Appalachian History

The dried apple stack cake is one of the most popular southern Appalachian cakes--- no surprise considering apples are found aplenty in the mountains. Culturally it's akin to the classic European torte. It looks like a stack of thick pancakes, with apple preserves, dried apples or apple butter spread between each layer. At holidays and weddings, early mountain settlers traditionally served stack cake in lieu of more fancy, and costly, cakes. Neighbors would each bring a layer of the cake to the bride's family, which they spread with apple filling as they arrived. It was said that the number of cake layers the bride got determined how popular she was.

Kentucky lays claim to originating the dessert via Kentucky pioneer washday cake. "Some food historians say that James Harrod, the colonist and farmer who founded Harrodsburg in 1774, brought the stack cake to Kentucky from his home in Pennsylvania," observes Mark F. Sohn in Appalachian Home Cooking: History, Culture, and Recipes. "While Harrod may have brought the first stack cake to Kentucky, the cake could not have been common until more than 100 years later when flour became readily available." Tennessee proudly points to Tennessee stack cake as the first, but in fact variations of the cake abound throughout the region.

The cake is many layered, low in fat, and not sweet. It's made with layers of stiff cookie like dough flavored with ginger and sorghum and spread with a spiced apple filling. When served, the cake is tall, heavy, and moist.

Stack Cake

1/2 cup shortening
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup molasses
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 cups flour plus 1/2 cup for rolling dough

Cream shortening and sugar thoroughly. Drop in egg and beat well. Add vanilla. Sift all dry ingredients together.Add molasses; then add sifted dry ingredients alternately with buttermilk. Roll dough to about 1/4 inch thickness. Divide dough into si x parts. Roll each ball of dough over the bottom of an 8 inch round cake pan. Bake in 350 degree oven for 15 minutes. When the six round layers are done, put together with applesauce or with the following:

1 (8 ounce) package dried apples or peaches
1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
When the dried fruit has been cooked according to directions on the package, add the sugar and cinnamon. Put between the layers of cake. Stack the cake until all fruit and layers have been used. Let set several hours or overnight before cutting.

sources: www.tngenweb.org/tntable/tabk5.htm
http://tennessee-guide.info/food/
Appalachian Home Cooking: History, Culture, and Recipes, by Mark F. Sohn, University Press of Kentucky, 2005

Fall means that the persimmons are getting ripe and it's time to gather the sweet, pulpy fruit. But you'd better try to get to them before the woodland critters beat you to it. Raccoons, foxes, squirrels, wild turkeys, bob white quail, possums, coyotes, and even deer feast on it. Numerous birds also relish persimmons.

The common persimmon, Diospyros virginiana, is a Native American tree in the southeastern United States. Diospyros is from the Greek, and means "fruit of the gods," and many country people would agree with the meaning. The Algonquin Indians called the fruit "pessamin," or "pasiminian" and are credited with its common name, and the Cherokee Indians are the ones who first introduced persimmon sweet bread to the Europeans.

Persimmon pulp can be used in many different baked goods including pudding, sweet bread, and cookies, and it makes a delicious ice cream topping or candy treat. Wine or beer made from persimmon is the poor relation of champagne--with the advantage that nobody is ever the worse for drinking it. And persimmon seeds can be roasted, ground, and used as a hot beverage, reminiscent of coffee.

It's best to get the ones that have already fallen to the ground, or ones that fall off the tree easily, when shaking the tree. If the fruit falls to the ground easily, it is ripe. Wait until the first frost has kissed the persimmons, as the frost takes away their puckering quality, making them as sweet as honey.

According to weather folklore, persimmon seeds can be used to predict the severity of winter weather. When cut into two pieces, the persimmon seed will display one of three symbols. A knife shape indicates a cold icy winter (where wind will cut through you like a knife). A fork shape means a mild winter. A spoon shape stands for a shovel to dig out of the snow.

The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore lists a number of cures and folk beliefs involving the persimmon:

Tie a knot in a piece of string for every chill that you have; then tie the string to a persimmon tree.

