97 Orchard Part 1
97 Orchard.
An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement.
by Jane Ziegelman
Introduction.
97 Orchard Orchard tells the story of five immigrant families, each of them, as it happens, residents of a single New York tenement in the years between 1863 and 1935. Though separated by time and national background, the Glockners, the Moores, the Gumpertzes, the Rogarshevskys, and the Baldizzis, were all players in the Age of Migration, a period of sweeping demographic change for both the Old and New Worlds. tells the story of five immigrant families, each of them, as it happens, residents of a single New York tenement in the years between 1863 and 1935. Though separated by time and national background, the Glockners, the Moores, the Gumpertzes, the Rogarshevskys, and the Baldizzis, were all players in the Age of Migration, a period of sweeping demographic change for both the Old and New Worlds.
Starting in Europe in the early 1800s, whole chunks of humanity streamed from the countryside to the cities-the continent's new manufacturing centers-in pursuit of work. Those who could afford to embarked on a trans-Atlantic migration, lured to the United States by the promise of American prosperity and freedom. 97 Orchard 97 Orchard chronicles what became of those immigrants, but from a special vantage point: it retells the immigrant story from the elemental perspective of the foods they ate. chronicles what became of those immigrants, but from a special vantage point: it retells the immigrant story from the elemental perspective of the foods they ate.
Within hours of landing, immigrants felt the keen pressures of a.s.similation. Before they even left Ellis Island, many had already traded in their Old World ident.i.ties for new American names. Once on the mainland, immigrants found it expedient to shed their native clothing and to dress like Americans. Men quickly adopted the ubiquitous derby. Women abandoned their shawls and kerchiefs in favor of American-style coats and bonnets. The immigrants learned to speak like Americans, subjected themselves to the rigors of American sweatshops, and delighted in the popular culture of their adopted home. These same immigrants, however, went to extraordinary lengths to preserve their traditional foods and food customs. Transplanting Old World food traditions-many of them rooted in the countryside-to the heart of urban America required both imagination and tenacity. To compound the challenge, the immigrants' eating habits oftentimes defied American culinary norms, and as the immigrant population continued to swell, concerned citizens attempted to wean the foreigners from their strange cuisine. The immigrants' food loyalties, however, were fierce. Native foods provided them with the comfort of the familiar in an alien environment, a form of emotional ballast for the uprooted. Within the immigrant community, food cemented relationships, and immigrants turned to food as a source of ethnic or national pride. As immigrant families put down roots, it also became a source of contention between parents and their American-born children for whom Old World foods carried the stigma of foreignness.
A large part of this story takes place in the immigrant kitchen. For many immigrants, this was a small, often windowless room in a five-or six-story brick tenement. A form of urban housing that began to appear on New York's Lower East Side in the 1840s, tenements were the first American residences built expressly for multiple families-in this case, working people. The typical tenement had an iron front stoop, a central stairwell, where children played and neighbors socialized, and four apartments on every floor. The tenement kitchen was furnished with a wood-or coal-burning stove and little else. Those at 97 Orchard, a well-equipped building for its time, were bereft of indoor plumbing or any means of cold storage aside from the windowsill or fire escape, a makeshift "ice box" that only functioned in winter. A place to cook and to eat, the kitchen was also used as a family works.p.a.ce, a sweatshop, a laundry room, a place to wash one's body, a nursery for the babies, and a bedroom for boarders. In this cramped and primitive setting, immigrant cooks brought their formidable ingenuity to the daily challenge of feeding their families. 97 Orchard 97 Orchard describes exactly how that challenge was met by five major immigrant groups: the Germans, Irish, German Jews, Russian-Lithuanian Jews, and Italians. describes exactly how that challenge was met by five major immigrant groups: the Germans, Irish, German Jews, Russian-Lithuanian Jews, and Italians.
East Side children were responsible for collecting wood and coal for the family stove.
To procure the ingredients they needed at prices they could afford, immigrant cooks depended on neighborhood food purveyors. Upon landing in America, immigrant entrepreneurs quickly established networks of food laborers, trades people, importers, peddlers, merchants, and restaurant-keepers. Many of these culinary workers have since vanished and are long-forgotten. Among the disappeared are the German krauthobbler krauthobblers, or "cabbage-shavers," itinerant tradesmen who went door to door slicing cabbage for homemade sauerkraut; the Italian dandelion pickers, women who scoured New York's vacant lots for wild salad greens; and the urban goose-farmers, Eastern European Jews who raised poultry in tenement yards, bas.e.m.e.nts, and hallways.
The networks they established met the foreigners' own culinary needs, but in the process of feeding themselves, they revolutionized how the rest of America ate.
A time traveler to preCivil War New York or Boston or Philadelphia, who happened to arrive at dinner time, could expect to encounter the following on the family table: roast beef stuffed with bread crumbs and suet, a dish of peas, and some form of pudding. This was sustenance for the professional or business cla.s.s. Further down the economic ladder, generations of working-cla.s.s Americans survived on "hash," a composite of leftover meat sc.r.a.ps and potatoes. One food that united the "haves" and "have-nots" was pie. Apple pie, cherry pie, berry pie, lemon pie, and mince pie were eaten for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert. The habit was so p.r.o.nounced that immigrants referred to their American hosts as "pie-eaters." Another universal food was oysters. While Americans devised a wealth of oyster-based recipes, including oyster patties and stews, they enjoyed them best in their natural state, sold raw from the saloons and street stands that proliferated in nineteenth-century cities.
The immigrants that began to settle in the United States in the 1840s introduced Americans to an array of curious edibles beyond their familiar staples: German wursts and pretzels, doughnut-shaped rolls from Eastern Europe known as "beygals," potato pastries referred to as "knishes," and the elongated Italian noodles for which Americans had no name but came to know as spaghetti. 97 Orchard 97 Orchard describes how native-born Americans, wary of foreigners and their strange eating habits, pushed aside their culinary (and other) prejudices to sample these novel foods and eventually to claim them as their own. describes how native-born Americans, wary of foreigners and their strange eating habits, pushed aside their culinary (and other) prejudices to sample these novel foods and eventually to claim them as their own.
Aside from satisfying our culinary curiosity, the exploration of food traditions brings us eye to eye with the immigrants themselves. It grants us access to the cavernous beer gardens that once lined the Bowery, where entire German families-babies included-spent their Sundays, the immigrant's only day of leisure, over mugs of lager beer and plates of black bread with herring. It is a door into the East Side cafes where Jewish pushcart peddlers drank endless cups of hot tea with lemon, accompanied by a plate of blintzes, and brings us face-to-face with the Italian laborers who formed their own all-male cooking communities to satisfy their longing for macaroni.
