Food History

I have a thing about the South. By the South, I mean Melbourne, of course (since I’m Australian) but I also mean states like Arkansas and Alabama.

One of my recent purchases is a book by Mrs. Fisher, first published in 1881. She started life a slave in Alabama and, a bit later, moved from Mobile to San Francisco. The little mauve (lavender? purple?) volume put out by Applewood Books in 1995 takes Mrs Fisher’s cookbook from 1881, gives it an introduction by leading food historian Karen Hess and is full of surprises.

It’s called “What Mrs. Fisher knows about Old Southern Cooking” and it contains a wide range of recipes. It’s not the same sort of cooking as, for instance, the plantation style of cookery, though it has a few recipes in common. It feels to this white on-American as a bridge between several cooking styles.

This tells us a bunch of stuff about Mrs. Fisher. First and foremost, she could cook. Not just what her mother taught her, but what people wanted to eat. If you live your life in a small community or are surrounded by people just like you, then this means something quite different to what it means in Mrs. Fisher’s case. She obviously did well in San Francisco and did well by finding the bits of Southern cooking that would appeal to the West Coast palate. This shows that she was culturally sensitive as well and enjoying her own heritage.

I’ve bookmarked two recipes. One is for one of my friends, because quinces are just in season here and she loves cooking with quinces. I’ll make sure she gets to see Mrs. Fisher’s Quince Preserves.

The other recipe is for you. I’ve wanted a 19th century recipe for Chow Chow for ages, and I’m feeling supremely generous, so I’m going to share it with you.

Chow Chow

Take one cabbage, a large one, and cut up fine. Put in a large jar or keg, and sprinkle over it thickly one pint of coarse salt. Let it remain in salt twelve hours, then scald the cut-up cabbage with one gallon of boiling vinegar. Cut up two gallons of cucumbers, green or pickled, and add to it; cut in pieces the size of the end of little finger. Then chop very fine two gallons more of cucumbers or pickles and add to the above.
Seasonings: One pound of brown sugar, one tablespoonful of cayenne pepper, one tablespoonful of black pepper, two gallons of pure wine vinegar, two tablespoonfuls of tumerick, six onions, chopped fine or grated. Then put it on to cook in a large porcelain kettle, with a slow fire, for twelve hours. Stir it occasionally to keep it from burning. You can add more pepper than is here given if you like it hot.