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5. Quickly finish the salsa by mixing in the mint, basil, parsley, salt, and pepper.

6. Arrange the roe on a large heated platter, ladle the salsa artfully on top, then garnish with the lime wedges and mint sprigs. Serve at once.

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TIME LINE: the people and events that shaped Southern Cuisine

1900

North Carolina native David Pender opens a grocery in Norfolk, Virginia. Offering the finest fresh produce, meat, fish, and fowl, and a delivery service, the David Pender Grocery prospers. By 1926, there are 244 Penders in Virginia and North Carolina.

1901

Nineteen-year-old Tennessean Howell Campbell opens the Standard Candy Company in Nashville. At first he makes only hard candies, but 11 years later he creates America’s first not-just-chocolate candy bar (see 1912).

The Picayune Creole Cookbook is published in New Orleans and quickly becomes a classic. Many editions later, it is still in print.

1901–1902

To publicize its local bounty and attract international trade to its port, Charleston, South Carolina, stages a six-month exposition with Teddy Roosevelt on hand for President’s Day.

The Chattanooga Bakery, later to become famous for its MoonPie, is founded.

Cocaine is removed from Coca-Cola syrup.

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Heirloom Recipe

This more-than-200-year-old recipe shows how dramatically fish cookery has changed since Colonial days. It’s reprinted here just as it appeared in From North Carolina Kitchens: Favorite Recipes Old and New, an uncopyrighted collection published in the early 1950s by the North Carolina Federation of Home Demonstration Clubs.

BAKED SHAD (1780)

Place in a large pan and cover with water. Put in oven, let simmer from 4 to 6 hours in wood stove. Stuffing for a 6-pound shad, take 2 pounds butter, 10 eggs, 2 quarts bread crumbs toasted, salt and pepper. Mix this up together then stuff shad. Then with needle and thread sew up. If the fish should get too hot, place a cloth over the top.

—Lincoln County, North Carolina

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BRONZED SHRIMP CREOLE

MAKES 4 SERVINGS

Although New Orleans restaurants grab most of the press, I’ve dined very well in lesser-known Louisiana, which I prowled several years ago while researching a food and travel article for Gourmet. I remember in particular this signature shrimp dish from Lafayette’s Café Vermillionville. It’s a long-winded recipe, to be sure, but it’s well worth the time and effort. Note: Clarified butter is melted butter from which the froth and milk solids have been skimmed. Its flavor is pure sunshine. Tip: Choreography is everything here. Because the Creole Sauce must simmer for three quarters of an hour, it’s best to make it a day ahead of time.

½ cup long-grain brown rice

½ cup long-grain white rice

1½ cups (3 sticks) butter, clarified (see Note above)

4 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

1 tablespoon onion flakes

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon hot red pepper sauce

1 teaspoon sweet paprika

¾ teaspoon dried leaf basil, crumbled

¾ teaspoon dried leaf thyme, crumbled

1/8 teaspoon white pepper

24 large shrimp (about 1 pound), shelled and deveined

3 cups Creole Sauce (recipe follows; see Tip above)

1 pound medium shrimp, shelled, deveined, and cut into ½-inch pieces

4 medium scallions, trimmed and thinly sliced (garnish)

1. Cook the brown rice, then the white rice by package directions; set both aside.

2. Meanwhile, combine the clarified butter, garlic, lemon juice, onion flakes, Worcestershire sauce, salt, hot red pepper sauce, paprika, basil, thyme, and white pepper in a large nonreactive bowl. Add the large shrimp, toss well, and set aside to marinate.

3. Place the Creole Sauce in a medium-size saucepan, add the shrimp pieces, and simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally, for 2 to 3 minutes or until the shrimp are cooked through. Remove from the heat and keep warm.

4. Fluff the brown rice, then the white rice. Lightly oil a ½-cup ramekin; fill one side of it with brown rice and the other side with white