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1728

William Byrd II and his assistants survey the North Carolina–Virginia line from Currituck Inlet some 240 miles westward. His notes on native American flora and fauna will prove to be invaluable.

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I remember the political rallies in the woods of Yazoo County…where Senator Bilbo and the others were of secondary importance to the barbecue and buttered yams and the biscuits dipped in molasses and the corn-on-the-cob, steamier and richer even than the perfervid rhetoric.

—WILLIE MORRIS, TERRAINS OF THE HEART

Soups, Muddles, and Chowders

From the fifteenth century on, Europeans exploring the New World—first the Spaniards, then the English and French—all remarked upon its bounty—and on the abundance of fish and shellfish in particular. With the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico pounding much of the South, turning the Lowcountry into a vast marine gumbo and making a peninsula out of Florida, it’s hardly surprising that seafood soups figure prominently among the regional classics.

In Two Hundred Years of Charleston Cooking (1930) I find recipes for Crab Soup, Shrimp Soup, Fish Chowder, Gumbo with Crabs or Shrimp, Oyster Soup, and Oyster Stew with Mace. Mary Randolph’s Virginia House-wife (1824) also gives us Catfish Soup, and early New Orleans cookbooks offer plenty of court bouillons and gumbos.

Two vegetable soups are quintessentially southern, too: groundnut (peanut), said to be George Washington’s favorite, and okra. Both show up in Sarah Rutledge’s Carolina Housewife (1847), and Mrs. Samuel G. Stoney’s Carolina Rice Cook Book (1901) offers five different okra soups plus a crawfish (or shrimp) bisque. A facsimile of Stoney’s book appears in Karen Hess’s The Carolina Rice Kitchen (1992).

The muddles—the fish and shellfish stews of the Outer Banks and Lowcountry—were so commonplace that I believe they were passed down by word of mouth from father to son and mother to daughter. At least I’ve found no recipes for them printed before the twentieth century and even the ones I did find appear mainly in local cookbooks.

Approximately half of the recipes in this chapter call for fish or shellfish, among them what I call the Big Four: She-Crab Soup, Frogmore Stew, Pinebark Stew, and Rock Muddle. For me, the recipe origins are as colorful as their names; the head-notes tell their stories.

BLUE CRAB SOUP

MAKES 4 TO 6 SERVINGS

Anyone living along the Chesapeake Bay or its tidal reaches knows that blue crabs are a singular delicacy. Just such a person is Meri Major, of Belle Air Plantation, whom I interviewed some time ago while on assignment for Bon Appétit magazine. I was researching a piece on the James River plantations of Virginia, the families who live there, and the regional recipes they serve. Wherever I went, I kept hearing about a wonderful cook named Meri Major, so I looked her up, then drove over for lunch one day. I wasn’t disappointed. Meri served this delicate crab soup which, unlike so many other blue crab recipes, tastes mostly of crab. “I don’t like it when excellent food is ruined by masking it with some other flavor,” Meri explained. “This is especially true of seafood and most especially true of crab. That’s why I’ve never made a crab cake.” Meri told me that the Virginia way to eat this soup is to mash the lemon and egg garnish with the soup spoon at the outset so their flavors are released. I find this a perfect main dish for a small party luncheon. It needs only a fresh green vegetable or tossed salad to accompany, though I sometimes substitute thickly sliced heirloom tomatoes lightly drizzled with fruity olive oil. Note: If blue crab is unavailable, substitute Dungeness or even frozen snow crab. But don’t expect the flavor to be the same.

4 tablespoons (½ stick) butter

1 cup finely minced celery (include a few leaves)

¼ teaspoon freshly ground white pepper, or to taste

1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

6 cups (1½ quarts) milk (about)

2 cups (1 pint) heavy cream (about)

¼ teaspoon Worcestershire