Culinary Wisdom from Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
By Nava Atlas | On December 9, 2015 | Updated October 19, 2024 | Comments (0)
Best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Yearling and her memoir, Cross Creek, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was as comfortable in the kitchen as she was at the typewriter — maybe more so, as cooking was a joy to her, whereas she belonged to the “writing is agony” school of thought.
Rawlings collected the recipes of her time and place in Cross Creek Cookery (1942).
For the most part, the recipes are simple and familiar, with a decidedly Southern accent. Still workable if not always healthful (lots of butter and sugar!), some of the dishes would now be considered a extreme and gross — Alligator-Tail Steak and Minorcan Gopher Stew among them.
Rawings enjoyed sharing her writing and publishing experiences, and relished holding forth about her kitchen and entertaining tips even more. Here are a few pieces of culinary wisdom (that don’t run contrary to my strict vegan sensibilities!) from Cross Creek Cookery in the forthright style this author was known for.
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“Soup comes into its own, poor-man stye, as a main course. One small serving of a ravishing soup is infuriating. It is like seeing the Pearly Gates seeing shut in one’s face after one brief glimpse of Heaven.”
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“The breaking together of bread, the sharing of salt, is too ancient a symbol of friendliness to be profaned. At the moment of dining, the assembled group stands for a little while as a safe unit, under a safe roof, agains the perils and enmities of the world.”
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“Food imaginatively and lovingly prepared, and eaten in good company, warms the being with something more than the mere intake of calories. I cannot conceive of cooking for friends or family, under reasonable conditions, as being a chore.”
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“A female Northern friend of mine married a male Kentucky friend of mine. She refused at first to be bothered with the hours-long trouble of making Kentucky beaten biscuits. Just as the marriage was about to go on the rocks, and rightly, she saw the light. Beaten biscuits now hold the happy household together.”
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“A few vegetables survive time, tide and transportation. Most of them lose so much with every hour after their picking, that sometimes, as with broccoli, the store-bought variety bears no recognizable relation to the fresh garden variety. Corn and green peas also suffer, past belief, a loss of flavor … I should not dream of cutting my broccoli earlier than an hour before meal-time.”
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“Collard greens and cornbread are a mark of the plain people, and Southern politicians make a point of their passion for them in their campaign speeches.”
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“Folk who would rather starve than eat parsnips would make a sizable army. Charles Brown describes parsnips as tasting like gun-powder. There is little excuse for eating plain boiled parsnips, and fried parsnips are none too tempting, but parsnip croquettes are the ugly ducklings become a swan.”
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“I have been known to invite ten for dinner just because I was in the notion to make a cake.”
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A Talk with Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
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“Two elements enter into successful and happy gatherings at table. The food, whether simple of elaborate, must be carefully prepared, willingly prepared, imaginatively prepared. And the guests — friends, family or strangers — must be conscious of their welcome.”
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About Black Bottom Pie: “I think this is the most delicious pie I’ve ever eaten. The recipe from which I first made it was sent me by a generous correspondent, and originated from an old hotel in Louisiana. It seemed to me it could be no better. Then another correspondent sent me a recipe for Black Bottom Pie that varied in some detail from the first one. Having tried both, I now combine the two to make a pie so delicate, so luscious, that I hope to be propped up on my dying bed and fed a generous portion. Then I think that I should refuse outright to die, for life would be too good to relinquish.”
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“We eat leisurely always, and sigh when we think it wise to eat no more, and know that the food will indeed be blessed to our bodies’ good.”
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“Grits are hominy dried and ground fine. They are a staple food in Florida, backwoodsmen eating them three times a day and considering a day without grits, a day wasted. A taste for grits must be cultivated by outsiders, and in any Southern eating place, Yankee tourists may be recognized by their reaction to grits, especially at breakfast. We use them in place of potatoes. Never as a cereal.”
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“Cow-peas are a summer staple in the South. They are served, with apologies, on city tables, without apology on Country tables, and greeted with gusto at both.”
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