On the streets of the Lower East Side, European food customs collided with the driving energy of the American marketplace. The tantalizing saga that ensued, an ongoing tug of war between culinary tradition and American opportunity, goes to the heart of our collective ident.i.ty as a country of immigrants. But while 97 Orchard 97 Orchard is concerned largely with a single immigrant community, Manhattan's Lower East Side, the history it tells transcends that one urban neighborhood. Though on a smaller scale, comparable changes were underway in cities and towns across America wherever immigrants settled. In fact, though the actors have changed, the culinary revolution that began in the nineteenth century continues today among immigrants from Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America, who have brought their food traditions to this country and continue to transform the way America eats. is concerned largely with a single immigrant community, Manhattan's Lower East Side, the history it tells transcends that one urban neighborhood. Though on a smaller scale, comparable changes were underway in cities and towns across America wherever immigrants settled. In fact, though the actors have changed, the culinary revolution that began in the nineteenth century continues today among immigrants from Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America, who have brought their food traditions to this country and continue to transform the way America eats.
CHAPTER ONE.
The Glockner Family.
The Lower East Side of Manhattan, circa 1863, was a neighborhood of squat wooden row houses, shelter for a population of artisans, laboring people, and small-time tradesmen. Built decades earlier as single-family homes, by the time of the Civil War the ground floor of the typical East Side dwelling was generally taken up by a grog shop or grocery with a small apartment behind the store for the shopkeeper's family. Two more families lived on the second floor, while the bas.e.m.e.nt was rented out to lodgers. More imposing structures could be found on the neighborhood's oldest streets. Made of stone, with peaked tile roofs, these were the former homes of New York's merchant princes, now converted into boardinghouses and cheap hotels that catered to a mainly immigrant clientele. But the East Side was also home to a strictly modern form of urban housing: the tenement-a five-or six-story brick building with multiple apartments on every floor. Their ma.s.sive size, along with their plain facades, reminded nineteenth-century New Yorkers of army barracks, and they were often referred to that way, even by the people who lived in them.
Hidden behind the dwellings, in the shadowy courtyards within each city block, were machine shops, print shops, brick-makers, furniture and piano factories, to name just a few of the local industries. Another kind of factory was concealed within the tenement itself. Here, in apartments that doubled as sweatshops (a term that had not yet been coined), immigrant workers produced clothing, lace, cigars, and artificial flowers for ladies' bonnets, a valued commodity in the hat-wearing culture of the nineteenth century. More evident to the casual observer, however, was the neighborhood's vibrant commercial life. In other parts of the city, people lived in private homes on relatively quiet residential streets but shopped and caroused on the noisier, more bustling avenues. On the Lower East Side, that distinction was blurred. Some kind of shop or business occupied the street level of most East Side buildings, turning the neighborhood into a single teeming marketplace. East Side shops sold a vast array of goods, from rusted sc.r.a.p metal and secondhand corsets to peac.o.c.k feathers and beaver-skin coats. There were shoe and hat shops, apothecaries, blacksmiths, glaziers, and tailors. Most plentiful, however, were businesses related to food. The impressive concentration of food markets and food peddlers, of slaughterhouses, brewers, bakers, saloons, and beer halls satisfied the culinary needs of the immediate neighborhood. At the same time, they played an essential role in feeding the larger city.
The people who lived and worked on the Lower East Side were predominately immigrants and, in lesser numbers, people of color-freed slaves and the descendants of slaves. Those sections of the Lower East Side that had been settled chiefly by Germans were collectively known as Kleindeutschland Kleindeutschland, or "Little Germany," covering the area from 14th Street south to Division Street and from the Bowery all the way east to the river. The businesses here were German-owned; the newsboys hawked German-language newspapers, and the corner markets sold loaves of mola.s.ses-colored pumpernickel and rosy-pink Westphalian hams. This semi-discrete corner of New York, a city within a city, was the world inhabited by Lucas Glockner, his wife, Wilhelmina, and their five children. It is also the world we are about to enter.
But before we do, let's have Mr. Glockner say a few words on his own behalf. Dead now for over a century, he speaks to us nonetheless with the help of certain official doc.u.ments, key among them the federal census report. The first census in which his name appears was taken in 1850, roughly four years after Glockner's arrival in New York. While the United States government had been counting its citizens since 1790, the 1850 census was groundbreaking in one respect: for the first time, it recorded the names of all household members, including women, servants, slaves, and children. Because of this innovation, we know that in 1850, Mr. Glockner lived on the Lower East Side at 118 Ess.e.x Street, along with his first wife, Caroline, a four-year-old son named Edward, and a baby named George, who was one at the time and would not survive. In this doc.u.ment, Mr. Glockner describes himself as a tailor, the leading occupation among New York Germans. According to the 1850 census, he is one of seven tailors, all of them German, living in the same small building.
1870 census record for Lucas Glockner and his family. Census records, among other official doc.u.ments, provide valuable information on the lives of otherwise anonymous immigrants.
The next time we hear from him, the United States is locked in a b.l.o.o.d.y civil war, and Lucas Glockner, along with thousands of other East Side Germans, has been registered to serve in the Union Army. According to an 1864 draft record, a beautiful, hand-lettered doc.u.ment, he is still employed as a tailor. Other sources tell us, however, that Glockner is ready to abandon tailoring for the more lucrative career of a New York property owner. In fact, he has already made his first investment. Glockner and his two partners have pooled their money to buy up the Dutch Reformed Presbyterian Church, not for the building but for the land underneath it: a plot large enough to fit three typical East Side tenement buildings. By the time of the next census in 1870, Glockner has become a rent-collecting landlord, the owner of several East Side properties.
By 1880, Glockner is living at 25 Allen Street with his considerably younger wife, Wilhelmina. Together they have three children: Ida, Minnie, and William. Neither of the girls is attending school, which shouldn't surprise us. If they weren't earning money as seamstresses or flower-makers, East Side girls were generally kept at home to help with the unpaid business of housework. Fifteen-year-old William, on the other hand, is enrolled in college, a very good indication that he will go on to work in an office-as a clerk, perhaps, or a bookkeeper, the kind of job that immigrant parents dreamed of for their sons. And Mr. Glockner? Living comfortably off his various properties (he owned at least three buildings by this time), he has earned the right to a new job t.i.tle. At fifty-nine years old, Glockner describes himself as a "Gentleman." And there we have it, from tailor to gentleman, the basic trajectory of one human life. Mr. Glockner's autobiography.
Glockner earned his fortune by investing in the kind of buildings he knew best, the multifamily dwellings known as "tenant houses," or "tenements" for short. His first property was 97 Orchard Street, the five-story brick structure that stands at the core of our story. Built by Glockner on the grounds of the old Dutch Church, it was a compact building designed to maximize s.p.a.ce, the mandate behind all tenement architecture. Covering a scant three hundred and fifty square feet, the Orchard Street apartments were minuscule by today's standards, the largest room not much bigger than a New York taxi. And yet, Glockner's building had a sense of style about it, both inside and out, a break from the tenement tradition up to that time.
