Results (Finally): BBQ History Quiz #4

Major procrastination seems the be the new theme with my BBQ Quiz.  I've been on the road a bunch lately (including fours days down in Oxford, Mississippi for the wonderful Southern Foodways Alliance symposium) and just haven't gotten around to keeping up with my blog deadlines.  But, in case you've been wondering at all about the answer to the stale question sitting over in the right hand column of the blog, here it is.

Question:  The first usage of the word "barbecue" to describe an event (and not just a cooking technique) occurred in the 18th Century.  In which colony was this event held? 

Responses:

A. Massachusetts: 9%

B. New York: 9%

C: North Carolina: 45%

D: Georgia: 36%

North Carolina and Georgia do seem like the most plausible answers, but the truth might surprise you: it's A. Massachusetts!

The first usage lexicographers for the Oxford English Dictionary have been able to find is from 1733, when Benjamin Lynde, Jr., of Salem, Massachusetts, recorded in his diary, "Fair and hot; Browne, Barbecue; hack overset."  The OED interpreted this to mean that Lynde when to a barbecue with Mr. Browne, and on the way there was a carriage accident.  This is as good of an interpretation as I can make of the cryptic entry.

In fact, barbecues were quite common in New England in the 18th Century, and I've been able to find plenty of references to them in old newspapers and journals.  In October 1752, the Rev. Ebenezer Bridge of Chelmsford, MA, recorded attending "a Barbacue in Dracut."  The diary of Mary Holyoke of Salem includes three mentions of barbecues in 1761 and 1762.  In 1767, seventy gentlemen attended a barbecue in Braintree to celebrate the launching of a ship named the Barnard.

By the end of the 18th Century, barbecues seem to have faded from New England.  But, for a brief period, it seems, Yankees were eating as much barbecue as those in the Southern colonies. 

For more results from past questions, see Barbecue History Quiz Question #3

Results: BBQ History Quiz #3

So, I got a little behind and didn't give out the answer for BBQ Quiz Question #3 on time.  Here it is  . . . finally.

This one was rather undramatic, since right out of the gate pretty much everyone got the answer right:

Question: Which regional barbecue sauce style is most like the sauce used at 19th century barbecues?

Responses:
A. Midlands S.C. (mustard-base): 11%
B. Eastern N.C. (vinegar-based): 66%
C: East Texas (tomato-based) 0%
D: Memphis (tomato & molasses): 11%

The answer, as most respondents knew, is B: Eastern North Carolina.  Perhaps it's because Eastern North Carolina sauce is so simple that it seems old, or perhaps it's just common knowledge, but the thin, spicy, and vinegar-based does appear to be the closest thing to the original American barbecue sauce.

One of the great differentiators in regional barbecue styles today is the sauce. In Eastern North Carolina it’s thin, spicy, and vinegar-based while in Texas it’s sweet, thick, and tomato-based. Some variations—like the white mayonnaise-based sauced from Alabama and the yellow mustard-based sauce from my home state of South Carolina—are specific to only a narrow region and not widely known in other places.  These famed  regional sauce variations are relatively recent developments. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the sauces used for barbecue followed a consistent formula throughout the colonies and then the early United States. 

Perhaps the earliest instructions for pit-cooking barbecue appears in Lettice Bryan’s The Kentucky Housewife (1839).  For sauce, Bryan called for “nothing but a little salt-water and pepper, merely to season and moisten it a little.” Once the meat was done, Bryan advised cooks to “squeeze over it a little lemon juice, and accompany it with melted butter.” Three decades later, Mrs. Annabella Hill, from La Grange, GA, published similar directions in Mrs. Hill’s New Cook Book (1872), though her recipe incorporated butter and a little mustard into the basting liquid: "Melt half a pound of butter; stir into it a large tablespoon of mustard, half a teaspoonful of red pepper, one of black, salt to taste; add vinegar until the sauce has a strong acid taste.” At the end of cooking, “pour over the meat any sauce that remains.”

This basic combination of butter or some other fat, vinegar, and pepper was the standard sauce for the rest of the 19th Century. An 1860 account of a Virginia event described iron vessels positioned along the side of the pit, ”some filled with salt, and water; others with melted butter, lard, etc. into which the attendants dipped linen cloths affixed to the ends of long, flexible wands, and delicately applied them with a certain air of dainty precision to different portions on the roasting meat.”  A Harper’s Weekly 1896 account of a Georgia barbecue noted that the meat was cooked for twelve hours and “basted with salt water . . . then, just before it is eaten, plentifully bedabbled with ‘dipney’—a compound of sweet country lard and the strongest vinegar, made thick and hot with red and black pepper.”

Texas today has not one but at least four separate barbecue styles, but before the 20th century it was pretty much the same as its Eastern cousins.   On a Mexican Mustang Through Texas, an 1883 travelogue, described a barbecue outside San Antonio with a sauce almost identical to that used in Virginia and Georgia: “Butter, with a mixture of pepper, salt, and vinegar, is poured on the meat as it is being cooked.”

