"Hindus"

Me: "Look, there's a recipe for cookies called Hindus."

E.: "That's not racist or anything."

There's no use sugar coating it.  Someone named these cookies "Hindus" because they contain both chocolate and molasses and are, if you will, dark-complexioned cookies.

Oh the hilarity.

The recipe comes from the Rumford Common Sense Cook Book, compiled by Lily Haxworth Wallace.  The 64-page book is undated, but various folks on the web think that it was published in about 1930.  Based in Rumford, Rhode Island, the Rumford Chemical Works produced the cookbook in order to promote its Rumford Baking Power.

(The Clabber Girl Corporation continues to make Rumford Baking Powder, although not in Rhode Island.  Before I get a disgruntled note from the Clabber Girl and her legal team, let's make it clear that there is absolutely no reason to think that the company promotes racist cookie recipes or endorses any racist uses for baking powder today.)

If this book does in fact date to 1930, it might be that the "Hindus" are reflective of 1920s-era American attitudes towards people from India. Not only was the Indian independence movement in the news, so too was U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind, a 1923 Supreme Court decision that excluded Indians from U.S. citizenship due to reasons of race.

Historically, U.S. citizenship had a lot to do with race.  The 1790 Naturalization Act limited U.S. citizenship to free, white persons. The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hildalgo not only ended the Mexican-American War, it also declared that Mexicans could be U.S. citizens.  That was true even if by the early twentieth century many "Anglos" in the Southwest tried to get around the fact that Mexican-Americans were not just citizens but also legally white.  The Fourteenth Amendment rendered Americans of African descent U.S. citizens.  The 1870 Naturalization Act allowed African aliens to become citizens.  Yet it also opened the possibility that all Asians could be excluded from U.S. citizenship.  Later, in 1882, the U.S. Congress barred all but a small segment of the Chinese from entering the United States, and it renewed that restriction in 1892 and 1902. Not until 1943 were Chinese persons allowed to apply for U.S. citizenship.

If you're wondering, Native Americans did not receive full U.S. citizenship rights until 1924. 

But if in 1923 blacks, whites, and Mexicans were eligible for U.S. citizenship, and the Chinese ineligible, what did that mean for Asians from places such as India?  Were they barred from becoming naturalized citizens?

In 1923, Bhagat Singh Thind, a Punjabi Sikh who lived in Oregon, put that question to a test.  He didn't challenge the racism underlying citizenship law.  Instead, Thind claimed that he was eligibile for U.S. citizenship because he was, indeed, white.  He was white, because he was from Northern India, a region settled by "Aryans."  If he was "Aryan," Thind argued, he was white and, therefore, eligible for U.S. citizenship.  The Supreme Court disagreed: Asian Indians were neither white nor permitted to become U.S. citizens. 

Is it a coincidence that less than a decade after the Thind decision there appeared a recipe for dark-colored, decidedly non-white cookies called "Hindus"?

I'm not shocked to find that one of my great-grandmother's old cookbooks has a racist recipe.  What surprises me is that the author correctly spelled Hindus. You'd think she would have gone with "Hindoos," which is far more derogatory.  It's almost as though she was trying not to be racist.

Was she?  We could also imagine that, while the cookies are racist because they are a play on skin color, they were inspired by the Indian independence movement of the 1920s.  Gandhi, a Hindu, gained world-wide fame in the 1920s for his commitment to non-violence and his leadership in the fight to end British rule in India.

These are some very serious cookies.

But not everything in the 1920s was so sternly different from today. The Rumford Common Sense Cook Book contains other, humorous, non-racist gems.  For example, it would be a terrible shame if I fail to make the Corn Flake Cookies.

Then there is the fantastic advice on school lunches.  What kid wouldn't want mashed baked beans with mayonnaise or chili sauce?  Of course, I used to eat chow mein sandwiches, so what do I know?  I certainly was unaware that: "Boys like plain folding lunch boxes, girls prefer daintiness of equipment."

Feel free to study this page yourselves.

For the record, I assume that the Spanish Meat Loaf is racism-free.  It contains pimientos, which are Spanish.  That one's legit.  Although, only someone lacking common sense would ask for this meatloaf in Spain.

Even if these recipes are probably not something you'd likely Google in preparation for your next meal, they might be worth trying. The "Hindus" were delicious. No, they were the best cookies I've ever made.

The batter was light and fluffy.  Forget about baking, I could have served it in a tall glass and called it dessert.  It was like a fine mousse.  So, seeing as I'm not going to serve "Hindus" to my friends, I've decided to change the name from "Hindus" to Mousse Melts.

E. agreed with me.  "That's far less racist," he said.

Less?  I was going for not racist at all.

Johnny Cakes (and The OId Grist Mill Tavern)

I don’t know when, but at some point I acquired this postcard from the The Old Grist Mill Tavern in Seekonk, Massachusetts. It originally belonged to my Aunt Harriet. That much I know.

I have had quite a few meals at the Grist Mill, but never, despite the declaration on the back of the postcard, have I ever had a johnny cake there. “ ‘Home of the Johnny Cake,’ ” it reads in quotation marks as if to imply that any customer might have uttered the phrase upon hearing the words Grist Mill. Yet if you look at the Grist Mill’s present menu, there are no johnny cakes to be found.

So much for the Grist Mill’s claim to fame.

I have no intention of boycotting the Grist Mill for not keeping true to some assertion a former owner made in the late 1950s or early 1960s, when the postcard was probably printed. I don’t even know if the Grist Mill ground corn when it was in operation as an actual grist mill in the eighteenth century.

