When I introduced Frederica Fare (Parents Association of Frederica Academy, St. Simons Island, Georgia, 1977), I never even got to the recipes because I was off on a tangent about the way the book's historical sketches went out of their way to reframe the Civil War and sanitize the treatment of enslaved people. It's important to look at cookbooks as historical documents and think about their agendas, but it's way more fun to look at weird old recipes. Today is the fun part.
One thing I learned about Frederica is that while the residents believe in hospitality, they have a strange sense of it.
Funny how the Gourmet Pumpkin Pie "is good, especially for people who don't like pumpkin pie." If I were making dessert for people who I knew didn't like pumpkin pie, I would imagine the best course of action would be to make some other type of dessert rather than telling them they would like pumpkin pie, goddammit, because this version is gourmet.
I also learned that the people of Frederica have a very specific definition of "classy."
It means "with a small jar of Cheese Whiz and a can of mushroom soup." Classy!
I also learned that Fredericans like sandwich "frosting" so much that they do not reserve this technique for large, layered sandwich loaves to be sliced and served cold at parties.
In fact, they will make individual crustless tuna salad sandwiches, frost them with "Sharp Cheddar Cold Pack Cheese Food" mixed with margarine and eggs, chill the layers overnight, and then bake them before serving! (And everybody wants a nice, hot sandwich in a nice, hot climate...)
My main takeaway, though, was that Fredericans like MEAT. Meat is just assumed to be part of veggie dishes, like Buttered Squash.
No need to mention that the dish also has bacon. (Perhaps, though, the reluctance to mention the bacon comes from the fact that it is boiled, which does not seem like the ideal prep method....)
Fredericans like meat enough that even recipes that sound like they might be light-- such as, say, chicken breasts-- are actually meat fests.
The chicken breasts are wrapped in bacon before being baked on a bed of dried beef-- meaning this is a chicken, beef, and pork dish! And if the meat is insufficient, the cream of mushroom soup can be swapped out for cream of chicken.
Most startling of all, at least for me, was the recipe for Italian Spaghetti.
There is no mention of spaghetti beyond the recipe's title and headnote (which claims that this recipe for the "Best spaghetti ever!" came "from an Italian woman in Illinois"). The recipe is actually for a seasoned chuck roast served with... meatballs? I guess that this entire meal is supposed to be served with a side of spaghetti, but I still can't figure out why one would make both a roast and meatballs or what the logistics of serving this combination might be. Maybe the roast is for the grownups and the meatballs are for the kids? (I'd speculate that maybe the roast is for diners who don't like ground meat and the meatballs are for people who prefer softer textures, but I already know that Fredericans' answer to "I don't like ground beef" would be "But you do like it the way I fix it, so just shut up and eat it.")
In any case, I am grateful that the recipes in this book are far more entertaining than the historical sketches!
I was also laughing about how "classy" vegetables use frozen broccoli and cauliflower which essentially turn into mush with woody bits. Brussels sprouts hold up better to the freezing process, but they would all be much classier if they were fresh (and not swimming in cheese whiz and mushroom soup).
ReplyDeleteI am almost always amused by anything described as "classy." In a practical sense, the person who uses the word "classy" usually has the same idea of the word as I do. We just have very different attitudes toward it. (They see it as upscale and I see it as campy.)
DeleteI've heard people rhapsodize about the foods of the south... I think they got a very censored version that was stripped of "process cheese food."
ReplyDeleteThat seems very likely!
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