Briar root bark, persimmon tree bark, grapevine root bark, and green sage boiled into a tea with alum and honey is cure for yellow thrash.

Wild cherry, oak, and persimmon bark tea with enough whiskey in it to keep it from souring makes a good tonic.

Ground persimmon sprouts are good for poulticing.

To cure Bright's disease, put into a half -gallon of apple brandy a handful of cherry bark, persimmon bark, red holly bark, and dogwood root, and drink the solution.

To cure chills and fever, make a band, or large thread, of black wool, from a black sheep, or black spotted sheep, fasten it around the waist, next to the body of the sick one, then let the person walk around a persimmon tree as many times as he has had chills. This is supposed to be a sure cure.

Cut a persimmon twig, cut as many notches in it as you have warts, bury the twig, and when it rots the warts will disappear.

If the husband or wife should stray, burn seven sprouts of persimmon in the fire and the unfaithful one will have seven severe pains and return home.

A girl eating nine persimmons in a row will turn into a boy in less than two weeks.


sources: The Frank C. Brown Collection of NORTH CAROLINA FOLKLORE online at www.archive.org/stream/frankcbrowncolle06fran/frankcbrowncolle06fran_djvu.txt
http://home.wlu.edu/~lubint/touchstone/AppalachianFolkMed-Stone.htm
www.appvoices.org/index.php?/site/voice_stories/spring_tonics_and_appalachian_herbals/issue/151
www.farmersalmanac.com/weather/a/persimmon-seeds-widen-the-lead-cold-winter-predicted-to-win
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/nature_sketches/78439/1

"Well, we used to go to the neighbors and play cards, various different kind of games, and we popped corn. No pizzas, but we popped corn and made popcorn balls. And we made those with sorghum molasses. We didn't waste any sugar. And we made our own sorghum molasses. I never cared all that much for it as molasses but some of the rest of the family used to like that sticky, runny stuff on their bread. Not me, it was too sticky. But I loved it on popcorn balls or something like that.

"Then we used to make apple butter and we'd have apple peelings when a whole neighborhood group would go together and peel those bushels and bushels of apples and cut them up. Then the day you made it? That was an all-day job. You stirred and you stirred and you stirred. You kept building the fire. The same way with the molasses. I dare say, you have no idea how we did that.

"As I said, we visited and we did things together neighbors did, even to the men, and then when they threshed that wheat? Somebody came in with a threshing machine. He made a business of traveling around to all the farms. And they threshed the wheat. And if you were the lucky family that got those men when it was mealtime, why then you prepared a meal for a whole group of men.

"That was quite a day. And the neighbor women would go together and they'd cook up a awful mess of stuff. Those men would eat like hungry men do eat, you know. And we kids always had to wait until the threshers were through eating and sometimes the stuff they fixed for the threshers - there wouldn't be any left that we were looking forward to. But we liked to watch them do it.

"And let's see: they used to take the wheat, now this you'll find hard to believe too – I find it hard myself now that I look back – take the wheat to a flour mill and have that wheat ground into flour. And that is the flour we used. And in our kitchen, we had a flour barrel, can you imagine, I remember just exactly where it sat. It had a wood lid over the top of it.

"And we kept the flour in that barrel and when my mother baked bread she got the flour out of that barrel and she had a big board she kneaded the dough on, on the kitchen table. And I remember, my mother set a sponge which nobody does now if they bake, but she did. Did you ever see bread sponge? I don’t imagine you have.

Pomeroy Bend on the Ohio River, Pomeroy, Meigs County, Ohio, ca. 1940-1949

"She had a jar she had it in. It had yeast in it. It was a foamy looking mess of stuff. But you had to keep it warm because cold will kill yeast no matter whether you make a sponge or just bake as people do now. Well, whether anybody else was warm or not, that sponge had to be. Because if it wasn't you didn't have any bread. She would wrap an old blanket all around that at bedtime and that sat right by the only warmth in the house. All wrapped up in a blanket. I will say the bread was really better in the summer than it was in the winter because our house was cold. If I had to live in a house like that, I don't think I'd lived as long as I have. It was cold.

