Mark Twain Dreams of Virginia Bacon

Adam Gopnik, staff writer for The New Yorker, recently viewed Mark Twain’s papers while visiting the Bancroft Library at U.C. Berkeley. What stood out for Gopnik was the “list”—American dishes that Twain was daydreaming about while on a speaking tour of Europe, including Saratoga potatoes, Virginia bacon, San Francisco mussels, Tahoe lake trout, Philadelphia terrapin soup, Southern-­style fried chicken, Sierra Nevada brook trout, Baltimore canvasback duck, Connecticut shad, Missouri partridges and Southern peach cobbler.

Clearly, 19th-century America offered a treasure trove of culinary wealth. It had a big helping of terroir, places famous for an ingredient or preparation. And much of the food was simple enough, focusing (as the 17th-­century French chef La Varenne suggested) on the true essence of an ingredient without embellishment, a notion that fit well into the American psyche—a direct, honest and unadorned people.

Today, however, food writers take something simple and sex it up, using a panoply of empty, decorative adjectives: sumptuous, mouth-­watering, basil-flecked, herbal, robust, yeasty, delectable, bold, decadent, flavor-­packed, indulgent and the like. The entire notion of being a “food writer” is suspect, since it should be no different than being a writer. One should describe a dish just the way one would describe a person—for example, how John le Carré describes his character George Smiley: “Short, fat, and of a quiet disposition, he appeared to spend a lot of money on really bad clothes, which hung about his squat frame like skin on a shrunken toad.” Good writers use a dash of imagination, humor and creative insight to sketch a character; run-of-the-mill adjectives need not apply.

But I am not here to skewer modern food writers, some of whom are quite good at their craft. (Many of us in the food world still delight in Pete Wells’ 2012 review of Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar in Times Square. He wrote, “Why is one of the few things on your menu that can be eaten without fear or regret … called a Roasted Pork Banh Mi, when it resembles that item about as much as you resemble Emily Dickinson?”)

I grew up in an era when the highest compliment was, “He is as good as his word.” One rarely heard “I” in a conversation, words meant something and were used sparingly, and even politicians were inclined to answer a question directly instead of using a query as a starting point for a self-serving rant. I did not know anyone with a fancy car (Country Squire station wagons, never Mercedes), designer clothes or Caribbean vacations. There was a lot of drinking, to be sure, and some quiet desperation, but apart from a handful of heroes—Joe DiMaggio, the Beatles, Muhammad Ali and the like—we weren’t out there 24/7 Photoshopping our faces in the hope of being discovered. Life was rarely about us.

Is modern food telling us something about America’s character? We want brightly colored foods that offer peak experience. In Calabria, where I spent a week recently, southern Italians want the opposite—familiar, local foods that maintain their natural character: zucchini with mint and beans, lagane e ceci (pasta with chickpeas), stuffed cabbage, vignarola (a stew of fresh vegetables), breaded pork cutlets, paccheri con ’nduja (pasta with a spicy, meaty tomato sauce), pasta e patate (pasta with potatoes), eggplant parmigiana, stroncatura (sauce made with anchovies, cherry tomatoes, etc.). Back in the States, we long for Awesome Pretzel Chicken Tenders.

The good things in life do not need dressing up. Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address lasted two minutes and contained 272 words. (Nobody remembers Edward Everett, who preceded Lincoln and spoke for two hours.) A well-prepared burger does not need Donkey Sauce. Dinner does not have to be performance art. Ovens would be just fine with two settings—bake and broil—instead of twelve. And everything is not better when made from carbon fiber.

Shakespeare wrote, “His words are bonds, his oaths are oracles; his love sincere, his thoughts immaculate; his tears pure messengers sent from his heart; his heart as far from fraud, as heaven from earth.”

Sounds like a recipe for success.