July 2017 - OLD LINE PLATE

Country Sausage

July 29, 2017January 12, 2019

“All that is necessary for the enjoyment of sausages at breakfast, is confidence.” – Baltimore Sun, 1847

Historically, sausage-making has been a winter thing, but the sage in my backyard was out of control so I figured I’d make a go of it.

With dozens of recipes at my disposal, choosing one seemed daunting until I compared them and determined that they are all pretty much the same. That’s because the basic seasonings for sausage have hardly changed since America was first colonized.

Only the wealthiest of colonists would be likely to possess a copy of “The English Huswife” by Gervase Markham, published in 1615. Nonetheless, in it they would find a recipe for “links” made of fat and lean pork stuffed into casings and smoked by the fireplace after the meat had been minced and seasoned with salt, pepper and “a good store of sage.”

“The Art of Cookery”, Hannah Glasse, 1780 edition

The same sausage seasoning formula is used in Hannah Glasse’s 1747 English cookbook. Eliza Smith, who also wrote a popular book in England which was published in the colonies in 1742, used sage but included cloves, mace, and rosemary. The addition of cloves and mace is predictable for the era but eventually fell out of favor while sage remained.

As for the Maryland cookbooks, I did my whole “spreadsheet thing” with recipes from all of the standards from “Maryland’s Way” and “300 Years of Black Cooking in St. Mary’s County” to “Domestic Cookery” (1845, Elizabeth Ellicott Lea) and “Mrs. Charles Gibson’s Maryland and Virginia Cookbook.”(1894) The primary change in that intervening century is one I can get behind: the inclusion of red pepper. The oldest recipes such as those from Elizabeth Ellicott Lea, M.L. Tyson and Mrs. B.C. Howard are, unsurprisingly, the saltiest. Sausage is a preservation method after all.

Although sausage didn’t undergo a flavor revolution throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, it did experience a mechanical one. The meat grinder was invented in the 1800s.

1881 advertisement, “Sanitary and Heating Age”

Elizabeth Ellicott Lea’s sausage instructions implied that she had access to a “chopping machine” in the 1840s, but that it was still a lot of work to cut the meat to fit into the machine. Since she was managing a small farm, she was making massive quantities of sausage. Lea advised that since “pork season in the country is one of the busiest in the year; everything should be prepared before hand that you possibly can.” She made sure to bake pies, bread, and stewed apples, and to have all vegetables washed “so that every member of the family, that is able, may devote herself to the work of putting away the meat which is of so much importance for the coming year.”

Cookbook author Marion Harland wrote in 1872 that sausage from a mill “is better, and the grinding does not occupy one-tenth of the time that chopping does, to say nothing of the labor.”

Sausage was of worthy importance for families to invest in specific equipment, but some choppers were sold alternately as a “mince meat cutter.” Baltimore merchant F.B. Didier & Brother took out a newspaper ad in 1855 declaring: “Every private family should have one for cutting up sausage or pie meat and for hashing purposes generally, meats or vegetables.”

Since the machines were essentially selling themselves, publications of the late 1800s advised hardware store owners on brand loyalty and complementary products to up-sell customers on.

Hardware: Devoted to the American Hardware Trade, 1894

To think, when I bought the attachment for my mixer, it was a frivolous purchase. (There may be a way to break even if you eat a lot of sausage and buy cheap meat…)

Since my sausage was intended to be kept in a freezer, I didn’t worry too much about preservation. I was curious to taste the effect of the common additive of saltpeter but I never got my hands on any, so I used pink curing salt containing sodium nitrite. I may have went a little overboard with the sage.

The butcher at John Brown General and Butchery recommended the 70%/30% meat to fat ratio. That too has not remained unchanged in centuries of sausage-recipes.

The quality and texture of home-made sausage are better but the seasoning (if you follow this formula) is pretty similar to what you’d get in a grocery store. I originally set aside a portion to season with Mrs. B.C. Howard’s unusual inclusion of ginger. Since I didn’t find the taste disagreeable I eventually mixed it into the larger batch.

My freezer is filled with months worth of sausage and I can’t complain.

Recipe:

5 lbs of meat, 30% fat
1.5 oz pink curing salt
1 oz black pepper
1 oz cayenne pepper
2 tb dried sage
optional: additional dried thyme, savory, marjoram, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, allspice

Run meat through grinder and blend well with herbs which have been finely ground. Cook a small amount to taste and adjust seasonings if desired. Roll into 1lb logs in waxed paper to store. Cook in sliced patties for sandwiches or crumbled for other dishes. Freeze up to 6 months.

Tomato Wine

July 19, 2017August 26, 2019

“If the Tomato be as highly medicinal as it has been represented, it may be anticipated that this wine will find favor with the public.” – Milwaukee Sentinal, June 1840

Interspersed with the shrubs, the cherry bounce, eggnog and Fish House Punch in 19th-century Maryland cookbooks are some of the most intriguing and intimidating recipes: for wines and beers.