Tenements, loosely defined, began to appear in New York sometime in the 1820s, many of them cl.u.s.tered in the old Five Points, a section of the Lower East Side that is now part of Chinatown. In colonial times, that same patch of New York had been a semi-industrial area of slaughterhouses, tanneries, breweries, rope-and candle-makers, all centered around a five-acre pond known as the Collect. In the early 1800s, the Collect was drained and filled, though not very effectively. A neighborhood of wood-frame row houses grew up on the site, but after a good hard rain, foul-smelling muck would well up from the ground, as if the former pond was reclaiming its rightful place. The terrible stench, along with the fear of disease, pushed out the old inhabitants, the merchants, and the craftsmen, making way for a less privileged cla.s.s of day laborers, boot blacks, and laundresses. Desperate for shelter, they moved into old single-family homes, which had been carved up into apartments. These improvised structures were the city's original tenements.
The appearance of the tenement coincided exactly with a sharp rise in immigration that began in the 1820s, gathering momentum in the 1830s and 1840s. In its wake, the population of New York suddenly ballooned, creating the city's first housing crisis. City landlords quickly grasped how to profit from the situation. They bought up old houses, stables, and workshops, or converted buildings they already owned, dividing them up into cubbyhole-sized living quarters. For businessmen of the time, including John Jacob Astor, a major investor in the East Side housing boom, the tenement was a real estate windfall. Among the first purposefully built tenements was a five-story brick structure on Water Street, near the East River, financed by a New York businessman named James Allaire, owner of the Allaire Iron Works, a company that made steamship engines. Since nineteenth-century employers often supplied their workers with room and board, it seems a good possibility that Allaire's tenement was built for his employees.
The history behind 97 Orchard sets it apart from the investments of the Astors and Allaires of New York. Where most East Side developers were "building down," creating housing for people far beneath them in the social hierarchy, 97 Orchard was built by an East Side immigrant for people much like himself. In fact, Glockner and his family lived at 97 for the first half dozen years of the building's existence and remained tied to it through a web of personal relationships long after they moved. The Glockners had friends at 97, like Natalie Gumpertz, the German dressmaker abandoned by her husband, and John Schneider, who ran a saloon in the building's bas.e.m.e.nt. More personal still, one of Glockner's sons eventually married the daughter of an Orchard Street tenant and moved into the building with his new wife.
The red-brick facade of 97 Orchard is an example of nineteenth-century Italianate design, very much in fashion during the 1860s. Typical of an Italianate row house, the kind seen farther uptown, the doorway at 97 Orchard is framed by a stone arch. Curved lintels and a stone sill border the windows, while the roof line is defined by a surprisingly ornate cornice. Though made of cast metal, it was finished to resemble brownstone, a more expensive building material. In fact, all of the building's decorative elements were much simplified, discount versions of their uptown counterparts, the best that Glockner could afford. The bas.e.m.e.nt at 97, which sits just below street level, is occupied by stores, one on either side of the building's front stoop.
On climbing the stoop, one enters the residential part of the building. The first room is a vestibule, or entryway, the walls lined with panels of white marble. On the far side of the vestibule door, a narrow hallway leads to a plaster arch. Pa.s.sing under it, the hallway widens. Directly ahead is the heavy wooden stairway that runs up the center of the building.
The apartments at 97 Orchard comprise three small rooms, a parlor, a kitchen, and a windowless "dark room" used for sleeping. Despite their size, the rooms are smartly finished with light oak baseboards and chair rails that match the doors and window frames. The walls are painted in pastel shades like salmon pink and pale mint green, while the ceilings are painted a soft shade of sky blue. Each apartment has two fireplaces, one in the kitchen used for cooking, and another in the parlor with a wooden mantel and slate hearthstone.
It had taken Glockner years of saving to buy the Orchard Street real estate and put up his building, a huge investment for an immigrant tailor, and a huge risk as well. Though he still had his trade, all of his capital was now in the building, a precarious state of affairs for a man in his forties with a family to support. Despite all this, Glockner embellished his property with marble paneling, arched doorways, chair rails, fireplaces with proper mantels. All of these flourishes are representative of Glockner's attempt to reach beyond Kleindeutschland Kleindeutschland and partic.i.p.ate in the larger and more affluent culture of middle-cla.s.s New York. and partic.i.p.ate in the larger and more affluent culture of middle-cla.s.s New York.
Though he splurged on decor, he skimped in other ways. Of all his money-saving strategies, none was more glaring than the absence of indoor plumbing. By 1863, pipes carrying fresh water from the Croton aqueduct had been laid under Orchard Street, and Glockner could have easily tapped into the underground system. Instead, he provided the building with a row of privies and an outdoor pump, both located in the building's back courtyard. Everyone who lived at 97 felt the impact of Glockner's decision, but no one felt it more than the building's women. Tenement housewives were like human freight elevators, hauling groceries, coal, firewood, and children up and down endless flights of stairs. Their most burdensome loads, however, were the tubs of water needed for laundry, bathing, house-cleaning, and cooking. It was sloppy, muscle-straining work, water sloshing everywhere, soaking the stairs and the women too, a bone-chilling prospect on a cold February morning, especially since the stairs were unheated.
Once a week the tenement kitchen served as a laundry room. Women and girls were responsible for hauling water up and down the stairs.
CSS Photography Archives, Courtesy of Community Service Society of New York and the Rare Book and Ma.n.u.script Library, Columbia University The premium on water shaped the way women cooked in the tenements. Climbing up and down three or four flights of stairs just to wash a dish is strong motivation to cook as simply and efficiently as possible. Lucky for Mrs. Glockner, Germans were expert stew-makers, a very useful culinary skill since it provided an entire meal using a single pot. Following German tradition, lunch was the heartiest meal of the day in the Glockner apartment. In the evening, the family might have boiled eggs, or bread and cheese, but lunch was a time to feast, time to fill your stomach with a good German frica.s.see of beef or veal or pork, served with boiled dumplings or maybe noodles.
Imagine, for a moment, a typical morning in the Glockner household. Mrs. Glockner is out, shopping for groceries, the baby is upstairs with a neighbor, so Mr. Glockner can attend to his accounts. At a small table by the parlor window, bent over his ledger, twirling the end of his rather bushy mustache, he loses himself in the rows of numbers. Very satisfying, he thinks, to see them all lined up so neatly. (After decades as a tailor, he appreciates good craftsmanship.) His thoughts are interrupted by the return of his wife. Hanging her cloak on a bra.s.s hook next to the door, she gives her hands a brisk rub to get the circulation back (the fall weather has suddenly turned cold) and lights a fire in the new black stove. Now she turns her attention to fixing the stew. The smell of browning onions reminds her husband that it's time for his mid-morning snack, so he trots downstairs to Schneider's Saloon, conveniently located in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the building, for a quick pint of beer and a plate of herring. He spends an hour or so chatting with Schneider, by which time the stew is nearly ready.
