For August, The Chamberlain Calendar of American Cooking (Narcisse and Narcissa Chamberlain, 1957) focused on a few vacation spots. While the vacation focus makes sense for August, when people are often squeezing in a summer getaway before school and cold weather get in the way, the choices seem a little weird.
A lot of people love seaside adventures, so I get why Marblehead, Massachusetts, is in here. The fresh seafood is a big draw, so I understand the choice of fish chowder, too, even if I'm more interested in chowder when it's cold outside than when the air is already hot and humid enough for me to feel like I'm trying to breathe chowder.
I just don't get the name: Spite House Fish Chowder. A little Googling showed me that the Marblehead Spite House is one of the oldest U.S. spite houses-- houses built to irritate or annoy neighbors with whom one has a dispute. They are often built to block someone's view, or to stay just within the boundaries of a too-small lot. This one is so old that nobody seems to be quite sure of who was being spited or how, but I have no idea how the chowder recipe came to be associated with the Spite House. It's not a restaurant, as far as my many seconds of research have found, and any mentions I can find of this recipe refer back to this cookbook. If anybody knows what the Spite House has to do with fish chowder, let me know!
Another potential destination for summer vacationers-- maybe for ones who love large bodies of water but prefer to know they're shark-free-- is Mackinac Island. I've never been to Mackinac Island, but when I saw that this slow-paced resort was featured, I knew that the recipe had to be for fudge! (If you've never heard of Mackinac Island and think I'm being overly deterministic, just Google "Mackinac Island recipes" and see what comes up. Plus, a lot of regional ice cream makers have a Mackinac Island Fudge flavor. I swear, it's not just me!) Everyone I know who has been there comes home with a few pounds of fudge to distribute to friends and relatives. So of course...
...the Chamberlains for some reason think the resort should be featured with a recipe for Scalloped Eggs and Onions. Which... I guess? Representing Mackinac Island with a recipe for eggs and onions is like taking a trip to New Orleans and coming back with a recipe for Cheddar mashed potatoes. I'm sure somebody in the area makes that, but it's not really the recipe non-native cooks are looking for.
At least these recipes made me think and even do a little bit of research, so I guess that counts as an educational activity? This August entry is getting me prepped for back-to-school time, whether or not I'm ready.
Maybe the spite part of this spite house was to cook fish and stink up the neighborhood. Nobody will forget the time someone re-heated shrimp in a microwave at the office (by an open stairway that ensured multiple floors reeked of fish for the rest of the day). I know it was shrimp because the stench was so bad, a building wide email was sent out...
ReplyDeleteAh yes, great lakes fudge. I remember coming back from a different Marblehead than the one featured here with many flavors of fudge (that I had to figure out how to keep cool in a dark colored car in the middle of August). The eggs and onions would certainly be more regional ingredients than what goes into fudge. I imagine keeping chickens and growing onions would certainly fit the zeitgeist of that island, more than fields of sugar beets with a stinky refinery. Then of course I had to do a little research on the island. They are also a national historic landmark, but way younger than mine (at least we have cars).
I imagine everything smells like fish or baked beans in New England, but that's surely a side effect of my reading materials. Still, not sure that smelling like fish would make this place stand out.
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