A Culinary History of West Virginia by Shannon Colaianni Tinnell

Author:Shannon Colaianni Tinnell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2020-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

The tradition of making sauerkraut was brought to West Virginia by early German settlers better known as the “Pennsylvania Dutch.” Library of Congress.

Tomato catsup recipe from 1835. Harrison County Historical Society.

West Virginia is home to many heirloom vegetable and fruit varieties, including the “West Virginia 63,” developed by Mannon Gallegly to commemorate the state’s centennial. West Virginia Farmers Market Association.

Perhaps the most iconic of the heirloom vegetables to emerge from the Mountain State is the provocatively named bloody butcher corn. Baker Creek Seed Company, a purveyor of heirloom varietals, describes the corn thusly:

A very beautiful, commonly crimson red dent variety introduced to the settlers in the Virginia area in the 1840s. Eight to twelve-foot tall stalks produce large, heavy, 8 to 12-inch long ears of solid red kernels that vary in hue. Occasional red and white kernels and ears may appear, but this is typical. It is known for its delicious, rich, sweet flavor when ground into meal and flour.

In 2014, NPR ran a piece on the return of bloody butcher and interviewed “Edgar Meadows, 93…one saver of seeds of the corn that have been in his family for at least five generations in West Virginia. The name Bloody Butcher refers to the flecks of red mixed onto the white kernels—like a butcher’s apron, Meadows says.”

In Glenn Lough’s Now and Long Ago is reprinted an unattributed brief memoir of life in Middletown (now Fairmont) in the 1820s that goes into some culinary and other detail:

Sometimes mother would make white biscuits using for shortening lard that she had flavored with bay leaves and other herbs. She didn’t roll out or cut the dough for these biscuits, but formed them with her own dear hands, and pricked them with a fork to keep them from blistering.…And with butter and jam, received from the neighbors for chores well done by us children, spread thickly on those biscuits.…Who could have asked for better eating?

The author also elaborates on the addition of fish to the household diet: “One kind of food there we had in plenty was fish. I think my brothers and I must have caught a hundred pounds of them during our first year in Middletown. We speared and netted them and sledged them through the ice. The Monongahela was teeming with fine fish in those days.”

The writer mentions wolf depredations on livestock and subsequent community reaction and the construction and furnishings of the family home. But perhaps the most poignant information comes in some of the closing lines, written from a distance of many decades:

I can shut my eyes at any time and see in my mind our poor little cabin standing there on that hill of stones and stumps, looking down on the river, and my dear mother sitting on the front stoop shelling peas or stringing beans.…Living in Middletown…was hard most of the time, but it made a good healthful people of all of us. I guess it was at Middletown that our family became what is spoken of today as American pioneers.

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