Back then, cooks knew how to do 

 more with a fish than just fry it. In her 

 research of colonial cooking, Taylor 

 found references to roasting, boiling, 

 broiling and stewing seafoods. "We 

 found many of the recipes were quite 

 simple, but a few were very elegant, 

 like one for baked fish with stuffed 

 clams," says Taylor (see recipe next 

 page). 



pine trees for flavoring, along with a 

 slab of bacon and a red pepper pod (see 

 recipe next page). 



The North Carolina tradition of 

 seafood didn't start with the English 

 settlers. The seafoods we eat and the 

 way we prepare them date back to the 

 Indians. Legend has it that the first 

 settlers to land on the North Carolina 

 coast were greeted by Indians, bearing 



"We found many of the recipes were quite simple, but a few 

 were very elegant." — Joyce Taylor 



Those were the days when recipes 

 were handed down, generation to 

 generation. Only one cookbook, The 

 Frugal Colonial Housewife, was 

 published in America between 1742 

 and 1796. That book instructed 

 housewives in "the art of dressing all 

 sorts of viands with cleanliness, 

 decency and elegance." The way to 

 boil a skate, it says, is to cut it into 

 long strings, throw it into salt and 

 water, and boil it for three minutes. 

 Drain it well and serve on a platter, 

 surrounded by broiled eel, with a but- 

 ter and mustard sauce. 



Eel, considered an underused species 

 in this country today, was a frequent 

 colonial dish. It seems the settlers, ac- 

 customed to dining on eel in Europe, 

 brought a wide variety of recipes with 

 them to the new country. The Frugal 

 Colonial Housewife instructs cooks 

 to prepare eel by roasting, boiling, fry- 

 ing, broiling and stewing. And, of 

 course, no colonial housewife should be 

 without a recipe for eel soup and eel 

 pie. 



A favorite recipe, published in an 

 1832 magazine, was the eel stifle, a 

 combination of onions, port wine, 

 gravy, vinegar, anchovies and spices, 

 boiled with eel. 



One of the most popular North 

 Carolina dishes was a muddle, named 

 so because it was a stew of fish mud- 

 dled together with pork, bread crumbs, 

 onions, mashed potatoes and spices. 

 Potatoes, a common ingredient in 

 colonial recipes, were often mashed, 

 then added to a stew as a thickener 

 (see recipe next page). 



Another Carolina original was the 

 pine bark stew. During Revolutionary 

 War times, Carolina cooks concocted 

 the fish stew using the tender roots of 



the gift of a boatload of freshly caught 

 fish. Those native Americans didn't 

 record their recipes, but they did leave 

 behind something almost as 

 valuable — garbage. 



David Phelps, an archaeologist at 

 East Carolina University, rummages 

 through ancient Indian garbage pits, 

 called middens, in search of clues that 

 will tell him how the Indians lived. A 

 list of the remains in those garbage 

 piles reads like an Indian menu: 

 shellfish, opossum, terrapin, fish, bear 

 and deer. 



"People have to put their garbage 

 somewhere and the middens are where 

 all the food remains and old utensils 

 went. We can go back a couple of thou- 

 sand years by exploring those garbage 

 piles," says Phelps. He's found that for 

 the most part, the Indians were eating 

 the same things we're eating today. 

 (Unlike the colonists, however, there is 

 no evidence that Indians ate eel.) 



"Unfortunately, we tend to think of 

 the Indians as savages living on the 



verge of starvation," says Phelps. On 

 the contrary, those native Americans 

 had a well-developed agricultural 

 system, producing such crops as corn, 

 beans, peas, pumpkin, melons, 

 potatoes, squash, cucumbers, 

 tomatoes, onions, and herbs and 

 spices. Some of the crops, they stored 

 for the winter. When the stores went 

 down, usually in the spring, they 

 depended on hunting and fishing to 

 sustain them. 



Excavations on Collington Island, 

 on North Carolina's Outer Banks, 

 turned up evidence that 2,000 years 

 ago, the Algonkian Indians established 

 fishing camps there when food was 

 scarce elsewhere. Phelps says, "The 

 Algonkian people knew how to get 

 every ounce of food out of the es- 

 tuarine system." 



We have to speculate on how the In- 

 dians cooked their seafood, says 

 Phelps. But John White, a colonial 

 historian and artist, left paintings, 

 showing that stewing and broiling were 

 at least two of the methods. 



What we eat today is a blend of the 

 European tradition and the Indian 

 know-how. Oyster roasts and clam 

 bakes date back to the earliest colonial 

 days, probably because the Indians 

 showed the settlers how to dig a hole in 

 the ground, line it with hot stones, and 

 cook seafoods in the covered pit. 



Joyce Taylor says her research has 

 shown her that modern cooks can take 

 a few tips from their colonial counter- 

 parts. The recipes may be a few hun- 

 dred years old, but they've stood the 

 test of taste. And those skates, eels and 

 oysters — well, they're just like the 

 ones the colonists used. Good as ever. 



— Nancy Davis 



