| Some of the foods, like ice water, are still around today, mostly unchanged. And I must agree with Twain's assessment that America is the only country in the world that loves ice water as we do. (Don't believe me? Travel to Europe.) Others, like "a mighty porterhouse steak an inch and a half thick, hot and sputtering from the griddle; dusted with fragrant pepper; enriched with little melting bits of butter of the most unimpeachable freshness and genuineness" are around - perhaps even common - but changed. The cows are raised differently, affecting both the milk and the meat, and all dairy products are now pasteurized. (Twain would have probably called today's versions "insipid" and "blasphemy!") With some effort, we can still recreate the versions Mark Twain must have eaten.
There are still more foods that we no longer eat for good reason. I would put raccoon in this category. Beahrs, bless him, actually cooked and ate coon. From his description, it's not something I would recommend trying. The fact that we do not factory farm and mass-market raccoon meat has perhaps little to do with how easy raccoons are to raise in cramped factory farm conditions and much more to do with the fact that the meat tastes - and smells - utterly vile. Apparently, if you cook it enough and trim the fat, you can make it bland enough to actually eat it.
And, as Beahrs notes in his chapter on "coon," this is one of many foods - particularly Southern foods - that are shaped by America's history of slavery. The first decades of the American south mixed the agricultural and culinary traditions of African slaves, native Americans, and the white descendants of Europeans. While Twain himself does not directly make note of this, he feels very strongly that many foods are ONLY cooked properly in the South, and any northern attempts at the same foods are abysmal. Beahrs then connects the dots for us and tells why that is.
And then there are the other foods that no longer - or barely - exist. These include prairie chicken from the midwest and trout from Lake Tahoe, which were once eaten by the trainload. In the case of prairie chicken, we did more than empty our prairies of birds via hunting. We removed the prairies, and the population of birds declined as its habitat disappeared. In the case of the trout, we overfished the trout, but we also straightened crooked rivers and added dams right where they got in the way of the trout's cycle of life. Beahrs found both animals and observed them as the guest of various conservation efforts, but wasn't able to eat them.
This book tells the story of the environmental destruction of America, and how it not only damaged our native wild species but also removed many of the tastiest wild foods from American menus. I recommend reading it in addition to (but not instead of) Kitchen Literacy by Ann Vileisis, so you can see where this particular period fits into the broader story of American culinary history. What this book makes clear and Vileisis states much more directly, is that the local, fresh foods that were so clearly grounded in place for Mark Twain were then often mass-harvested and sold to a far-away American public that did not realize it was literally emptying a continent of wild foods. And when food is no longer local, particularly wild foods, then one does not notice that the destruction of the environment is synonymous with the destruction of our food sources. In fact, today, now that wild foods are limited mostly to fish (or the occasional hunted deer), Americans sometimes ridicule conservationists and environmentalists for wishing to save this habitat or that endangered species. What's the use of the spotted owl, they ask? Well, if wild species were among your favorite menu items - as they were for Mark Twain - then you wouldn't have to ask.
The last point I feel I must make about this book is that it's a great topic, and it's incredibly well-researched, but it's made infinitely better by the fact that Beahrs can write. I cannot stress that enough. Nearly anyone can write a book, but not everyone has such a gift with the English language. Simply put, Beahrs uses an amount of sensory detail that would have made my high school English teachers cry tears of joy. As a reader, it's an absolute thrill to read the words of someone who so clearly loves the English language. |
