The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1895-07-18
THE SOUTf4-R.l Emu.


Guinea Squash, Corn Fritters, Hopping
John" and Other PaiatabIes.
The average northcrner who at
tempts to compile menu to tickle
the southern palate usually makes a
mess OF it. Some of tho bills OF fare
from northern sources that arc from
time to time to be seen in southern
publications are we'll calculatcd-not
designedly, however, it is to be
hoped-to make the southern house
keeper drop and expire from that
tired feeling" About nine times in
ten the alleged southern dishes in
the bills Of fare are pure fictions,
and almost without single excep-
ton the menu is unsuited to this
latitude and to the palates of people
who know better
No southerner in good health and
in his right mind ever eats 'hominy
with milk and sugar" for breakfast,
notwithstanding the dish is IN
doubtedly safer than salmon, with
egg sauce" for supper Hominy in
this part of the country is dressed
with butter or q little of meat gravy
and is eaten with chop or a steak
or bacon and eggs or broiled ham,
etc. Hominy thus served is u stand
ard breakfast dish in the south and
is fit for king. 1t needs no sugar
or cream or nutmeg, and to put Ell
ther on it is to commit o crime
against astronomy. The Same OBJ
servations apply to rice, the stand
ard dinner dish of the south, which
the nothern menu makers tell US to
serve with cream and sugar.
The cooking of rice, by the way,
is an art which has not yet been &C
quired in the north. Properly cook
ed, each grain of rice stands firm, dry
and separate from its fellows, yet is
as soft as dead ripe fruit and the
whole mass as white as snow. In the
north they boil the grains into a
glutinous mass, utterly destroying
its beauty and individuality, and then
sweeten it. Sometimes southern
folks sweeten rice for sick people or
ailing children and call it rice pud-
ding. Again they make a pillau of
rice and peas. This they call "hop-
ping john, and it is a food for all
upright and healthy men. Other
pillaus, made of rice and chicken, or
okra and bacon or birds, are dis
tinctively southern dishes, and the
person who sits down to either dish
with an appetite has reason to thank
heaven for his good fortune Rice is
also used in soups and gumbo. But
sodden rice, dressed with cream and
sugar, for breakfast-bah Out upon
the infdel who suggests it!
There arc dozens and dozens of
real southern dishes that delight the
souls of those who cat them when
prepared properly-sugared sweet
potatoes, guinea squashes, corn frit-
ters, etc-but the northern built
menus seldom or never mention
them They tell us to cat hominy
with sugar for breakfast and salmon,
with egg sauce, for support One
may well wonder how he would get
through the night and where be
would be the next morning after fol
lowing such directions. He would
need, like some of the papers that
publish such bills of fare, to have a
patent inside" to stand the ordeal.
There are in the south, however,
people who pretend to like the north
ern bills of fare. 1t is all pretense.
They affect oatmeal because the
northern people eat oatmeal The
northerners eat it merely because
they do not know anything about
hominy and rice properly cooked,
and their southern mimics eat it be-
cause they think it is more tony
Such people, we feel constrained to
say, sacrifice both their brains and
their stomachs to style "-Savan-
nah News.
Tie Grab Fisherman.