Trixie Friganza
FISH CHOWDER
1⅓ lbs. fresh codfish 1 small onion 6 medium-size potatoes-sliced Boil the fish and onion until nearly done, add potatoes, cook until potatoes are nicely done, but not too soft; now add a quart of milk and season with salt and pepper to taste, and sprinkle with chopped parsley. This is bully and I love it. Served very hot with smiles and a light heart it is great!
Sincerel Trixie forigaya
OYSTERS ACOMAC
2 dozen oysters I ½ pint of cream Yolks of two eggs 1 slice boiled Virginia ham cut in cubes Wineglass of sherry Stew ham and oysters and oyster liquor about three minutes and add cream into which yolks of eggs have been whipped. Add sherry and cook until thick, taking care not to boil too hard or the sauce will separate.
Serve piping hot on toast.
Two dishes on one page: a plain milk-based cod chowder and a much richer oyster stew thickened with egg yolk. Both are quick, and both are ruined by hard boiling once the dairy goes in.
- "11/3 lbs." is 1 1/3 lbThe fraction bar has been flattened by the printer. Read it as about 21 oz of cod, or simply use 1 1/2 lb of skinless loin cut into large chunks.
- Don't boil the fish to pieces"Boil the fish and onion until nearly done" means a bare simmer in enough water to cover, five to seven minutes for thick cod. Cod goes to threads at a full boil; lift it out while the potatoes finish if it looks fragile and return it at the end.
- The milk must not boilA quart of milk added to hot, salty, starchy potato water can curdle if pushed past a simmer. Bring it just to steaming. Whole milk holds together better than skim.
- Season more than you thinkThere is no bacon, no butter and no stock here, so salt and pepper are doing all the work. Salt the cooking water for the fish and potatoes rather than only at the end.
- Chowder yieldSix medium potatoes and a quart of milk make roughly six generous bowls. It thickens on standing as the potato starch bleeds out, and reheats only over low heat.
- Oysters need three minutes, no moreThe original is right and worth obeying: ham, oysters and their liquor stew about three minutes, until the oyster edges just ruffle. Longer and they tighten into erasers.
- A wineglass of sherryIn period cookbooks a wineglass is roughly 2 fl oz. Use a dry amontillado or fino, not cream sherry.
- The egg-yolk sauce is a custardThe egg-yolk sauce is barely a custard -- Two yolks whipped into 1 1/2 pints of cream give only a light thickening; yolks begin to set somewhere in the 160-180F range and scramble not far above. Keep the pan at a lazy simmer and stir constantly; the warning about separating is the hinge of the whole dish.
- Virginia hamA country ham is dry-cured, salty and firm. If you substitute ordinary boiled deli ham, expect the dish to want more salt; if you use a true salt-cured country ham, taste before seasoning at all.
- Oysters Acomac serves fourTwo dozen oysters in a rich cream sauce over toast is a supper dish for four, or a first course for six in small portions.
Fish chowder of exactly this shape — salt or fresh cod simmered with onion and potato, finished with milk and no tomato — is the New England pattern that turns up in American cookbooks throughout the nineteenth century. Trixie Friganza (1870–1955) was a vaudeville headliner and an active suffragist, and her note is pure trouper's voice: "bully," then the period's standard slang for first-rate, and food judged by how it holds up between shows. The second recipe points somewhere else entirely: Accomack County on Virginia's Eastern Shore was one of the great oyster-producing districts of the Chesapeake, and the pairing of local oysters with Virginia country ham and sherry is a Tidewater signature. In celebrity cookbooks of this kind a performer might send in a favourite dish and a signature, and the handwritten name has come through the transcription as "forigaya."