Traveling is one thing, but experiencing a culture is another. The prominent linguist Kato Lomb joked that people take the Latin proverb, "saxa loquuntur," "stones talk," all too literally. Her point was that just being somewhere does not mean that you automatically absorb the culture, like a sponge. You have to experience the culture to really understand the way other people live their lives. And one way to have this experience is closer to home than you may think.
While stones may not talk, food certainly does. It tells a unique story of a culture, its people and their way of life. Food and food traditions transmit the language, stories and values of a culture. Earlier this spring I had the opportunity to reconnect with my own cultural roots through a traditional Pennsylvania German meal with food historian Dr. William Woys Weaver.
The Pennsylvania German, or "Dutch," culture we have in Lancaster County traces its roots back to the Swiss, German and Eastern French immigrants who settled here during the 18th and 19th centuries. Through time these people established a unique language, culture and food tradition here in Eastern Pennsylvania that is now famous the world over.
Weaver has spent much of his life, from boyhood to the present, researching this tradition. A fluent speaker of Pennsylvania German, he has translated Pennsylvania German books into English and has extensively documented local culinary traditions.
The scene was set for a great meal as we pulled into the driveway of his 1700s Roughwood Tavern home, an historic building once a stop for travelers on the road from Lancaster to Philadelphia. Outside of its tall doorways, large rooms and historic architecture, the house is framed on all sides with garden beds where Weaver collects and preserves traditional varieties of plants from around the world, all a part of his research on food traditions.
Contrary to popular belief, Pennsylvania German food is not the artery-clogging tourist fare found in many restaurants across Lancaster County. With agriculture so prominent in the area, it features many fruits, vegetables and meats that were abundant locally. While some rich dishes certainly exist, I was impressed by just how healthy, flavorful and filling the dishes were.
One of the main dishes was zwiwwelkuche, or onion tart. A thick bread crust is topped with caramelized onions and cheese and baked in the oven until golden, kind of a Pennsylvania German pizza. It used to be a typical dish fed to farm workers who endured long days of hard physical labor. It is, however, a sharp contrast to the highly processed snacks people enjoy today.
Next on the menu were small, spiced Hosenschantz pears that had been prepared "sweet and sour," seasoned with herbs like cloves and cinnamon, and pickled in vinegar and sugar, a typical Pennsylvania German take on pickles. They had a delightful crunch and a strong, spiced flavor.
The Hosenschantz pear is only a fraction of the size of a regular pear. Over dinner Weaver disclosed the mystery surrounding this old pear, which dates back to1805: The pears turn from green and crunchy, like an apple, to soft mush almost overnight. Why would someone intentionally grow a pear tree that produces tiny fruit that spoils so quickly? The answer, Weaver discovered, was in how you use the pears. Their mushy quality, and excellent flavor as they become soft, means they lend themselves well to pear butter. Fruit "butters" used to be a common way to preserve fresh fruit into winter. A large kettle of fruit would be stewed for several hours until it was thick like butter and concentrated. These "butters" had a long shelf life and represented a cultural approach to storing foods by people who did not have refrigeration.
The string beans served were pickled sweet and sour, like the pears, spiced with caraway seed and "?snippled," cut into ridged strips that resembled the ridges in a potato chip. These pickled, snippled beans, schnippelbuhne, were a reminder of a time when many people "snippled" their vegetables by running them through a special grinder-like "snippler" machine.
Even the potato salad, grumbiere-selaat in Pennsylvania German, had a traditional twist. The potatoes were tubers harvested the previous fall from Weaver's garden. They were small, dry and shriveled, and resembled a prune much more than a potato. Weaver explained that, prior to chemicals, most potatoes used to look this way by the end of winter, as the tubers lost moisture and shrank to a fraction of their original size. Today they are sprayed with chemicals to maintain their pristine appearance throughout the year. Never judge a book by its cover, as the saying goes. Served with a light mustard dressing, they were still firm and flavorful. I never would have never guessed that these potatoes had aged all winter.
For dessert we ate blackberry pie, brombeere kuche, and Quaker cakes, Quaekerkuche, a recipe recipe that dates back to the 1800s and was first translated by Weaver.
We dined on a hearty meal of food, stories, traditions and language — all an important part of our region's heritage, yet few people know of them today. Dishes that were once an important element of my family's daily life were as foreign to me as manicotti and minestra might be for someone exploring Italian cuisine.
Whether you are using food to reconnect with your own cultural roots, or as a tool to learn about an exotic foreign culture, the experience is only as far away as a cook who knows how to prepare these traditional dishes. Whether it's spending time with a food historian like Weaver, or learning about spiced watermelon rind in your grandmother's kitchen, you can make these cultural connections whenever you experience even the simplest of foods. I have always been fascinated by foreign language and cultures and always will be, but what this meal helped me to realize is just how special my own culture and heritage is.
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