Twain's Feast - Andrew Beahrs [72]
Once a simple, poor man’s soup, terrapin became a luxurious dish; Washington and Lafayette are said to have eaten it the night before the Battle of Yorktown, and Lafayette’s love for the dish is supposed to have helped draw him back to the States. John Adams ate it at least four times during the Continental Congresses, with one meal including “Turttle, and every other Thing—Flummery, Jellies, Sweetmeats of 20 sorts, Trifles, Whip’d Syllabubbs, floating Islands, fools—&c., and then a Desert of Fruits, Raisins, Almonds, Pears, Peaches.”
The “turttle” may well have been cooked with expensive Madeira like that Adams drank during the same meal “at a great Rate and found no Inconvenience in.” Such Madeira or good sherry was, from very early on, always used in upper-class terrapin recipes, which both added to and symbolized a stew’s exclusivity. An 1881 New York cooking class taught by Juliet Corson, one of America’s first cooking teachers, froze up momentarily when the students realized that she was about to add such a “precious cordial,” a “treasure-trove” that could be found in only two of the city’s clubs. One student openly protested, asking whether “such divine wine [was] to be amalgamated with a terrapin,” and class continued only after another argued that “noble food requires a royal dressing.” Terrapins, the author judged, were the Athenians of the fish world, especially compared with helots like the skate.
Corson’s students seem to have known everything about terrapin—biology, history, price, where to find and eat the best—except for how to cook it. The greatest distance the coastal specialty of terrapin soup traveled was not east to west but down to up: from the iron stewpots of poor blacks and whites to the silver tureens of the elite. And it was a rare man who could make the same trip.
STEWED TERRAPIN, WITH CREAM
Place in a sauce-pan, two heaping tablespoonfuls of butter and one of dry flour; stir it over the fire until it bubbles; then gradually stir in a pint of cream, a teaspoonful of salt, a quarter of a teaspoonful of white pepper, the same of grated nutmeg, and a very small pinch of cayenne. Next, put in a pint of terrapin meat and stir all until it is scalding hot. Move the sauce-pan to the back part of the stove or range, where the contents will keep hot but not boil: then stir in four well-beaten yolks of eggs; do not allow the terrapin to boil after adding the eggs, but pour it immediately into a tureen containing a gill of good Madeira and a tablespoonful of lemon juice. Serve hot.
—FANNY LEMIRA GILLETTE, White House Cook Book, 1887
In 1866 Twain had left San Francisco for New York.11 His short story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” had already made him unexpectedly famous. But it was his next voyage that would establish him firmly and finally among the country’s most popular writers; in New York he boarded the steamer Quaker City, joining the first organized touring cruise in American history. He’d visit Europe and the Holy Land, traveling all the while with a party of mostly pious and respectable fellow passengers.
Along the way Twain and a few like-minded friends mocked the “pilgrims” mercilessly; they played cards, drank, and ran free through Paris and Italy and the ruins of Greece. Twain’s portrayal of the staid pilgrims would be among the first of awkward, humorless American tourists. It would also be among the most popular—during his lifetime The Innocents Abroad was his best-selling book.
But for a short while, en route to the Middle East, he’d become preoccupied with something smaller and more personal. A fellow traveler had opened a locket, revealing a picture of his sister.