Mississippi Delta Recipes ( updated)

7th Mississippi Infantry

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
Joined
Sep 28, 2013
Location
Southwest Mississippi
I thought some members may enjoy this article about our " Mississippi Delta cuisine" .
The original article has been updated.


The Literature of Food and Cooking in the Mississippi Delta: An Overview

When it comes to the literature of food and cooking in the Mississippi Delta, there’s a lot out there; this document only scratches the surface. Though I am including fiction, periodicals and personal accounts such as memoirs, community cookbooks are the keys to food and cooking the Delta, and those keys open a lot of doors.
Ground Zero
The food of the Mississippi Delta is for the most part typical of Southern foods. Some time ago, I made a list of 12 essential dishes any Southern cook needs to know. I ran it by my friends on social media, and it was like I’d thrown a June bug down in a chicken run. It took a month before the dust settled and I was able to nail it down. Here they are:
baby-cornbread-blog2a-300x295.jpgButtermilk biscuits
Cornbread
Pimiento and cheese
Fried chicken
Barbecued pork
Pound cake
Fruit cobbler
Cornbread dressing
Chicken and dumplings
Sweet potato pie
Banana pudding
Stewed greens
I consider this a list of representative foods you might find anywhere in the Lower South as well as Mississippi, but in the Delta you have one big distinction, that being the cultural influence of New Orleans.

The entire article may be read at:

https://jesseyancy.com/the-literature-of-food-and-cooking-in-the-mississippi-delta-an-overview/
 
I thought some members may enjoy this article about our " Mississippi Delta cuisine" .
The original article has been updated.


The Literature of Food and Cooking in the Mississippi Delta: An Overview

When it comes to the literature of food and cooking in the Mississippi Delta, there’s a lot out there; this document only scratches the surface. Though I am including fiction, periodicals and personal accounts such as memoirs, community cookbooks are the keys to food and cooking the Delta, and those keys open a lot of doors.
Ground Zero
The food of the Mississippi Delta is for the most part typical of Southern foods. Some time ago, I made a list of 12 essential dishes any Southern cook needs to know. I ran it by my friends on social media, and it was like I’d thrown a June bug down in a chicken run. It took a month before the dust settled and I was able to nail it down. Here they are:
View attachment 395687Buttermilk biscuits
Cornbread
Pimiento and cheese
Fried chicken
Barbecued pork
Pound cake
Fruit cobbler
Cornbread dressing
Chicken and dumplings
Sweet potato pie
Banana pudding
Stewed greens
I consider this a list of representative foods you might find anywhere in the Lower South as well as Mississippi, but in the Delta you have one big distinction, that being the cultural influence of New Orleans.

The entire article may be read at:

https://jesseyancy.com/the-literature-of-food-and-cooking-in-the-mississippi-delta-an-overview/
Interesting about Lafcadio Hearn.
Despite all the time I had spent in New Orleans from age 8 to my late forties, I had never heard of him.
Until my third trip to Japan, when I visited Matsue, on the northern shore of Honshu. We were treated to a fantastic tour of the area by our hosts. The most unexpected part of which was being taken to the home he lived in during his sojourn in Japan. It was here that our tour guide "introduced" me to the man whose writings "invented" the image of New Orleans that the world is familiar with.
How strange and fascinating this was.
Hearn wrote about New Orleans during the 10 years he lived there, roughly the 1880s. He moved to Matsue in 1890.
Incidentally, in Japan, Hearn is more widely remembered as Koizumi Yakumo, a westerner who became a writer of Japanese ghost stories.
There's a lot more to the very interesting life that he lived.
 
I thought this was Miss Delta food, If were going Cajun/Coondonkey. 2 words Justin Wilson, I guranton told you that good food.
1616896207388.png
 
Yep. And what about delicious summer veggies; purple hulls and crowder peas, yellow squash - nothing better than squash casserole.

Bet @7th Mississippi Infantry remembers the old doubtable restaurants in Mendenhall and McComb.
Oh Yes !

The Revolving Tables restaurant in Mendenhall and The Dinner Bell in McComb.

The Revolving Tables closed about twenty years ago, but the Dinner Bell is going strong.
(I think the Dinner Bell may be the last restaurant of this type left in Mississippi).

Both restaurants (along with a recipe for squash casserole) are mentioned in this article:

https://www.hattiesburgamerican.com...0/10/st-john-roundtable-restaurants/73653064/
 
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And some more classics.
Our writer Eudora Welty was well known for collecting ancient recipes.

Here's some of her 1930's recollections:

MAY 13, 2021 BY JESSE YANCY

Welty on Mississippi Food

This text is from a pamphlet that Eudora Welty wrote for and was distributed by the Mississippi Advertising Commission in 1936. Bearing that in mind, the simplicity of the recipes and the appeal to “Old South” sensibilities are better understood. This essay was selected by the Federal Writers’ Project only a short time before the publication of A Curtain of Green in 1941, a work that established Welty as a leading light in American letters, a position she still holds.

