Yep, that's right...a thread about food..

[Glorybound]

September 20, 2011, 2:52 pm
Sampling the Tastes of the Civil War


Daniel Mowles preparing roasted rabbits for a tasting of Civil War-era food at the Roger Smith Hotel on Monday By JAMES BARRON Photographs by Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times.

The chef, it turned out, was from southwest Virginia and grew up in a household that, he said, had inherited some of Robert E. Lee's silverware.

Those were just coincidences at a tasting of dishes from the Civil War era, prepared according to recipes adapted from cookbooks published between 1861 and 1865.

Here was another coincidence. The tasting was organized by Andrew F. Smith, a faculty member at the New School and the editor in chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, who said he was distantly related to a Miss Leslie.

He said she was famous among culinary historians as a 19th-century cookbook writer from Philadelphia. And it was her stewed mutton chops that were on the tasting menu, right after "Captain Sanderson's boiled pork-and-bean soup" and before "Mrs. Haskell's 1861 mashed potatoes." That accompanied the roast rabbit.




http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/sampling-what-the-civil-war-tasted-like/?scp=2&sq=civil war&st=cse

 

[ole]

I will get you for that, Lee.

 

[pamc153PA]

Now I'm hungry . . . and I just finished dinner. Thanks, Lee!

 

[Glorybound]

Yeah I haven't "et yet", kind of wish I had "Johnny cakes, rabbit, and Boston mustard" after reading the article, but I reckon I'll have to settle for a few chicken tenders...with maybe some Frank's...:shrug:

 

[pamc153PA]

I've never had rabbit. Does it really taste "almost like chicken"?

 

[Glorybound]

I've never had rabbit. Does it really taste "almost like chicken"?

I've never had it either, but from what I've heard it does taste like chicken. It just looks kinda good in the photo from the article. Maybe there's somebody on the board who could clue us in on that.

Lee

 

[TinCan]

It tastes like chicken.....but if this guy wasn't cookin over an open fire, or at least with wood, it's all bogus anyway.

 

[diane]

Here's a companion article complete with the recipes for those foods tasted in the article. Don't know but what I should put it on Donna's thread for the recipes!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/21/nyregion/recipes-adapted-from-cookbooks-of-the-civil-war-era.html

Some of them look pretty good all gussied up for our tastes!

 

[Glorybound]

Here's a companion article complete with the recipes for those foods tasted in the article. Don't know but what I should put it on Donna's thread for the recipes!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/21/nyregion/recipes-adapted-from-cookbooks-of-the-civil-war-era.html

Some of them look pretty good all gussied up for our tastes!

Wow, yeah that link has got all the recipes for that civil war food, Johnny cakes etc...thanks Diane, I didn't see that link.

Lee

 

[Robtweb1]

It does tasted like chicken, and the tame ones (farm raised) tend to have more white meat than do the wild ones.

Now somebody tell me what Boston mustard tastes like.

 

[Glorybound]

Boston Mustard
¼ cup mustard Seeds
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon sugar
3 tablespoons milk
In mortar, mix mustard seeds, salt and sugar. Add milk and mix till smooth. It should be very smooth.
•

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/21/ny...l-war-era.html

 

[pamc153PA]

The fried catfish sounds good. . .think I'll try to make the Confederate Ketchup that goes with it. Considering I'm a Yankee, though, I might not be qualified.

 

[K Hale]

Dear God, why do those look so much like cats?

 

[diane]

Lol! Sometimes cats are referred to as roof rabbits. :hmmm: One British admiral of the 18th century claimed nothing was better than properly prepared rats - often served them!

 

[njwilliams]

I've never had it either, but from what I've heard it does taste like chicken. It just looks kinda good in the photo from the article. Maybe there's somebody on the board who could clue us in on that.

Lee

I does taste like chicken but I think there is a lot more dark meat also the rabbit I've have had more bones than chicken does.

Interesting side fact, eating rabbit might be healthier because in itself rabbit is not fattening. I have looked at studies that say if all you ate was rabbit you would starve because it takes more energy for the human body to actually breakdown(digest) rabbit compared to other meats.

 

[ole]

Meat is meat. Cat, rat, squirrel or rabbit, it is meat. From what I've read salt pork or beef didn't come close to fresh meat. It might have filled the tummy now and then, but a cat or a dog could be a welcome relief from all that. Better still was the pig that you "requisitioned." Or the duck, turkey, goose or chicken.

When you're on the road. Lord only knows what you get to eat. Here, kitty, kitty.

 

[donna]

Thanks for posting article and recipes from New York Times. I had rabbit. It does taste like chicken but more gamey to me. When you have family members that hunted you get to taste a lot of things. I guess a lot of you have had deer meat. My husband's father did a lot with fixing deer meat. I think the best I ever tasted was his chili made with deer meat.

 

[gold lotus 99]

Love the whole thing - thanks Lee for the post. Wish they would take their tasting fair on the road... southwest would be good...

And I've eaten wild and farm-raised rabbits, and cooked the farm-raised. It does taste like chicken, especially the farm-raised. Yes, the wild are gamey and have less white meat, still good, though. Hasenpfeffer is traditional German dish, essentially rabbit stew with pepper.

 

[diane]

One of my cousins raised rabbits for fur and meat - there is very definitely a difference between them and wild rabbits! I would rather eat squirrel, to tell the truth, than a stringy old jackrabbit - which is all we have here. They are mean, too. I've seen them kill snakes and possums. Definitely best left to the coyotes! I've had possum, raccoon, snake, squirrel - none of it tastes like chicken. Tastes like possum, raccoon, snake and squirrel... Druther stick to the fowls of the air and the fish of the sea as the good book puts it - quail, duck, goose, steelhead, trout, salmon!

 

[Nathanb1]

Dear God, why do those look so much like cats?

You noticed that, too.