Recipes for German stews of the period can be found in the Praktisches Kochbuch Praktisches Kochbuch ( (Practical Cookbook), by Henrietta Davidis, Germany's answer to f.a.n.n.y Farmer. Originally published in Germany in 1845, the Praktisches Kochbuch Praktisches Kochbuch offers a sweeping view of what Germans were eating in the nineteenth century. The book was tremendously popular, selling over 240,000 copies in the author's lifetime. Some of those copies traveled to America in immigrant suitcases. Additional copies were shipped across the Atlantic and sold in German-language bookstores in the United States. In 1879, a German-bookstore owner in Milwaukee, a city with a large German community, published the first American edition of Henrietta Davidis under the t.i.tle offers a sweeping view of what Germans were eating in the nineteenth century. The book was tremendously popular, selling over 240,000 copies in the author's lifetime. Some of those copies traveled to America in immigrant suitcases. Additional copies were shipped across the Atlantic and sold in German-language bookstores in the United States. In 1879, a German-bookstore owner in Milwaukee, a city with a large German community, published the first American edition of Henrietta Davidis under the t.i.tle Praktisches Kochbuch fur die Deutschen in Amerika Praktisches Kochbuch fur die Deutschen in Amerika (or (or Practical Cookbook for Germans in America Practical Cookbook for Germans in America). A bestseller in immigrant circles, the book was reprinted several times. The first English translation, which appeared in 1897, reached a different and wider audience. It was for the immigrants' children and grandchildren, people who spoke English as their first language, and who had perhaps lost touch with the cooking traditions of their German ancestors. But the book also appealed to ordinary Americans of any background, since by 1897, many had sampled German cooking and wanted to know more.
The Practical Cookbook Practical Cookbook contains many stew-like recipes, some called "frica.s.sees" and some "ragouts," but all of them savory concoctions of meat, vegetables, broth, and a.s.sorted seasonings. A recipe for stewed duck with dumpling uses pork fat, peppercorns, cloves, bay leaves, onion, and lemon peel to flavor the cooking stock. A recipe for stewed leg of mutton calls for the meat, which "should not be too fresh," to be simmered in water and beer, and seasoned with "cloves, peppercorns, three bay leaves, a few whole onions, and a bunch of green herbs, such as garden rue, marjoram, and sweet basil." contains many stew-like recipes, some called "frica.s.sees" and some "ragouts," but all of them savory concoctions of meat, vegetables, broth, and a.s.sorted seasonings. A recipe for stewed duck with dumpling uses pork fat, peppercorns, cloves, bay leaves, onion, and lemon peel to flavor the cooking stock. A recipe for stewed leg of mutton calls for the meat, which "should not be too fresh," to be simmered in water and beer, and seasoned with "cloves, peppercorns, three bay leaves, a few whole onions, and a bunch of green herbs, such as garden rue, marjoram, and sweet basil."1 The generous use of spices and fresh herbs, the hint of tartness from lemon or vinegar, make all these dishes typically German. But for even more concentrated flavor, the The generous use of spices and fresh herbs, the hint of tartness from lemon or vinegar, make all these dishes typically German. But for even more concentrated flavor, the Practical Cookbook Practical Cookbook provides a recipe for spiced vinegar, a condiment for sprinkling over stews at the table, like a German form of Tabasco sauce. The potent mixture calls for a "half ounce of mace, some cloves (or, if preferred, garlic), ginger, one ounce of mustard seed, a pinch of whole white pepper, a piece of grated horseradish, a handful of salt, six or eight bay leaves," all steeped in a jar of vinegar along with sixty whole walnuts. provides a recipe for spiced vinegar, a condiment for sprinkling over stews at the table, like a German form of Tabasco sauce. The potent mixture calls for a "half ounce of mace, some cloves (or, if preferred, garlic), ginger, one ounce of mustard seed, a pinch of whole white pepper, a piece of grated horseradish, a handful of salt, six or eight bay leaves," all steeped in a jar of vinegar along with sixty whole walnuts.2 In the world of German stews, perhaps no dish was more highly flavored than hasenpfeffer hasenpfeffer, a ragout made from wild rabbit. Immigrants brought their love for hasenpfeffer hasenpfeffer to New York, where German saloon-keepers gave bowls of it to anyone who paid for a drink. Below is a recipe for to New York, where German saloon-keepers gave bowls of it to anyone who paid for a drink. Below is a recipe for hasenpfeffer hasenpfeffer by Gesine Lemcke, a German immigrant who opened a successful cooking school on Manhattan's Union Square. She also wrote cooking columns for the by Gesine Lemcke, a German immigrant who opened a successful cooking school on Manhattan's Union Square. She also wrote cooking columns for the Brooklyn Eagle Brooklyn Eagle, which is where this recipe appeared in 1899: HASENPFEFFERCut two well-cleaned rabbits into pieces, season them with one tablespoonful salt, put them in a bowl, add two large onions cut in slices, six cloves, twelve whole allspices, and half tablespoonful whole peppers, cover with vinegar; cover the bowl and let stand three days. When ready to cook, put the rabbits with the vinegar and all the other ingredients into a saucepan over the fire, add half pint water and tablespoonful sugar, boil till tender. In the meantime, melt one heaping tablespoonful b.u.t.ter, add one heaping tablespoon flour, stir until light brown, strain the rabbit broth, add it to the flour and b.u.t.ter, stir and cook to a smooth creamy sauce, lay the rabbit in a hot dish and pour the sauce over it. Serve with small browned potatoes cooked in deep fat or serve with potato dumplings.3 The following is a recipe for German-style veal stew with celery root and dried pear. Lemon, mace, clove, and bay leaves are the main seasonings, a combination often found in German-American cookbooks of the period. Bringing together meat, root vegetables, and fruit is another common German touch.
