These days, I get to spend quite a bit of time with the great American poetess, Edna St. Vincent Millay. Not in the literal sense (she died in 1950), but figuratively, as I am working on a project about her. I just re-read her fine biography, Savage Beauty—which has become one of my favorite books.
The following passage particularly amused and inspired me: one evening, Millay was about to give a reading of her work when she was drawn into conversation with a visiting Frenchwoman. In describing her impressions of America, this madame pointed out that she had never before eaten “such bad food.”
This did not go over well with Millay. But instead of reacting with trite patriotic indignation, Millay instead launched into a glorious, spontaneous “gastronomic prose poem” in defense of her country’s cuisine:
“In your travels, chere madame, did you ever taste the lobsters that come from the waters off the coast of my home state, Maine? Broiled or boiled and served with melted, fresh country butter, they are unforgettable. Did you have fish chowder made of haddock, Maine potatoes, onions, salt pork and rich milk?
“Were you ever introduced to Boston baked beans? I mean the kind baked in an old-fashioned crock. We cook them slowly and for long hours in the oven and serve them sometimes with such brown bread as can be found in no other part of the world.
“Did you ever have Cherrystones or Little Necks; and did you ever, by chance, taste a Provincetown clam pie made of the deep-sea Quahogs and a liberality of olive oil and garlic? Were oyster-crabs and whitebait ever set crisp before you? Did you taste soft-shell crabs, lightly sauteed, or drink the juice of the soft-shell crab? Were you ever a happy member of an old-fashioned clam-bake on a secluded New England beach?
“There’s the shad roe and the shad itself, both broiled; sweet corn and sweet potatoes; pumpkin pie and deep-dish blueberry pie; diamond-back terrapin done as the Baltimoreans do it in a rich Madeira stew, or as the Philadephians do it with egg-yolks, cream, and ‘sweet butter in a lordly dish.’
“There’s the Creole Jambalaya of New Orleans made with savory rice and shrimps almost as big as your French ecrevisses. We also have our native blueberries. And there are our cranberries and beach-plums which I used to gather on Cape Cod. We make delicious preserves from them. Oh, there are many other products and dishes native to states and regions of my country. If you have never tasted them, ma chere, you cannot in all fairness judge American cuisine ...”
The Frenchwoman was later heard telling a friend that she thought Millay’s defense of America’s specialites gastronomiques had been tres bien faite.
