African-American Food History Part 2
VOLUMEVOLUME XVI, XXVI, NUMBER NUMBER 4 2 FALL SPRING 2000 2010 Quarterly Publication of the Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor Episodes in African-American Food History Part 2 An ice cream sandwich vendor in an alley in Washington, DC, one century ago. Photo: Charles Frederick Weller, Neglected Neighbors: Stories of Life in the Alleys, Tenements and Shanties of the National Capital (1909) REPAST VOLUME XXVI, NUMBER 2 SPRING 2010 THE TRUE ORIGINS OF When I lived in the Boston area from 1947 to 1953, this BOSTON BAKED BEANS dish was served by many restaurants, but quite a few would serve it only on Saturday evenings, which, as was explained by Edgar Rose to me, was the traditional time to eat Boston Baked Beans. This timing was taken for granted and quite puzzling to me. Our summary of Lucy M. Long’s Sept. 20 talk to Though some people tried to explain this custom to me CHAA on regional American foodways (Winter 2010, using Prof. Long’s reasoning, it did not really account for p. 3) caught the attention of Repast subscriber Edgar why Saturday evening was the traditional time for Rose of Glencoe, IL. In her talk, Prof. Long had Bostonians to enjoy this meal. For the explanation to make mentioned Boston Baked Beans as a classic example sense, Sunday night would have had to have been the of a regional American food, describing it as a traditional consumption date— not Saturday night. custom that allowed colonial Puritans to eat a warm meal on Sunday without violating the Sabbath. A few years after my sojourn in Bean City, around the mid-1950’s, I came across an article in Gourmet magazine our wonderful Repast is a constant source of by the famous author of historical novels, the Maine native Yenlightenment to me, and I enjoy every issue very Kenneth Roberts.
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