The regional variations in barbecue sauces developed in the 20th century, driven largely by the rise of barbecue restaurants and the specialization they fostered.  Of all the modern variations, the simple Eastern North Carolina style of vinegar and red pepper sauce seems most like what was used in the earliest barbecues in this country.

For more results from past questions, see Barbecue History Quiz Question #2

The Results: BBQ History Quiz #2

OK, so the polls have closed on Question #2 of the Barbecue History Quiz.  Time to see how everyone did.

Question: Many states claim to be the birthplace of Brunswick Stew.  In what state did it really originate?

Responses:
   A. Georgia 66%
   B. North Carolina: 16%
   C: Tennessee: 11%
   D: Virginia: 5%

While Brunswick stew is a standard barbecue side dish in all four of the above states, Georgia is clearly the crowd favorite.  I can understand all the votes for Georgia, considering how ubiquitous the stew is in Peach State barbecue joints.  There's an entire city in Georgia with the name of Brunswick, and it even has a very specific material piece of evidence: the original Brunswick Stew pot, which is posted on a monument at the welcome center just outside of town.

If this pot is to be believed, the very first Brunswick Stew was made on nearby St. Simon's Island on July 2, 1898.  A mess sergeant, the full story goes, created the stew for a company of soldiers stationed at Gascoigne Bluff on the island.  He had no particular recipe, using whatever meats and vegetables he had handy, but it turned out so tasty that local residents started copying his formula.

Now, I'm not one to argue with an old stew pot, but the truth of the matter is that Brunswick Stew was in existence long before 1898, and it's original birthplace was not in the state of Georgia.

The correct answer, which only 5% of respondents chose, is D: The State of Virginia.

Partisans of Georgia and Virginia have hotly debated the claims over the years, but Virginia's version has the most documentary legs.

Brunswick Stew most likely was the creation of one James "Uncle Jimmy" Matthews from the Red Oak neighborhood in Brunswick County, Virginia.  A soldier who fought in the War of 1812, Matthews was a sociable rover and accomplished squirrel hunter whose squirrel stews made him a popular figure at picnics and public gatherings in old Virginia in the 1820s.

His recipe was quite simple.  He stewed the squirrels in water along with bacon and onions until the flesh separated from the bones, which were skimmed out.  He finished the stew with butter and breadcrumbs and seasoned it with salt and pepper.

After his death, Matthews was succeeded by Dr. Aaron B. Haskins as the local stew master, who was in turn succeeded by Jack Stith and then Col. W. T. Mason.  Each man brought his own innovation to the recipe.  Haskins was said to have added a touch of brandy or Madeira wine to the stew for flavor.  Stith introduced vegetables sometime during the 1830s, adding tomato, onion, corn, and potatoes.


By the 1840s and 1850s, Brunswick Stew was a fixture at election day barbecues in the Old Dominion State, a fact attested to by numerous newspaper and diary accounts of such events.

I can't be as definitely certain about the story of Uncle Jimmy Matthews as the originator, but the story has a decent documentary trail.  In 1886 the Petersburg Index-Appeal published a letter from “Tar Heel” that sketches the basic outline of the story.  In 1907, I. E. Spatig, the Commissioner of Brunswick County, Virginia, wrote a pamphlet that provided a capsule history of the county, and using information from letters he solicited from residents of the Red Oak District he traced the history of the famous stew, and the responses align with the story from the Petersburg Index-Appeal.  Now, even the Index-Appeal's story was some sixty years after the supposed events, and memories are murky and malleable, but it seems to firm enough to at least award the title to Virginia.  

BBQ Quiz Question #3 is posted now in the sidebar.


For more results from past questions, see Barbecue History Quiz Question #1

The Results: BBQ History Quiz #1

Voting is closed, and the great majority of respondents were . . . dead wrong.

Question: What meat was sold at the first commercial barbecue stand in North Carolina?

Responses:

A. Beef: 7%
B. Pork: 42%
C: Mutton: 35%
D: All of the Above: 14%

I'm not surprised that pork would get the most votes, since that is the signature meat of North Carolina barbecue today.  And, I can chalk up the 35% tally for mutton to the fact that I had said in my comments that "the answer might surprise you."

And that answer is . . . D. All of the Above.

In 1899, a notice in the Charlotte Observer announced that Mrs. Katie Nunn had rented a store on South Church St., where she planned to run a grocery store and a barbecue stand, with her husband doing the cooking on a pit he had constructed behind the store.  Two weeks later, this classified ad ran in the paper:

The appearance of mutton is especially surprising, since pork so dominates North Carolina today and mutton is something rarely found outside of Kentucky.  But, it helps illustrate the fact that regional barbecue styles were a 20th Century development, and one driven by the rise of barbecue restaurants.

BBQ Quiz Question #2 is posted now.