Stark Young, in his book Feliciana, tells how a proud and lovely Southern lady, famous for her dinner table and for her closely guarded recipes, temporarily forgot how a certain dish was prepared. She asked her Creole cook, whom she herself had taught, for the recipe. The cook wouldn’t give it back. Still highly revered, recipes in the South are no longer quite so literally guarded. Generosity has touched the art of cooking, and now and then, it is said, a Southern lady will give another Southern lady her favorite recipe and even include all the ingredients, down to that magical little touch that makes all the difference. In the following recipes, gleaned from ante-bellum homes in various parts of Mississippi, nothing is held back. That is guaranteed. Yankees are welcome to make these dishes. Follow the directions and success is assured.
Port Gibson, Mississippi, which General Grant on one occasion declared was “too beautiful to burn,” is the source of a group of noble old recipes.

STUFFED EGGS
12 eggs
1 lb. can of spinach or equal amount of fresh spinach
1 small onion, cut fine
salt and pepper to taste
juice of 1 lemon or ½ cup vinegar
½ cup melted butter or oil
1 large can mushroom soup.
Boil eggs hard, peel, and cut lengthwise. Mash yolks fine. Add butter, seasoning, and spinach. Stuff each half egg, press together, and pour over them mushroom soup thickened with cornstarch, and chopped pimento for color.

_______

One of the things Southerners do on plantations is give big barbecues. For miles around, “Alinda Gables,” a plantation in the Delta near Greenwood, is right well spoken of for its barbecued chicken and spare ribs. Mr. and Mrs. Allen Hobbs, of “Alinda Gables,” here tells you what to do with every three-pound chicken you mean to barbecue:

BARBECUE SAUCE
1 pint Wesson oil
2 pounds butter
5 bottles barbecue sauce (12 ounce bottles)
1/2 pint vinegar
1 cup lemon juice
2 bottles tomato catsup (14 ounce bottles)
1 bottle Worcestershire sauce (10 ounce bottles)
1 tablespoon Tabasco sauce
2 buttons garlic, chopped fine salt and pepper to taste
This will barbecue eight chickens weighing from 2.42 to 3 pounds. In barbecuing, says Mrs. Hobbs, keep a slow fire and have live coals to add during the process of cooking, which takes about two hours. The secret lies in the slow cooking and the constant mopping of the meat with the sauce. Keep the chickens wet at all times and turn often. If hotter sauce is desired, add red pepper and more Tabasco sauce.
Mrs. James Milton Acker, whose home, “The Magnolias,” in north Mississippi is equally famous for barbecue parties under the magnificent magnolia trees on the lawn, gives a recipe which is simpler and equally delightful: • Heat together: 4 ounces vinegar, 14 ounces catsup, 3 ounces Worcestershire sauce, the juice of 1 lemon, 2 tablespoons salt, red and black pepper to taste, and 4 ounces butter. Baste the meat constantly while cooking.

_______

Pass Christian, Mississippi, an ancient resort where the most brilliant society of the eighteenth century used to gather during the season, is awakened each morning by the familiar cry, “Oyster ma-an from Pass Christi-a-an!” It would take everything the oyster man had to prepare this seafood gumbo as the chef at Inn-by-the-Sea, Pass Christian, orders it:

SEAFOOD GUMBO
2 quarts okra, sliced
large green peppers
1 large stalk celery
6 medium sized onions
1 bunch parsley
½ quart diced ham
2 cans #2 tomatoes
2 cans tomato paste
3 pounds cleaned shrimp
2 dozen hard crabs, cleaned and broken into bits
100 oysters and juice
½ cup bacon drippings
1 cup flour small bundle of bay leaf and thyme
salt and pepper to taste
1 teaspoon Lea & Perrins Sauce
1 gallon chicken or ham stock
Put ham in pot and smother until done. Then add sliced okra, and also celery, peppers, onions, and parsley all ground together. Cover and cook until well done. Then add tomatoes and tomato paste. Next put in the shrimp, crabs, crab meat and oysters. Make brown roux of bacon dripping and flour and add to the above. Add the soup stock, and throw into pot bay leaves and thyme, salt and pepper, and Lea & Perrins Sauce. This makes three gallons of gumbo. Add one tablespoon of steamed rice to each serving.

Two other seafood recipes from the Mississippi Coast come out of Biloxi, that cosmopolitan city that began back in 1669, and where even today the European custom of blessing the fleet at the opening of the shrimp season is ceremoniously observed. “Fish court bouillon” is a magical name on the Coast, it is spoken in soft voice by the diner, the waiter, and the chef alike; its recipe should be accorded the highest respect; it should be made up to the letter, and without delay:


The remainder at:
https://jesseyancy.com/welty-on-mississippi-

A couple of those recipes were identical to how my Grandmothers would prepare such dishes.

And while those two ladies were never BFF's, they did respect each other.

I do remember they would have an occasional disagreement about deviled eggs.

:bounce:
 
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Nice addition.
Thanks.

I thought some of the food forum aficionados might find that interesting.

When Miss Welty wasn't writing short stories ... or developing her photography skills ... she was always
very interested in the food of her childhood (what remained of the Old South)

She was always one of the first to be asked to write introductions to a host of local "cookbooks" until late in her life.

One of my favorite Welty quotes is actually about food.

I can't recall what she was talking about, a different Chicken Pot Pie perhaps ?
But her response ... when asked ... was:

" It's tasty, but I've always heard it's a Methodist dish "

:rofl:
 
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