Brewing was a part of everyday household management, hardly considered any more frivolous than bread. (And the two processes were often intertwined.)

Beer appeared in the first American cookbook, “American Cookery”, by Amelia Simmons in 1796. Cider was fairly easy to make from fruits like apples and pears. Wine was a little more complicated.

European grapes didn’t always fare so well in America, and the native ones didn’t always make wine that was considered palatable. (Don’t worry – we’ll revisit that topic later this summer…)

In an 1790, the Maryland Gazette reported that a New Jersey man, Joseph Cooper, Esq., could make the elusive “excellent American wine” from honey and cider. Cooper believed that “by using the clean honey instead of the comb… such an improvement might be made as would enable the citizens of the United States to supply themselves with a truly federal and wholesome wine.”

It was the increased availability of sugar in the 1800′s that really fueled a century of creative wine brewing.

According to Waverley Root and Richard De Rochemont in “Eating in America,” “every housewife knew how to make ‘weed wines’ fermented from “any product of field or garden” – dandelion, elderflower, spinach, tomato, mint, “and of course berries.”

“Early American Beverages,” by John Hull Brown reprinted recipes for a staggering variety of wines that could be found in 19th-century America, including apricot, birch, egg, ginger, lemon, sage, turnip and walnut leaf.

Tomatoes were really taking off in popularity around this time. Whether or not colonists or Europeans had previously suspected tomatoes of being poisonous, in the early 1800′s, the opposite was true.

The idea of tomatoes being a panacea is attributed to a Dr. John Cook Bennett, who publicized tomatoes as a cure for dyspepsia, Cholera, and liver problems among other things. Bennett promoted recipes for tomato pickles, sauces, and ketchup. Manufacturers of cure-all pills and tonics capitalized on the craze by peddling tomato extract pills (which may or may not have contained any trace of tomatoes.)

Newspaper advertisements in the 1830s and 1840s offered a variety of brands of tomato pills guaranteed to cure “all diseases of the blood.”

Tomato wine experienced a surge in popularity in tandem with this. The recipe was popularized in the widely circulated “Dr. Chase’s Recipes” publication alongside fruit wines, remedies, animal husbandry and other information. Tomato wine appeared in regional newspapers as well – including the Baltimore Sun in 1856. Some recipes promised to “retain the well-known properties of the fruit.” Others claimed the resulting drink resembled Champagne or Madeira.

In 1865, “The American Agriculturalist” had had enough. In a scathing and humorous editorial, they praised the tomato as food while dismissing the medicinal claims:

“The following precious nonsense is going the rounds of the agricultural and other papers: ’ A good medical authority ascribes to the tomato… important medical qualifications… the tomato is one of the most powerful aperients of the liver and other organs… it is one of the most effective and the least harmful medical agents known… a chemical extract will be obtained from it that will supersede the use of calomel in the cure of diseases”…

This we regard as.. a libel upon our good friend the tomato. No ‘good medical authority’ ever wrote himself down such a stupid as to accuse the tomato-vine of being an apothecary’s shop… Just think of what a condition our livers must be in at the close of tomato season, after being so powerfully ‘aperiented’ to say nothing of the ‘other organs.’ The whole thing savors of the most arrogant quackery.

The tomato extract dodge was tried years ago, and we had “Tomato pills, will cure all ills,” as the quack epidemic for its day. Let no lover of the delicious tomato be deterred from enjoying it for fear of taking anything bearing the slightest resemblance to calomel or any other medicine, but eat as many as he likes without thinking of his liver or the doctor.“ – The American Agriculturist, Volume 24, 1865

In the chapter of “Southern Provisions” about sugar, David Shields discussed the historic variety of American wines. “Since the 1930′s, the superiority of wine made from Vitis Vinifera grapes has been maintained so insistently in culinary circles that the splendors of tomato wine, rhubarb wine, and strawberry wine have been discounted.”

It is true that when word got out about my tomato winemaking venture to friends-of-friends in Napa, eyebrows were raised. I think it’s a little unfair to hold this endeavor as a litmus test to whether tomato wine is worthy of revival. My brewing experience before this was limited to ginger ale, after all.

Furthermore, I’m not the biggest fan of white wine – which is tomato wine’s closest comparison point. I drank a glass and enjoyed it as much as any other white wine. Then I promptly introduced the vinegar mother.

In addition to the lost wines, Shields lamented “we have lost not only the beverages, but a world of early pickles that employed vinegar made from fruit and berry wines.” So it’s not all a lost cause.

There is some tomato wine available on the market today. For that matter, there are tomato pills available on the market today. If you have cholera or liver problems, you should probably just stick to water.

