Panamanian Cookery, 1947
By Dave DeWitt Gladys Graham self-published her cookbook, Tropical Cooking, in the Panama Canal Zone, then a U.S. possession, in 1947. It is a surprisingly comprehensive survey of cooking in the zone with 130 pages of recipes with ingredients ranging from avocado to vulture. She wrote of visiting local markets in her introduction. “Here are counters with avocados, mangos looking …
Curry-Making [Made Complicated]
Curry-Making [Made Complicated] Editor’s Note: I added the extension in the title because that’s exactly what this long-winded, poorly- organized, and overly-complicated demonstration is. But it’s also funny, in a British sort of way. Curry was all the rage in England post-Raj, and many Brits thought that they could spread it to the States. But the culture in the former …
Observations on Paprika, 1844-1897
Compiled by Dave DeWitt “At the entrance of the market was planted a cohort of dealers in Paprika, who had sacks full of this red pepper, so violently pungent, that a little on the point of a knife was enough, to our taste, to spoil a dish, but of which astonishing quantities are eaten by the natives. In the hotels, …