Twain's Feast - Andrew Beahrs [0]
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Introduction
One - IT MAKES ME CRY TO THINK OF THEM
Two - A BARREL OF ODDS AND ENDS
Three - MASTERPIECE OF THE UNIVERSE
Four - HEAVEN ON THE HALF SHELL
Five - DINNER WAS LEISURELY SERVED
Six - THE MOST ABSORBING STORY IN THE WORLD
Seven - IT IS MY THANKSGIVING DAY
Eight - TWILIGHT
EPILOGUE
Acknowledgements
NOTES
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
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First published in 2010 by The Penguin Press a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Copyright © Andrew Beahrs, 2010
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Beahrs, Andrew, 1973-
Twain’s feast: searching for America’s lost foods in the footsteps of Samuel Clemens / Andrew Beahrs.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN : 978-1-101-43481-9
1. Gastronomy. 2. Cookery, American. 3. Food habits—United States.
4. Twain, Mark, 1835-1910. I. Title.
TX633.B393 2010
394.1’20973—dc22
2009053444
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For Erik and Mio
IF I HAVE A TALENT IT IS FOR CONTRIBUTING VALUABLE MATTER TO WORKS UPON COOKERY.
—Mark Twain
INTRODUCTION
FOR MY THIRTY-THIRD BIRTHDAY, I wanted breakfast with Mark Twain. I’d been preparing for more than a week—reading Twain’s novels, digging through old cookbooks, shopping in a half dozen markets. Now a two-inch-thick, dry-aged porterhouse rested on my kitchen counter in a nest of brown butcher paper. Buckwheat batter and a tray of biscuits waited for the oven; dark maple syrup warmed in a small saucepan. In the living room, my wife had our three-year-old son pinned down (literally, I hoped). Beside me a deep, seasoned-to-black cast-iron fryer heated over the highest possible flame.
I owed my planned menu to Twain’s painful homesickness. In the winter of 1879, he was more than a year into the European tour chronicled in A Tramp Abroad. Along the way he’d mocked the pretensions of Alpine expeditions, the absurdity of French duels, the awful German language—and the food, most of all the food. He detested the food. From watery coffee to decayed strawberries to chicken “as tasteless as paper,” Twain thought European food monotonous, a hollow sham, a base counterfeit. “There is here and there an American who will say he can remember rising from a European table d’hôte perfectly satisfied,” he wrote. “But we must not