The Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky Read Free Book Online Page B

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    However, the idea prospered, and soon it became a state-wide event. It was more than a gathering of lovers of good cooking; it was also a social gathering. Before the days of automobiles, people journeyed to the Oaklawn church afoot and in horse and buggy. Whole families arose at sunrise and set out for the church. It was the place for a fellow to take his girl. When the trolley cars came into the picture, the event took on added numerical strength. Unfortunately it was a cold ride, especially for the boys and girls who travelled any distance, for the street railway company at that time of year always trotted out its open cars. Any old-timer will testify that to roar and jounce through the countryside in an open car on the first day of May was a “darned cold ride.” But every one got his money’s worth, the celebration in those first days lasted all day, providing a chance to renew old friendships. Many a matrimonial match resulted from one of these May Day gatherings. For the past years the May Breakfast is the whole celebration. People eat, shake hands all around, jump into their cars and either return home or go to work, leaving them a saddened committee of women who gloomily look around and say, “Never again. It isn’t worth all the trouble.”
     
    Note: These same women would undoubtedly rise up in arms if anyone dared suggest that they retire from the May Breakfast committee.

Dishes New York City’s Hotels Gave America
    ALLAN ROSS Mac DOUGALL
    Allan Ross MacDougall had a restless and unpredictable writing career. Among his works are a 1930 food encyclopedia, The Gourmet’s Almanac; a 1944 translation of a sixteenth-century Belgian epic by Charles de Coster, The Glorious Adventures of Tyl Ulenspiegl; an edited volume of the letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay; and a 1956 biography of the dancer Isadora Duncan. It is surprising that the FWP did not seek a more central role for MacDougall in America Eats, since he was one of the few FWP writers with a major food writing credit to his name. MacDougall’s food almanac is a wonderfully quirky, always readable, though not always helpful month-by-month food guide. On mutton he wrote, “Maybe it would be better to let the poor witless sheep live.” About a third of the way through the book he abandons its premise, declaring, “By this time you will have come to see that there is no reason presiding over the choice of foods treated each month.” This piece and one on oyster stew at Grand Central were the only contributions of this offbeat but stylish food writer.
    In 1956, on the day MacDougall mailed his finished biography of Isadora Duncan to New York from Paris, he went to lunch at the Café de Flore and collapsed across the table, dead of a heart attack, a fact that seems particularly bizarre considering the dancer herself was accidentally strangled by her scarf only days after completing her own autobiography, My Life, twenty-nine years earlier.
    MacDougall died as poor as he had been when he was part of the New York City Writers’ Project, and the Isadora Duncan biography was not published until four years after his death.
    I n the two decades between 1840 and 1860 the population of the city of New York almost tripled in size. Larger and more elaborate hotels on the European continental model sprang up. Famous imported French chefs catered to a cosmopolitan and newly rich native clientele, and many elaborate “made” dishes replaced the simple roasts and stews. Even new cuts of beef were introduced, the Steak Delmonico, for instance. Many of the culinary innovations and creations of that period have long since been forgotten; others have passed into the common language and thence into the dictionaries and cook books of the nation.
    In Webster is found, beside the Delmonico steak, Waldorf Salad, Delmonico Potatoes, Chicken à la King, and Lobster à la Newburg. Like such creations of hotels outside New York as Parkerhouse rolls and Saratoga chips, the