"I remember the kitchen, of course, was colder than the living room. The kitchen was long. And the stove was in one end and you had to have those old coal ranges hot in order to cook on them or use the oven. But it didn't penetrate to the table on the other end of the kitchen. Used to wear our coats when we ate breakfast and sit there and shiver, I remember. On cold days, that is. I remember on more times than one, grabbing something that I wanted to eat and taking it in to the living room where it was a little warmer."


Christina Grueser
Pomeroy, OH
(1909-2005)
1997 interview with Sarah Grueser

Oral History from the Countdown To Millennium Project, a partnership between Ohio University, Rural Action, the School Districts of Trimble, Federal Hocking, Meigs Local, and Vinton County and the communities, of Glouster, Amesville, Kilvert, McArthur, Trimble and Pomeroy.
online at http://home.frognet.net/~cntdown/OralHistoryPages/ChristinaGrueser.htm

Please welcome guest bloggers Roger and June Lowe, a writing/photography team in Bluff City, TN. They travel the highways and byways of the Appalachians searching for descriptive words and photos. Their work appears in several outdoor publications, and at Appalachian Outdoor Recreation Examiner.

In addition to recipes, a cookbook can dish up a nice serving of history. Especially a book published in 1890 and passed down from mother to daughter (and in some cases, grandmother to granddaughter) through the years. Appalachian history can be found in the oddest places and attached to the strangest things.

“My daughter is the fifth owner of this book,” Granny Laura said, tapping the antique book with a finger. “I remember her grandmother getting it out occasionally to look up something. It was starting to fall apart even then and she wouldn’t let anyone hold it. I can’t remember a time while she was alive that I had this book in my hands.”

The book can only be described as deteriorating rapidly. The cover (front and back), along with the first 22 pages and who knows how many back pages, were missing. The leaves, yellowed and brittle, were pulling free from the fragile sewn binding.

“These old cookbooks were way more than just a collection of cooking recipes,” Granny continued. “A book would offer recipes for cooking. Then you’d find a section of hints and tips for many health issues including invalid cooking. The toilet and bath was covered with details for taking care of the skin, hair, and other various parts. And a book always had a section of housekeeping suggestions and tips.”

Leafing carefully through the brittle pages uncovers a wealth of knowledge about how we lived ‘way back then’. For example, details on preparing wild game are presented. Want to know how to prepare Frog on Toast or Squab Pie? Recipes can be found on page 59.

Worried about graying hair? Page 523 in the Toilet section describes one way to cover the gray. The recipe calls for an infusion of butternut (walnut) hulls and daily dampening of the hair with strong cold tea or coffee. Today’s HBA section in the local retail store is much more convenient.

The title of the book “Three Meals a Day” is printed at the top of every left page. Researching the title revealed additional information (along with photos that ascertain this is the same book). “Three Meals a Day” by Maud C. Cooke, copyright 1890, printed in Chicago by ACME Publishing House was sold by subscription only.

Is it a history book? Not by any stretch of the imagination, but insights about the socio-economic standards of the time can be found throughout the book. Old cookbooks—interesting reading.



cookbooks appalachian+foods home+making appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

"Cider for apple butter must be perfectly new from the press, and the sweeter and mellower the apples are of which it is made, the better will the apple butter be. Boil the cider till recuded to one half its original quantity, and skim it well.

"Do not use for this purpose an iron kettle, or the butter will be very dark, and if you use a brass or copper kettle, it must be scoured as clean and bright as possible, before you put the cider into it, and you must not suffer the butter to remain in it a minute longer than is actually necessary to prepare it, or it will imbibe a copperish taste, that will render it not only unpleasant, but really unhealthy.

"It is best to prepare it late in the fall, when the apples are quite mellow. Select those that have a fine flavor, and will cook tender; pare and quarter them from the cores, and boil them in the cider till perfectly soft, having plenty of cider to cover them well.

