. Why
can't it be done? It is conceded, I take it, that in the beginning our
cookery was essentially of the soil. Of course when our forebears came
over they brought along with them certain inherent and inherited Old
World notions touching on the preparation of raw provender in order to
make it suitable for human consumption; but these doubtless were soon
fused and amalgamated with the cooking and eating customs of the
original or copper-colored inhabitants. The difference in environment
and climate and conditions, together with the amplified wealth of native
supplies, did the rest. In Merrie England, as all travelers know, there
are but three staple vegetables--to wit, boiled potatoes, boiled
turnips, and a second helping of the boiled potatoes. But here, spread
before the gladdened vision of the newly arrived, and his to pick and
choose from, was a boundless expanse of new foodstuffs--birds, beasts
and fishes, fruits, vegetables and berries, roots, herbs and sprouts. He
furnished the demand and the soil was there competently with the supply.

We owe a lot to our red brother. From him we derived a knowledge of the
values and attractions of the succulent clam, and he didn't cook a clam
so that it tasted like O'Somebody's Heels of New Rubber either. From
the Indian we got the original idea of the shore dinner and the
barbecue, the planked shad and the hoecake. By following in his
footsteps we learned about succotash and hominy. He conferred upon us
the inestimable boon of his maize--hence corn bread, corn fritters,
fried corn and roasting ears; also his pumpkin and his sweet
potato--hence the pumpkin pie of the North and its blood brother of the
South, the sweet-potato pie. From the Indian we got the tomato--let some
agriculturist correct me if I err--though the oldest inhabitant can
still remember when we called it a love apple and regarded it as
poisonous. From him we inherited the crook-neck squash and the okra
gumbo and the rattlesnake watermelon and the wild goose plum, and many
another delectable thing.

So, out of all this and from all this our ancestors evolved cults of
cookery which, though they differed perhaps as between themselves, were
all purely American and all absolutely unapproachable. France lent a
strain to New Orleans cooking and Spain did the same for California.
Scrapple was Pennsylvania's, terrapin was Maryland's, the baked bean
was Massachusetts', and along with a few other things spoon-bread ran