Legendary Author Mark Twain Favored Southern Cooking

Mark Twain dearly loved New Orleans cuisine, dating to his river boat captain days. But he may never have sampled Cajun, the country style half of "Cajun Creole," which would include many one-pot stews. That is according to Andrew Beahrs in his book, "Twain's Feasts."
   In Twain's day, the Cajuns, exiles from Canada, resided far from the cities, their wondrous culinary concoctions little known beyond the sloughs and bayous.
   Creole, on the other hand, is the food of the city, according to Beahrs. The tendency is toward a more delicate, African-influenced cuisine, though it does feature gumbos. Creole "was what Mark Twain ate while in town."
 
 The name gumbo comes from the Bantu "gombo," reflecting the heritage of slaves who became cooks and chefs, but the basis of this stew, the roux, is French, so you have a dish that may vary in many ways but is both Cajun and Creole.
   Twain favored Southern cooking and disparaged attempts to imitate it as made by Northern cooks, referring to cornbread and fried chicken among other dishes.
   Beahrs follows Twain here and there around the U.S. and devotes considerable attention to his time spent in Europe, where Twain found the commercial menu offerings mostly unbearable.
   One interesting trip took Beahrs to Gillett, Arkansas, for the annual raccoon feast. It is a fact that Twain said he missed "coon," among many other American dishes, while off in Europe.
   In Gillett the supper featured 600 lbs. of coon, meat sizzled in huge pots and handled with slotted shovels. Beahrs complains about the rank smell of cooking coon. It was interesting to learn that coon produces a grease that, according to the report, even dogs wouldn't touch. All in all, the author's critique of the event might send one off looking for nearest possum supper or Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet.
   I was looking for references to stews in the book; there is a recipe for oyster stew but that is simply stewed oysters without further ingredients of any substance. Nearby I found an oyster soup recipe that struck me as more stew-like, featuring onions, ham, cream and egg yolks, plus of course oysters. (Here's an oyster stew recipe, nice step by step. Hopefully you have the good fortune, like me, to live near a source of fresh from the bay oysters).
   In general the style of the book is that Twain points the way and then Beahrs fills in vast blanks. Beahrs is something of a character: "A confession: watching almost any animal for long enough makes wonder how it tastes." Hmmm. Really? Almost any animal? Ah well, he redeems himself in my view with a jaundiced opinion of modern industrial farming as "amputation of nature's rhythms, subtleties and joys."
   Twain disliked boring mediocre edibles and would have hated the uniformity of modern assembly line fast food. He thought badly of European restaurant cuisine but truly enjoyed opportunities to dine in private homes while overseas.  But he realized that tastes may be anchored in one's homeland. When visiting the U.S., he suspected, "the Scotchman would shake his head, and say, 'Where's your haggis?' and the Fijian would sigh and say, 'Where's your missionary?'"
     (Twain's Feast by Andrew Beahrs, Penguin Books, 2010)