VEAL S STEW WITH D DRIED P PEAR2 pounds veal stew meat pound veal or beef bones3 tablespoons b.u.t.ter1 large onion, chopped cup chopped parsley root1 rounded tablespoon floursmall pinch of mace (about 1/8 teaspoon)2 whole cloves1 2 cups beef stock6 stalks parsley8 dried pear halves, cut in half lengthwise1 medium celery root, peeled, cut in half then thinly sliced lemon, thinly sliced into roundsRinse the meat and pat dry. In a large Dutch oven or heavy stew pot, melt 2 tablespoons of the b.u.t.ter. When it begins to foam, add veal in batches. Be careful not to crowd the pot or the meat won't brown properly. Let the veal cook, untouched, five minutes or so before turning it to brown the other side. You should also brown the bones. Remove veal, bones and all, from the pot. To the same pot, add onion and parsley root. Saute until golden, adding more b.u.t.ter if needed. Add the flour, and stir for a minute or so. Return veal to the pot, seasoning it with salt and pepper, mace and cloves. Add the beef stock, just enough to cover, along with bay leaves, 6 stalks parsley, and dried pear. Simmer very gently for about 1 hours. Add celery root and cook another half hour. In the last ten minutes, add the sliced lemon.4 In German kitchens, the traditional accompaniments to stew were some form of dumplings. Bread dumplings, potato dumplings, flour dumplings, dumplings made with cabbage, bacon, liver, ham, sweetbreads, or even calf's brain-these are just a few of the dumpling recipes found in early German-American cookbooks. In most volumes, an entire chapter is given over to them, both savory and sweet. The following bread-based recipe for "Green Dumplings," flecked with bits of chopped parsley, spinach, and chive, is from Henrietta Davidis: GREEN D DUMPLINGS ( (A S SUABIAN [SIC] RECIPE)A handful of parsley, the same quant.i.ty of spinach, half as much chervil and chives, chop all together and stew in b.u.t.ter for a few moments. Then mix with 2 grated rolls, 2 eggs, salt and pepper, form into little b.a.l.l.s, and let them come just to a boil in the finished soup, or they will fall to pieces. These dumplings are very nice in the Spring.5 The alternative to dumplings was noodles, a Bavarian specialty that German cooks adapted from the Italians, their neighbors to the south. In the German state of Swabia, cooks perfected a technique for making the pebble-shaped noodle known as spaetzle. Bavarians made threadlike soup noodles and thick, chewy noodles eaten as a side dish. Here is Ms. Lemcke's recipe from 1899: EGG N NOODLESPut one cup of flour in a bowl, add two eggs, a small piece of b.u.t.ter the size of a hazelnut, a pinch of salt, and two tablespoonfuls cold water, mix this into a dough, adding more flour if necessary, turn the dough onto a board and work it till stiff and smooth, divide it into four parts, roll each part out very thin, hang them over the edge of a bowl to dry, then roll each piece up like a music roll and if the nudel nudels are wanted for soup cut them as fine as possible, and if wanted to be served with frica.s.see in place of vegetables cut them half-finger wide. As soon as they are cut, shake them apart on a floured board and let them lie until perfectly dry.6 In 1865, Orchard Street alone was home to at least ten grocery stores, most of them German-owned. Ten years earlier, the same stores would have been in Irish hands. As German immigrants flowed into the city in the 1850s, the balance began to shift. By 1860, the German corner grocery had become a New York fixture, not just on the Lower East Side but throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn too.
The trick to running a successful grocery was to "have a little bit of everything and no great quant.i.ty of anything." These stores typically carried a small selection of fruits and vegetables, milk and b.u.t.ter, canned goods, coal, kerosene, kindling wood, sugar, soap, rolled oats, crackers, cigars, and for their German customers, imported delicacies like Westphalian ham, caviar, sausages, sauerkraut, and poppy-seed oil. But their bestselling item was alcohol, usually whiskey, which provided the grocer with most of his income. As it happens, 97 Orchard Street was literally flanked by grocers. If Mrs. Glockner needed a cup of milk or a loaf of bread, she could dash downstairs and buy it from either Frederick Aller at number 95 or Christian Munch at 99. Most likely, she bought on credit, the normal way of doing business for a grocer of the period. At the end of the business week, her husband would drop by the store and pay the bill.
For more serious shopping, Mrs. Glockner hooked her basket over one arm and headed for the public market on Grand Street, one of roughly a dozen scattered through Lower Manhattan. The public markets were large, shedlike structures with rows of individual stalls, the largest by far the Washington Market on the Lower West Side. Conveniently located near the busy docks along the Hudson River, this was the place where most of the food consumed in New York was bought and sold.
A quick scan of city newspapers circa 1860 reveals how much negative attention was generated by the public markets. The main complaint: dirt. The following "warning" ran in the New York Times New York Times in May 1854: in May 1854: If you are going to market this morning, be pleased to put on thick, stout shoes, and a dress that will not readily show dirt. For of all the dirty places in the City, our Public Markets are the dirtiest. In the fish markets the floors are slippery and constantly wet. In the meat market, giblets are scattered about the floor, unsightly objects are obtruded at all points, and refuse meats are frequently only swept out under the eaves, and left to disgust all pa.s.sersby.7 Aside from the filth, the condition of the buildings themselves, patched together and half-disintegrating, was deplorable. Among the most decrepit was the Fulton Market, "a filthy wood-shed with its leaky roof and tottering chimneys."8 For observers of the time, it was hard to reconcile the dirt and decay of the markets with the stature of New York, the largest, richest city in America. "The Metropolitan city of New York has endured the stigma of being, without question, the most illy-supplied with public food markets of any civilized centre of population of even one-tenth its pretensions," is how one critic put it. For observers of the time, it was hard to reconcile the dirt and decay of the markets with the stature of New York, the largest, richest city in America. "The Metropolitan city of New York has endured the stigma of being, without question, the most illy-supplied with public food markets of any civilized centre of population of even one-tenth its pretensions," is how one critic put it.9 The att.i.tude of shamed outrage was just about universal, but not quite. The many accusations hurled at the markets belied an immutable fact, one recognized by a select handful of supporters. The market system supplied New Yorkers with a staggering variety of meats, fish, fowl, vegetables, and fruits. The following description comes from The Great Metropolis The Great Metropolis, Junius Henri Browne's 1869 guide to New York. At the Washington Market, he tells us, Nothing is lacking to gratify the palate,-to delight the most jaded appet.i.te. The best beef, mutton, veal and lamb the country affords are displayed upon the stalls. Those roasts and steaks, those hind-quarters, those cutlets, those b.r.e.a.s.t.s with luscious sweetbreads, would make an Englishman hungry as he rose from the table. Those delicate bits, so suggestive of soups, would moisten the mouth of a Frenchman. Those piles of rich juicy meats would render an Irishman jubilant over the memory of his determination to emigrate to a land where potatoes were not the chief article of food. What an exhibition of sh.e.l.l-fish, too! Crabs, and lobsters, and oysters in pyramids, yet dripping with sea-water, and the memories of their ocean-bowers fresh about them. And vegetables of every kind, and fruits, foreign and domestic, from the rarest to the commonest, from the melon to the strawberry, from the pine apple to the plum. Fish from the river and mountain stream, from the sea and the lake. Fowls and game of all varieties, from barnyard and marsh, forest and prairie.10 Critics of the public market took for granted the feast available to them on a daily basis; they were equally blase about the tremendous human effort required to a.s.semble all those varied goods: beef and pork transported by rail from the Midwest; vegetables, b.u.t.ter, cheese, and milk from the farms of Connecticut, New Jersey, and Long Island; stone fruits and melons from the South, along with fish and seafood shipped from all points along the Eastern Seaboard.