Recipe:

I used the above recipe from “Queen of the Kitchen” by M.L. Tyson as a starting point, and referred to the Tomato Wine Tutorial on leaf.tv for reference. I think I also asked some questions of the helpful people at Nepenthe and Maryland Homebrew as well.

Additional thanks goes to One Straw Farm for supplying me the tomatoes!

Cherry Douci

July 12, 2017January 12, 2019

Aside from the delicious and intoxicating experiment with Cherry Bounce, I’ve neglected to incorporate cherry desserts into this blog. The reason is pretty obvious – cherries rarely outlast the snacking phase.

The 1921 “Report of the Maryland Agricultural Society” made note that “Cherries have never been considered as one of the money makers for Maryland,” and the Society advised that would-be commercial cherry growers make sure to plant sour varieties or the Tartarian black cherry or Spanish yellow.

It is true that cherries had been shipped to Baltimore from California in the late 1800s, but primarily in the early season or in years of crop failures. In July of 1889, the Sun mentioned that early “May Dukes” had arrived from California (in May, of course) but that Maryland cherries came in later – first from the southernmost county, St. Mary’s. Black Tartarian cherries from Howard and Carroll Counties held “the highest place in the popular taste,” and frequently reached “three-quarters of an inch diameter.” These cherries were in turn shipped to places with shorter growing seasons: New York and Philadelphia.

Baltimore Sun, 1850

Property listings throughout the 18th and 19th century mentioned cherry trees among their orchards, often listing the specific varieties. And in June of 1891 the Sun reported that the greater Baltimore region was experiencing a bumper year for cherries. Farmer Ezra Chew of Patapsco shipped 20,425 lbs of red cherries to New York “for present use,” and sent the crop of white cherries to Baltimore for packing. Cherries were so abundant that year that packing plants could not keep up, and were turning the crops away.

The following year, a recipe for “cherry toast” was published in regional newspapers:

“To make cherry toast, toast thin slices of stale bread and spread over them, while hot, a trifle of butter. Stew one quart of cherries either with or without pitts, adding half a cup of water, and pour over the toast in alternate layers of bread and fruit. Set away and serve cold. The cherries while warm should be sugared to taste.” – The News (Frederick Maryland) July 23, 1892

This simple recipe is nearly identical to a mysterious recipe found in two Maryland cookbooks. Entitled “Cherry Douci” in “Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen,” (1873) and “Cherry Douce” in “Queen of the Kitchen” (1870), the recipe also appears in “Maryland’s Way” as “Cherry Douci,” albeit in a completely different form more akin to a cobbler.

The Maryland’s Way recipe is attributed to Alice Key, who was possibly a relative of the authors of “Queen of the Kitchen” (Mary Lloyd Tyson) and “Fifty Years…” (Mrs. B.C. Howard), but I have not seen that original manuscript and cannot determine if there is a connection with the recipes.

I couldn’t find any other recipes with a similar name. The mystery is primarily an etymological one – Maryland cookbook author Elizabeth Ellicott Lea included a version of Cherry Toast in her 1859 book “Domestic Cookery.” It seems apparent that “Douce/i” is a variant of the Romance Languages’ words for ‘sweet.’ Did Tyson rename it when she added meringue?

“Domestic Cookery”, 1859 Elizabeth Ellicott Lea

Though Lea does suggest nutmeg or cinnamon, her version is simpler; there is no layering or topping.

For an informed opinion on Cherry Douci, I consulted Maryland culinary historian Joyce White. She informed me that as far as names go, an 1857 Indiana cookbook, Collins’s “Great Western Cook Book,” has a recipe named Peaches Douce Et Aigre. Again, the connection here is purely etymological – the recipe is for pickled peaches.

Joyce White’s offered me some more background on the origin of Cherry Douci, the dish. (Plus a reminder of another very Maryland dessert that I need to get around to making…):

“This recipe as written in Howard’s book appears to be a variation of a British summer pudding or an Apple Charlotte, where fried bread is used to line a mold, then it is filled with apple compote, and more fried bread is used to cover the opening at the top. The whole thing is baked and best served warm. The theory behind this is that it emerged during the reign of King George III in honor of his Queen Charlotte who was a patron of apple growers. Lots of variations to this emerged including the Charlotte Russe which used sponge fingers to line the mould and was filled with fruit-flavored cream. The Maryland version, Kossuth Cake, was a variation of the Charlotte Russe.”

As for the dish, it was plenty tasty. I followed Howard’s instructions, more or less. The addition of meringue is unique to Howard and Tyson, and may be what turns ‘toast’ into ‘douci,’ but I would have preferred whipped cream. All in all it’s not a bad way to use up the last of your cherries.

After singing the praises of the Howard and Carroll County Black Tartarian cherries, the Sun lamented that the cherry trees “will be denuded within a week,” with the consolation that “the blackberry will be at the funeral of the cherry.”