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Dallas Morning News (KRT) When I was little, my Southern grandmother fed me sugar sandwiches: white bread slathered with butter, then sprinkled with sugar. I thought they were wonderful. But as I grew older and more sophisticated I saw them as an aberration, an obscure food folkway like pig's knuckles or bacon grease on toast.
Or so I thought until I mentioned sugar sandwiches to Matthew B. Rowley, who writes on Southern subjects, including food. Rowley lives in Philadelphia, but has ties to the South. He sits on the board of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi's Center for the Study of Southern Culture. "We called it sugar bread," he recalls. "We would take butter and store-bread. I suspect it probably came out of cooking for shut-ins." John Egerton, who also writes about food and the South, laughed at my story. Then a memory popped into his brain. "A sugar biscuit is what we called them. At supper if you were working with the last of the day's biscuits _ not stale, but not just out of the oven either _ following the example of my mother, you'd split the biscuit open, spread a little butter and sprinkle a little sugar on each side." What we were witnessing was one more expression of Southern cookery's long, intensive and creative involvement with sugar. Southern mothers pacified babies with pork rind dipped in sugar. Southern cooks put sugar on everything from greens to a pot of beans to sliced tomatoes. Think of sugar-cured ham and candied yams. And pralines and peanut patties. And over-sweetened ades: lemon-, lime- and orange. And Southern cakes and pies. Until relatively recently, a Yankee driving south would encounter an invisible line, somewhere south of Baltimore and east of St. Louis, where he got iced tea with sugar in it, whether he wanted it or not. "I never understood the sweet-tea thing, never liked it," says Rowley. "Until I had some of that vinegar-based North Carolina barbecue. It was the balance, the great sweet-and-sour balance." Egerton says cooks added sugar and a bit of hot pepper to stewed cabbage for the same reason. "Sugar was always a major piece of the cookery of the houses I grew up in," he says. "Sugar, cream, salt, eggs and bacon grease -- they're the staples of Southern cooking." Southern cooking is an amalgam of European techniques, African cooks and native American ingredients, says author Damon Lee Fowler, who was born in North Georgia and raised in South Carolina. "I say African because the first generation were still slaves." Fowler's "New Southern Baking" (Simon & Schuster, $26) is a compendium of some of the wonderful things that can be done with a little flour, butter and sugar, not to mention pecans, chocolate and bourbon. The Southern sweet tooth, he says, is a modern phenomenon. "Sugar stayed expensive into the 19th century. People kept it under lock and key." With the 20th century, sugar became more available and cheaper. "Sugar starts to appear in savory dishes, not as the dominant flavor, but as a way to draw the flavor out. My grandmother put a pinch in vegetable soup. It does the same thing that salt does. It's an aroma enhancer." People forget the practical uses of sugar, says Adrian Miller, who is writing a culinary history of African-Americans. Food spoils rapidly in warm climates, he points out. That's why we have sugar-cured ham. "Sugar is a preservative. Boiled icing on cakes was a way to preserve the cakes." Miller was program director for this year's Southern Foodways Alliance Symposium, held last month in Oxford, Miss. The theme: "The Sweet Life: Sugar and the South." Earlier this year, when New Orleans was still New Orleans, alliance members traveled to that city to study sugar. They visited plantations and a rum distillery, dined at the city's famous restaurants and sampled specialties like sugar-dusted beignets and Creole cream cheese. Jessica Harris, culinary historian and English professor at New York's Queens College, lectured on the politics and history of sugar. Sugar production was labor intensive, she said. "Where sugar went, slavery followed." And where slavery went, certain foods followed, she says. The humble peanut patty followed the African diaspora through the Caribbean and into the American South. Because food was prepared for Southern households largely by slaves, she adds, traditional Southern cooking was in large measure African-American cooking. "Most totemic Southern dishes have some African-American hand in the pot." That hand sprinkled sugar. "Generally speaking, and certainly in the South, African-Americans have a ferocious and voracious sweet tooth," she declares. She recalls being called upon by Pillsbury to consult on African-American foods. A number of black chefs had contributed recipes for the company's Minneapolis test kitchen. "The head of baking was an African-American woman," she says. "Her instructions to the test kitchen were to add as much sugar as you would ordinarily add to the recipe. And when you think it's too sweet -- add more." ___ CHOCOLATE PECAN TASSIES Cream Cheese Pastry for Tassies (recipe follows) 1 large egg Divide the pastry into 24 equal balls, about 1 inch in diameter. If the pastry begins to soften too much, lay the balls on a sheet of wax paper on a baking sheet and chill for a few minutes. Put a ball of pastry into each well of an ungreased mini (1 ¾-inch diameter) muffin tin. With flour-dusted fingers, press the pastry to the bottom and sides of each well until it is level with the top. Refrigerate the shells while you make the filling. Position the rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 350 F. Lightly beat the egg and then beat in the brown sugar, bourbon, a small pinch of salt, and butter, beating until smooth. Divide the pecans and chocolate chips among the shells, and spoon about 1 ½ teaspoons of the filling into each. Bake until golden, about 25 minutes. Makes 24 tassies. Note: To toast pecans, position rack in the center to upper third of oven; preheat to 375 F. Spread nuts on a rimmed baking sheet in 1 layer. Toast, stirring occasionally, about 10 minutes. Don't overcook. Cream Cheese Pastry for Tassies: With a mixer, cream 1 (3-ounce) package cream cheese, softened, and ½ cup butter (1 stick) until light and fluffy. Whisk together ¼ teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon sugar and 1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour; work it into the cheese and butter until the pastry is smooth. Scoop the dough onto a sheet of plastic wrap, form the dough into a ball, fold the wrap over it, and press into a flat, 1-inch-thick disk. Chill until the dough is firm, at least 2 hours. Can be made several hours or a day ahead. PER SERVING: Calories 129 (56 percent fat) Fat 8 g (4 g sat) Cholesterol 25 mg Sodium 116 mg Carbohydrates 13 g SOURCE: "New Southern Baking" ___
BOURBON BROWN SUGAR POUND CAKE 15 ounces (about 3 cups) unbleached
flour Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 325 F. Butter and flour two (9-inch) loaf cake pans. Set aside. Whisk or sift together the flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt and baking powder. With a wooden spoon or a mixer fitted with a paddle or rotary beaters, cream the butter until it is light and fluffy, then gradually beat in both sugars; cream mixture until very light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, alternating with the flour-and-spice blend, a little at a time, until both are incorporated. Don't overbeat. Stir in the bourbon and vanilla, and spoon batter into prepared pans. Slip a table knife blade into the batter and run it through in a back-and-forth S motion to take out any large air pockets. Give the pan a couple of firm taps on the counter – enough to bring any air pockets to the surface. Bake for about 1 ½ hours, until risen, golden brown and a straw inserted into the center comes out clean. Don't open the oven door for the first 1 ¼ hours. Make sure the cake is completely done, but don't overbake it or it will be dry and heavy. Turn off the oven and let it cool for 10 minutes, then crack the door and let the cake cool completely before taking it out of the pan. Makes 2 loaves, 12 to 16 servings. PER SERVING: Calories 456 (39 percent fat) Fat 20 g (12 g sat) Cholesterol 128 mg Sodium 136 mg Fiber 1 g Carbohydrates 60 g SOURCE: "New Southern Baking"
___ © 2005, The Dallas Morning News. _____ Have a comment? Please e-mail us.© The Voice 2005 Revised 09/17/2007 01:47:36 PM — http://www.uamont.edu/organizations/thevoice/3_10/thanksgiving.htm |