A leading defender of the markets was Thomas De Voe, a New York butcher who leased a stall in the Jefferson Market at the intersection of Sixth Avenue and Greenwich Street. A portrait of De Voe shows him in typical butcher's costume: a top hat and long ap.r.o.n, a knife in one hand, poised before a rack of meat, ready to slice.
Born in 1811, De Voe worked as a butcher's apprentice as a young boy and remained with the profession until 1872, the year he was appointed superintendent of markets for the city of New York. But De Voe was an intellectual as well, intensely curious about the world of the market and how it evolved. In 1858, he presented a paper on the history of the markets to the New-York Historical Society, which he later expanded and published as The Market Book. The Market Book. His next project, His next project, The Market a.s.sistant The Market a.s.sistant, was an encyclopedic and exhaustively researched survey of "every article of human food sold in the public markets of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Brooklyn."11 The result of his efforts is a precise record of culinary consumption in urban America. It tells us, for example, that New Yorkers once dined on buffalo, bear, venison, moose (the snout was especially delectable), otter, swan, grouse, and dozens of other species, wild and domestic; that fish dealers offered fifteen types of ba.s.s, six types of flounder, and seventeen types of perch; and that shoppers at the produce stalls could choose between purslane, salsify, borage, burdock, beach plum, black currants, mulberries, nanny berries, black gumberries, and whortleberries. The result of his efforts is a precise record of culinary consumption in urban America. It tells us, for example, that New Yorkers once dined on buffalo, bear, venison, moose (the snout was especially delectable), otter, swan, grouse, and dozens of other species, wild and domestic; that fish dealers offered fifteen types of ba.s.s, six types of flounder, and seventeen types of perch; and that shoppers at the produce stalls could choose between purslane, salsify, borage, burdock, beach plum, black currants, mulberries, nanny berries, black gumberries, and whortleberries.
Portrait of Thomas De Voe, scholar and defender of the New York public markets.
Science, Industry & Business Library, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Business at the public markets followed a predictable daily rhythm. It began at four in the morning, when the wholesale customers-the restaurant owners, hotel caterers, and grocers-arrived at the sprawling Washington Market to buy their supplies. Next to arrive were the well-heeled shoppers: those who could afford the choicest cuts of meat and the freshest produce. They came in person, both men and women, or sent their cooks. By afternoon, the best goods had disappeared and prices began to fall. Now it was time for the bargain shoppers, women from middle-cla.s.s and poor families, to buy their provisions. But the keenest hunters of bargains were the boardinghouse cooks, the last customers of the day, who filled their baskets with leathery steaks and slightly rancid b.u.t.ter.
Descriptive accounts of the New York markets present scenes of great kinetic energy. Here is one especially vivid pa.s.sage from Scribner's Monthly: Scribner's Monthly: Choose a Sat.u.r.day morning for a promenade in Washington Market, and you shall see a sight that will speed the blood in your veins,-matchless enterprise, inexhaustible spirit and mult.i.tudinous varieties of character...You cannot see an idle trader. The poulterer fills in his spare moments in plucking his birds, and saluting the buyers; and while the butcher is cracking a joint for one purchaser he is loudly canva.s.sing another from his small stand, which is completely walled in with meats. All the while there arises a din of clashing sounds which never loses pitch. Yonder there is a long counter, and standing behind it in a row are about twenty men in blue blouses, opening oysters. Their movements are like clock-work. Before each is a basket of oysters; one is picked out, a knife flashes, the sh.e.l.l yawns, and the delicate morsel is committed to a tin pail in two or three seconds.12 Artists were also drawn to the markets. Their challenge was to capture the ceaseless activity of the market in a single, unmoving image. One particularly successful ill.u.s.tration depicts the arrival of fresh Georgia watermelons at the Fulton Market. In this scene, a good cross-section of New York has swarmed the melon stand: barefoot street children, tramps, working men of color, housewives in bonnets, a mustachioed gentleman in a silk top hat. As the image makes clear, the markets were democratic in character, serving the broadest range of New Yorkers from Fifth Avenue tyc.o.o.ns to downtown street urchins.
The watermelon stand at the Fulton Street market, 1875.
Picture Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.
The Ess.e.x Market on Grand Street, where Mrs. Glockner did her shopping, was a three-story brick building that ran the entire length of one city block. In design, it resembled a medieval fortress with ma.s.sive square towers at each corner. Like other market buildings, it served more than one purpose. Food sellers occupied the ground floor, while the upper floors were home to a courthouse, a police station, a jail, a dispensary, and, in later years, a makeshift grammar school.
The Ess.e.x Market housed twenty vegetable and poultry stalls, eight b.u.t.ter and cheese stalls, six fish stalls, twenty-four butcher stalls, two stalls for smoked meat, two for coffee and cake, and one for tripe. In all likelihood, this is where Mrs. Glockner bought her veal bones, pig's knuckles, cabbage, salsify (a root vegetable much loved by the Germans), plums, and apples. It's also where she shopped for fish.
Predictably enough, the biggest fish-eaters in pre-modern Germany lived in coastal areas along the Baltic and the North Sea. Here, fishing boats trawled for cod, salmon, whitefish, flounder, among other forms of marine life. Their most prolific catch, however, was the diminutive herring. In its fresh form, this small, silvery fish (cousin to the sardine), figured prominently in the local diet. Preserved herring, meanwhile, became an important trading commodity. Cured in brine and packed into barrels, it traveled inland and established itself in the German kitchen. In the nineteenth century, immigrants brought their taste for herring to America, where it was never too popular among native-born citizens. Still, every winter, schoonerloads of herring arrived at the wharves along the East River and were sold in the public markets, both fresh and salted. Germans, along with the Irish, British, and Scots, were the main customers. The herring found a more welcoming home in a new kind of American food shop that began to appear on the Lower East Side sometime in the 1860s. The Germans called them delicatessens.