"If you wish to make it on a small scale, do not remove the apples from the cider when they get soft, but continue to boil them gently in it, till the apples and cider form a thick smooth marmalade, which you must stir almost constantly towards the last.
A few minutes before you take it form the fire, flavor it lightly with cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves, and when the seasonings are well intermixed, put it up in jars, tie folded paper over them, and keep them in a cool place.

"If made in a proper manner, it will keep a good more than a year, and will be found very convenient, being always in readiness. Many people who are in the habit of making apple butter, take it from the fire before it is boiled near enough. Both to keep it well, and taste well, it should be boiled long after the apples have become soft, and towards the last, simmered over coals till it gets almost thick enough to slice.

"If you wish to make it on a large scale, after you have boiled the first kettle full of apples soft, remove them from the cider, draining them with a perforated ladle, that the cider may fall again to the kettle, and put them into a clean tub. Fill up the kettle with fresh apples, having them pared and sliced from the cores, and having ready a kettle of boiling cider, that is reduced to at least half its original quantity; fill up the kettle of apples with it as often as is necessary.

"When you have boiled in this manner as many apples as you wish, put the whole of them in a large kettle, or kettles, with the cider, and simmer it over a bed of coals till it is so thick, that it is with some difficulty you can stir it: it should be stirred almost constantly, with a wooden spaddle, or paddle, or it will be certain to scorch at the bottom or sides of the kettle. Shortly before you take it from the fire, season it as before directed, and then put it up in jars."

The Kentucky Housewife, Lettice Bryan, 1839, (p. 375-77)

Mrs. Bryan's contribution to the literature of Southern cooking is her thoroughness. Not only are there more recipes in this than in other books of the period---1,300---but the ingredients, techniques and results are also described more completely than was typical at the time.

Source: www.foodtimeline.org/foodfaq.html#applesauce



appalachian+foods apple+butter Lettice+Bryan appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

"My father walked six miles carrying a bucket and a pick. The bucket was made of tin and in the bottom of the bucket was tea for lunch, and the top of the upper section of the bucket was a compartment for a couple of sandwiches or some fruit and then the lid. Inside the coal mines the temperature never varied, so the temperature that the food was as it was brought to the mines stayed the same temperature. After a short time every coal miner's bucket smelled of the coal mines. You could scrub and scrub and scrub but when you pulled that sandwich out, it smelled of coal.

"Each ethnic group had its own cuisine. The Germans used a lot of pork, and they would have a piece of pork between big slices of rogenbrote, as they called it — rye bread — or schwarzbrote — black bread. They didn't go in for white bread like the Welsh or the Scots or the Irish.

"I can still see my grandmother with one of those big loaves of bread that — when she sliced it she put it in the crook of her arm and held it with her right hand, and she sliced it off while holding it. The bread loaf was so big you didn't put it on the table, but you held it in your arm and sliced it this way. I never figured out why but that's the way she always did it.

"So that each group developed its own food styles. A very popular one was ham because it was easier to slice and to put into sandwiches, but almost everybody drank tea. I don't know why, but I can still see the coal miners going into the grocery store and buying tea by the pound. It was kept in large canisters on the counter where it would be handy because the store owner knew that would be one of the commodities they would be looking for—it was kept handy for the customers.

"I used to enjoy watching the coal miners around the church picnics, around the church activities, for instance, after a dinner at the church, there would be a lot of cake and cookies left over. Everybody would withdraw discretely and let the coal miners go 'round and pick up the cookies or the cake for the bucket. And we knew o'course that was their treat."


Howard Rees
b. Frostburg MD, 1911
1991 interview with daughter Elizabeth Rees Gilbert
Western Maryland Regional Library collection
Source: www.whilbr.org/itemdetail.aspx?idEntry=2895&dtPointer=5


appalachia appalachian+foods appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history coal+mining Garrett+County+MD Howard+Rees