The True Story of Stingy Jack

When researching my book on Fannie Farmer, “Fannie’s Last Supper,” I thought I had found the origins of Boston cream pie. The dessert in question was served at the Parker House starting in 1856 and consisted of two sponge cake layers filled with custard then drizzled with ganache—an extravagant flourish given the rarity and expense of chocolate at the time. I repeated this story a dozen times with more than a whiff of a supercilious know-it-all attitude. But as it turns out, this story may not be true. A well-respected food historian told me that she had searched Parker House menus and the local newspapers for any mention of Boston cream pie or chocolate cream pie with a direct connection to the Parker House and found none. I did the same with the Boston Globe archives and came up empty.

The food world is caught up in a tangle of culinary history. Take the food of the American South. I interviewed Jessica B. Harris, author of “High on the Hog,” a couple years ago and fell in love with her dedication to the truth. In the early 17th century, New York City had one of the largest Black populations in the country and was a major slave-trading center. The botanical connection between West Africa and the American South was small since many African plants did not thrive in America: black-eyed peas, watermelon and okra all adapted well enough, but not oil palm, African yams and kola. The first rice introduced to the South came from Captain John Thurber, who sailed from Madagascar. (West African rice thrived later because of its ability to grow in brackish water.) Fried chicken was first and foremost practical—all you needed was a pot, a fire and some oil, and it could be served hot or cold. Most surprising—and hard to believe—was that the death rate among sailors on slave ships was often higher than the death rate among the enslaved. One saying about sailing to Benin in West Africa went, “For one that comes out, there are forty who go in.” Ms. Harris summed up American history by saying, “We’re all finding it ain’t necessarily the way it’s been told.”

History is often fake news. Take Roman history. The Republic—in the centuries before the coming of Caesar—has been held up as a model for American democracy. But the rich hated the poor. Bribery and corruption abounded. And there were dictators like Sulla who were perfectly happy to kill to maintain power; he once had some 6,000 prisoners massacred (he had promised them free passage if they surrendered) while he addressed the Senate nearby. The screams were his way of sending a message about crossing his path. Not much of a democracy.

Or take Thanksgiving. This holiday has been cleaned up for modern purposes as a joyful day of feasting and family. The truth is that roughly 90 Wampanoag people and 52 settlers came together to form a political alliance. The settlers desperately needed the survival skills of the Wampanoag. The Native Americans, devastated by disease brought by the settlers, were looking out for their own survival through a peace deal. Given the language barrier (a few Wampanoag did speak English), one wonders what they said to each other over that awkward three-day feast. As for the food, it was probably shellfish, wild duck, venison (from the Wampanoag), corn porridge—nary a roasted turkey. And it wasn’t until 1863 that Thanksgiving was declared a national holiday.

As for Halloween, the jack-o’-lantern derives from the story of Stingy Jack who, having tricked the devil two times, finally ended up at the gates of Hell and was rejected, then forced to walk the earth with a lump of burning coal in a turnip to light the way. The term jack-o’-­lantern—presumably referring to Jack from the folktale—was used in the 19th century to describe the candlelit carved pumpkins that kids would carry around on sticks to scare families through their windows. By the late 19th century, the pumpkin was a popular party decoration and had lost its menace.

Like Jessica B. Harris, I believe that we rewrite history to suit the times we live in. It may not matter how Boston cream pie was invented or how the jack-o’-lantern came to be, but it does matter what history can teach us about the possibilities of the human condition. The river of human greed and cruelty runs through every epoch, but it is also true that the human soul aspires to empathy and kindness. The first step is getting the facts straight before we appeal to our better selves.