) lived in low country South
Carolina.