The card simply reminds me that I don’t see johnny cakes, supposedly a mainstay of New England cooking since the colonial period, too often anymore.

In December I was in Rhode Island and decided to pick up a box of Kenyon’s white corn meal so that I could remind myself of just what a johnny cake tastes like. Now, normally I’m skeptical of buying pre-mixed flours or meals, because I can just purchase corn meal or flour in bulk and save myself a lot of money. I know how to make pancakes, for instance, and it’s not so difficult that I need to buy the ingredients pre-mixed. But, seeing as Rhode Island’s economy is in the toilet, I thought I’d do my part to help out both a Rhode Island grocery store and the folks at Kenyon’s Corn Meal Company in Usquepaugh, R.I.

Since then I’ve been reading up on johnny cakes and, among other things, found that Kenyon’s packaged white corn meal is really stone ground, while most corn meal is made using steel blades. This means that Kenyon’s corn meal is not only more nutritious than others, but that it also has a distinctive taste and finer texture.

It’s a good thing, or so Martha Stewart Living tells me.

Strangely, in Rhode Island, by law it should be spelled jonny cakes, not johnny cakes. (So, in a state where native speakers add an h to the end of any word ending in r, you’re supposed to drop the h in the middle of this one particular word. Up to speed?) In that respect, opening a box of Kenyon’s corn meal for johnny cakes could be considered a revolutionary act.

Someone might want to alert the Rhode Island Tea Party about this.

I recently made johnny cakes for breakfast, following the recipe on the box of Kenyon’s corn meal. Judging from the company's website, the cakes I made were in South County style, as opposed to Newport style, which requires milk rather than boiled water. You can make them any way you like. Mine came out about a quarter of an inch thick, crispy on the outside, and soft on the inside. We had them with eggs and a bit of maple syrup. They were quite good. I plan to make another batch whenever I get around to cooking some sort of seafood with a cream sauce.

I like a food that works for both breakfast and supper.

Johnny cakes also remind me of a certain passage in Two Years Before the Mast, Richard Henry Dana’s 1840 account of how he, a Boston Brahmin and Harvard undergraduate, spent two years as a lowly sailor. Dana’s description of the way his brutal "down-east johnny-cake" captain, a Mainer I presume, reacted to the demands of the crew reads as follows:

“Well, what the d---l do you want now?” Whereupon we stated our grievances as respectfully as we could; but he broke in upon us, saying that we were getting fat and lazy, didn’t have enough to do, and it was that which made us find fault. This provoked us, and we began to give word for word. This would never answer. He clenched his fist, stamped and swore, and ordered us all forward, saying, with oaths enough interspersed to send the words home, “Away with you! go forward every one of you! I’ll haze you! I’ll work you up. You don’t have enough to do! If you a’n’t careful, I’ll make a hell of heaven! . . . You’ve mistaken your man! I’m Frank Thompson, all the way from ‘down east.’ I’ve been through the mill, ground, and bolted, and come out a regular-built, down-east johnny-cake, when it’s hot, d----d good; but when it’s cold, d----d sour and indigestible; -- and you’ll find me so!”

It probably goes without saying, but I made sure my Rhode Island johnny cakes were piping hot when we ate them.

The Rocky Point Shore Dinner Hall

Blame it on the cold weather, but all day my thoughts kept returning to memories of eating clam cakes and red chowder in the Shore Dinner Hall at Rocky Point Park. Located on Narragansett Bay in Warwick, Rhode Island, the park opened in 1847 and closed in 1996. The Shore Dinner Hall served its last clam cake in 2000. (Check out the film “You Must Be This Tall” for more on the history of Rocky Point Park.)

Apparently my grandfather, a labor reporter for the Providence Journal-Bulletin, was quite the shore-dinner connoisseur. He used to take my dad to Rocky Point for clam cakes and chowder and Dad, in turn, took me and my brother. This usually occurred around the Fourth of July, when my father's childhood and college friends, with their children and spouses, annually reunited in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

I must have inherited this penchant for the shore dinner, as I remember the Rocky Point Shore Dinner Hall with its seemingly endless rows of tables, watermelon, and salty, battered clam cakes better than I do the Corkscrew or the Freefall or the House of Horrors (well, my eyes were probably unnecessarily closed for much of that last one).

Around 1989 or so I picked up the above postcard of the Shore Dinner Hall, complete with a description of the menu on its backside:


With the park and the dinner hall long gone, I will have to make “Famous Rocky Point Clam Chowder” for myself.

ROCKY POINT-STYLE CHOWDER

1/2 pound ground or finely diced salt pork
1 pound onions, cut in medium dice
1 gallon clam juice
1 pound potatoes, diced
Salt, pepper to taste
1 tablespoon paprika
2 cups canned tomato puree
1 1/2 quarts chopped quahogs
Water as needed
Pilot crackers, crumbled

Heat salt pork until the fat melts. Add onions; cook over gentle heat until very soft. Add clam juice, potatoes, seasonings, tomato puree and a little water.

Simmer until potatoes are soft, then add quahogs. Heat and taste for seasoning. Add water if needed.

It is best to use old, not new potatoes, because they thicken the chowder somewhat with their starch. Crush some pilot crackers and stir them into the chowder to thicken it further near the end of cooking. Makes 20 eight-ounce servings.

Note that the above recipe, located with others in a 1997 Providence Journal-Bulletin article, suggests that you make the chowder with pilot crackers. But like Famous Rocky Point Clam Chowder that, too, is a bygone food unless you make it yourself. (Nabisco discontinued Crown Pilot Crackers despite a concerted effort against this move by residents of Chebeague Island, Maine. But that’s another story.)