This post was originally going to be called “Martha Washington’s Potato Rolls.” I had found recipes by that name in several cookbooks, and thought this would be a straightforward historical re-creation. Well food history is rarely straightforward — haven’t I learned that by now? The recipes turned out to be completely different, and I couldn’t tell which was really Martha’s.
My brothers and I used to fish for trout when we visited our grandparents in the Poconos, in Pennsylvania. If my siblings read this, they’ll insist that they were fishing and I was merely watching. It’s true that after a few years I started feeling sorry for the fish and didn’t want to catch them anymore. (This didn’t stop me from eating them.)
Trout frying hasn’t changed a huge amount since colonial times. Here’s a 1753 recipe from The Ladies’ Companion, reprinted in The Williamsburg Art of Cookery:
“You must, with a Knife, gently scrape off all the Slime from your Fish, wash them in Salt and Water, gut them, and wipe them very clean with a Linnen Cloth; that done, strew Flour over them, and fry them in sweet Butter, till they are brown and crisp; then take them out of the Frying-pan, and lay them on a Pewter Dish, well-heated before the Fire…. Continue reading
Revolutionary Pie 