The delicatessen shopper could choose among herring dressed in sour cream and mayonnaise, pickled herring, herring fried in b.u.t.ter, smoked herring, and rolled herring stuffed with pickles. There was some version of a herring salad, a fascinating composition of flavors, textures, and colors. The following is a typical example: HERRING S SALADA very popular German salad is made in this manner: Soak a dozen pickled Holland herring overnight, drain, remove the skin and bones, and chop fine. Add a pint of cooked potatoes, half a pint of cooked beets, half a pint of raw apples, and six hard-boiled eggs chopped in a similar manner, and a gill each of minced onions and capers. Use French dressing. Mix well together. Fill little dishes with the mixture, and trim the tops with parsley, slices of boiled eggs, beets, etc.13 The building at 97 Orchard Street stands atop a natural elevation that protects it from flooding, a problem that afflicted most other sections of the Lower East Side. Thanks to that subtle rise, the building's rooftop offered sweeping views of the surrounding neighborhood. Directly to the east lay a tight grid of squat row houses. Here and there, one of the newer tenements poked up awkwardly, a brick giant among dwarves. In the courtyards formed by the grid, the square within each city block, were additional structures, "rear tenements," as they were known, which provided New Yorkers with some of the worst housing in the city. Closer to the river, the rear tenements were replaced by factories (most were for furniture), and past them, the shipyards. Beyond lay the wharves, visible only as a thicket of ship's masts. Facing north, the grid opened slightly, the blocks were longer and the avenues wider. The buildings were newer and taller. Tompkins Square (Germans called it the Weisse Garten Weisse Garten-the "white garden") was among the few open s.p.a.ces in the city grid. Nearing the river, the landscape turned more industrial, the tenements replaced by lumberyards, slaughterhouses, and breweries. To the south, toward the narrow tip of Manhattan, lay the Five Points, a maze of skinny pa.s.sageways and tottering wooden houses. Just beyond it rose the domed cupola of City Hall. To the west of Orchard Street stretched an unbroken string of saloons, restaurants, theaters, and beer halls, some large enough to accommodate a crowd of three thousand. This was the Bowery, New York's main entertainment district. Beyond it, Broadway, the city's widest street, sliced the island neatly down the middle.
The view from 97 Orchard embraced roughly four city wards, a geographic designation dating back to 1686, when New York's British governor divided Lower Manhattan into six political districts, each one responsible for electing an alderman to sit on the Common Council, the city's main governing body. As the city expanded northward, new wards were created, so by 1860 it had twenty-two. From the roof of 97 Orchard, the view encompa.s.sed the tenth ward (home to the Bowery), the seventeenth ward surrounding Tompkins Square, and the eleventh and thirteenth wards covering the industrial blocks along the river. Those same four wards made up Kleindeutschland Kleindeutschland, "Little Germany," the focus of our present story and the center of German life in New York.
The residents of Kleindeutschland Kleindeutschland were largely urban people. They had emigrated from cities in Germany and knew how to manage in one. (Immigrants from the German countryside generally pa.s.sed through New York on their way to Missouri, Illinois, or Wisconsin, wide-open states where land was cheap and they could start farms.) New York Germans, by contrast, earned their living as merchants or trades people. Many were tailors, like Mr. Glockner, but they were also bakers, brewers, printers, and carpenters. Despite their shared roots, however, the residents of "Dutch-town," as it was sometimes called, were divided into small enclaves, a pattern that mirrored the cultural landscape of nineteenth-century Germany. were largely urban people. They had emigrated from cities in Germany and knew how to manage in one. (Immigrants from the German countryside generally pa.s.sed through New York on their way to Missouri, Illinois, or Wisconsin, wide-open states where land was cheap and they could start farms.) New York Germans, by contrast, earned their living as merchants or trades people. Many were tailors, like Mr. Glockner, but they were also bakers, brewers, printers, and carpenters. Despite their shared roots, however, the residents of "Dutch-town," as it was sometimes called, were divided into small enclaves, a pattern that mirrored the cultural landscape of nineteenth-century Germany.
Maps of central Europe in the mid-nineteenth century show Der Deutsche Bund Der Deutsche Bund, "the German League," a confederation of thirty-nine small and large states. The people who made up that sprawling political body, however, were bound together in much smaller groups. Nineteenth-century Germans identified themselves as Bavarians or Hessians or Saxons. Their loyalties were regional, cemented by cultural forces like religion and language. Depending largely on where he lived, a German could be Catholic or Jewish or Lutheran or Calvinist. Germans spoke a variety of local dialects that were often unintelligible to outsiders. And each region had developed its own food traditions that the immigrants carried with them to New York.
Very broadly speaking, the culinary breakdown looked something like this: Germans from southern states like Swabia, Baden, and Bavaria depended on dumplings and noodles, a cla.s.s of foods which the Germans called Mehlspeisen Mehlspeisen (roughly, "flour foods"), as their main source of calories. Northerners, meanwhile, relied more on potatoes, beans, and pulses like split peas and lentils. Where northerners tended to use pork fat as a cooking medium, southerners used b.u.t.ter. Where northerners consumed large amounts of salt.w.a.ter fish, southerners ate freshwater species like pike and carp. Though Germany was a nation of sausage-eaters, every region, and many cities, produced its own local version. So, Bavarians had (roughly, "flour foods"), as their main source of calories. Northerners, meanwhile, relied more on potatoes, beans, and pulses like split peas and lentils. Where northerners tended to use pork fat as a cooking medium, southerners used b.u.t.ter. Where northerners consumed large amounts of salt.w.a.ter fish, southerners ate freshwater species like pike and carp. Though Germany was a nation of sausage-eaters, every region, and many cities, produced its own local version. So, Bavarians had weisswurst weisswurst (white sausage), a specialty of Munich, while Swabians had (white sausage), a specialty of Munich, while Swabians had blutwurst blutwurst (blood sausage) and Saxons had (blood sausage) and Saxons had rotwurst rotwurst (red sausage). The residents of Frankfurt, a city in Hesse, consumed a local sausage called (red sausage). The residents of Frankfurt, a city in Hesse, consumed a local sausage called Frankfurter wurst Frankfurter wurst, the ancestor of the American hot dog. Turning to baked goods, Berlin was the city of jelly doughnuts, while Dresden produced stollen, and Nuremburg made gingerbread. And finally, the liquid portion of the meal. While beer was the national beverage, Germans also enjoyed cider, the regional favorite in Hesse, while Badeners favored wine and northerners preferred a local version of schnapps.
As they settled on the Lower East Side, Germans tended to form village-like cl.u.s.ters, a settlement pattern repeated again and again with successive immigrant groups. It was a precarious life, especially at first, so Germans from the same town or city banded together to form landsmanschaften landsmanschaften, clubs that offered a crude but important form of life insurance. To join, the immigrant paid an initiation fee of two or three dollars, then monthly fees of a quarter or less. In return, members were invited to picnics and dances, but more important, the pooled money went to help members in distress, people who were sick or who couldn't work for one reason or another. But the landsmanschaften landsmanschaften's true raison d'etre was death. When a member died, the club paid for the burial-it also supplied the burial plot-and ensured a good turnout at the funeral.
