The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1899-12-29
GASTRONOMIC FEASTS-A REMIN-
ISCENCE.

Northern people travel about the
south now and going back tell of this
or that in the south, some of which is
true and much is speculative and far
away from facts. Mr.. H. P. Gentry,
of Philadelphia, tells of what he knows
of the south, in the Washington POST.
He tells something that he does not
know. For instance:
II know all about the ability of the
old black mammieS to bake the most
delightful biscuit in the world, and to
fry young chickens in a way hat can't
be equaIed. But such a limited roper
toire, sc to speak, was insufficient for
an age that progresses in the gastron-
omic art as in everything"
Every man who lived before the war
and knows Of the cooking of those
times, knows that the cooking of the
fine, hospitable homes all through the
south, where there were trained, eXpe-
rienced black cooks, was simply superb,
quite u~nriValled in our country. We
repeat, that men who travelled all over
the country, n yet know how the
old family cooks could prepare a din
rer, car bear testimony to the state
ment that the cooking was we'll nigh
perfection. The old family cook of the
richer mansions could prepare a dinner
of rare variety, and embracing a half
dozen kinds of meats, with any amount
of vegetables, side dishes, and cakes,
buildings and pies of wondrous excel
lence, hat would put to shame any
other section. A leading and VEN
able Baptist minister, Rev. DR.. Thomas
Skinner who was born in luxury
and has the creature comforts of God
in great p%rOfusion, after living in the
north and twenty months in England,
said to this writer not long after the
war: Il am satisfied hat the people
in the south prior to hostilities, lived
better than any other people on the
globe. A man with $4,000 or $4,000 or
500, 900 lived in more luxury and with
food better served than n man in
the north or elsewhere would live with
a corresponding sum-" But it is all
changed now here. Cooking among
negroes is a lost art" The old time
rich, royal cooking is clean gone for
ever" and all that remains is the men,
DRY of the past, trying to recall the
savory viands, and to bring back in
imagination those peaceful, happy,
most comfortable times with all of it's
hallOWed associations and delightful
dinners and profuse suppers and break
fasts fit for kings and queens. h
ever a fellow traveller may find in the
south now to meet the demands of the
Creature MAI" in the way of edibles,
they suggest nGught of the rare cult
nary art of the long time ago, but is a
mere make-shift for the time. We have
seen but one dinner-spread for thirty
that was comparable to those anti-dat-
ing the surrender at ~AppomattoX. That
was in 1870, so soon after the war, that
old family cooks who knew their bust
ness prepared it, aided by two or three
white m~issusses." There were we
think, not less than eight or ten kinds
of meats n every thing else galore"
1t was so sumptuous the deserts, in
marvellous variety and abundance,
were served in another room. But the
good old days come not pack again.
They live only in the memory of a few
old stagerS whose numbers are being
so rapidly lessened. The dinner was
given by Major Nat Gregory, of Gran
Vile county, at the former home of his
father, William o. Gregory, a man of
wealth, of education, of rare reading
and who wrote for the public press for
a half century. He passed away some
twenty years ago perhaps, and was a
native of Virginia.