Beginning in the 1850s, the Lower East Side saw a steady flow of outside visitors, among them city officials and social reformers who came to investigate tenement living conditions. Journalists flocked to the tenements in search of human-interest stories, which they found in great supply. Each of these groups set down their observations, leaving us with a large body of descriptive writing. A number of themes snake through this literature. A few of the most persistent are overcrowding in the tenements, the absence of sunlight, and the absence of fresh air, the three evils which outsiders identified as the crux of "the tenement problem." (Visitors were much less interested in the low wages and high rents that made crowding necessary.) Closely related to evil number three were the smells of the tenement, a topic that captivated uptown visitors, who prowled the East Side wards with handkerchiefs held before their noses. The following account, taken from an 1865 article in the New York Times New York Times, describes an interview with an East Side woman who lived in Fisher's Alley, a particularly fragrant strip in the old fourth ward: We were greeted courteously by an old woman with a short garment and a pipe not much longer, and by her we were entertained with a vivid description of life in Fisher's alley. Fights, rows, scrambles for supremacy, sickness, death, much misery, but, on the whole, not so bad as it might be. Dirt in every shape, filth of every name, smells in every degree, from the faintest suggestion of fat-boiling, through the inter-mediate gradings of close, heated rooms, unswept floors, perspiratory and unwashed babies, unchanged beds, damp walls, and decayed matter, to the full-blown stench which arose from the liquid ooze from the privy-these combined failed to impress the speaker or, indeed, any of the slightly-clad women who joined us in the pa.s.sage, as anything to feel annoyed about, and we left her with the conviction that, however wretched and offensive she was, she had at least the consolation of not knowing it.14 The gulf between tenement dwellers and their uptown observers was so wide that the Times Times's reporter felt perfectly free to share his disgust for the courteous old woman and her pungent suroundings, confident that his readers would feel the same.
Reporters generally gravitated to the worst buildings in the poorest sections, but even in a well-kept tenement the air was thick with competing odors. Especially in winter, when doors and windows were closed to shut out the cold, the tenement became a kind of hothouse in which smells bloomed, instead of flowers. In the German wards, however, one especially potent smell overwhelmed the rest: the sulfury, penetrating tang of sauerkraut.
In the patchwork that made up Kleindeutschland Kleindeutschland, sauerkraut was everywhere. It cut across ethnic boundaries and economic ones, too, consumed by rich and poor alike. Between late October and early December, tenement housewives (and saloon keepers as well) turned their energies to sauerkraut-making, producing enough in those few weeks to last through most of the year. In a pre-Cuisinart world, the chopping of that much cabbage was a daunting project, so women enlisted the help of an itinerant tradesman known as a krauthobler krauthobler or "cabbage-shaver." With a tool designed specifically for the task-it worked like a French mandolin, the blades set into a wooden board-the or "cabbage-shaver." With a tool designed specifically for the task-it worked like a French mandolin, the blades set into a wooden board-the krauthobler krauthobler went door to door, literally shaving cabbages into thread-like strands. The cost was a penny a head. went door to door, literally shaving cabbages into thread-like strands. The cost was a penny a head.
Once the cabbage was shaved, the housewife took over. She scoured an empty liquor or vinegar barrel and lined it with whole cabbage leaves. Next came the shredded cabbage, which she salted and pounded, layer by layer, until the barrel was nearly full. Now she covered the cabbage with a cloth, then a piece of wood cut to the size of the opening, weighing it down with a stone. Left on its own, the salted cabbage began to weep, creating its own pickling brine. Once a week, the housewife tended to her barrel, rinsing the cloth to prevent contamination and skimming the brine.
Sauerkraut-making in the tenements was a harvest ritual, a celebration of the autumn bounty. Like all seasonal rites, it marked the pa.s.sage of time. Its power came through repet.i.tion. The scrubbing of the barrel, the arrival of the cabbage-shaver, the salting and pounding, were all steps in a familiar routine that the immigrant housewife carried with her from Germany. Seasonal food traditions, like sauerkraut-making, supplied an uprooted community with a sense of order. At Christmas, the Germans baked squares of lebkuchen lebkuchen, or honey cake; loaves of stollen, a sweetbread studded with raisins, and trays of pfeffernusse pfeffernusse, peppery spice cookies coated in sugar syrup. In spring, for just a few weeks, German saloons served up mugs of dark bock beer. Summer in Kleindeutschland Kleindeutschland arrived on Pentecost Sunday, which the Germans marked with an all-day picnic. Each of these food-based rites, carried over from Germany, was reenacted in a completely new context by the immigrants who settled in New York and other cities throughout the United States. Over the decades, as Germans a.s.similated into the wider culture, the need for the old rituals began to slip away, replaced in some cases by new American customs. But a.s.similation moved in the opposite direction as well. Many German food traditions were adopted by the wider culture, so baking stollen became a Christmas tradition in non-German families along with decorating the Christmas tree, another German contribution to American home life. arrived on Pentecost Sunday, which the Germans marked with an all-day picnic. Each of these food-based rites, carried over from Germany, was reenacted in a completely new context by the immigrants who settled in New York and other cities throughout the United States. Over the decades, as Germans a.s.similated into the wider culture, the need for the old rituals began to slip away, replaced in some cases by new American customs. But a.s.similation moved in the opposite direction as well. Many German food traditions were adopted by the wider culture, so baking stollen became a Christmas tradition in non-German families along with decorating the Christmas tree, another German contribution to American home life.
If fall was the season for sauerkraut-making, the payoff came in the first days of winter, when the cabbage was fully ripe and ready to be eaten. It was a moment the Germans looked forward to expectantly and enjoyed completely: "The look of pleasure on the bibulous German as he steps out of his favorite lager-beer saloon these cold days tells the pa.s.ser-by as plainly as do the words that hang outside the door that the day of sauerkraut lunch is here."15 This happy vignette is taken from a Philadelphia newspaper, another city with a large German community, but could just as easily describe the saloon-goers of Chicago, Milwaukee, or New York. This happy vignette is taken from a Philadelphia newspaper, another city with a large German community, but could just as easily describe the saloon-goers of Chicago, Milwaukee, or New York.
Alongside the krauthobler krauthobler, a figure who had vanished from New York by the close of the Civil War, the German appet.i.te for pickled cabbage also supported sauerkraut importers, local cabbage farmers, and eventually sauerkraut manufacturers, including Henry J. Heinz, who opened a sauerkraut factory on Long Island in the 1890s. At the height of the busy season, his factory processed a hundred tons of cabbage a day. On the streets, the most visible face of this trade was the "sauerkraut man," actually a roving peddler who sold cheap meals to hungry East Siders. Here he is in a 1902 article from the New York Evening Post New York Evening Post: The regular and popular visitor to the German inns and taverns of the East Side is the sauerkraut man. He brings his calling with him from the Old Country, and finds a more profitable field in New York than in Berlin or Hamburg. His equipment is quite curious. He wears a blue or white ap.r.o.n running from his neck nearly to the ankles, and from his shoulders is suspended a circular metal box which goes half way around his waist. It has three large compartments, two of which are surrounded by hot water. In one are well-cooked Frankfurter sausages, and in the other thoroughly boiled sauerkraut. In the third compartment is potato salad. He carries in his hand a basket in which are small plates and steel forks. One sausage and a generous spoonful of sauerkraut and potato salad cost 5 cents. All three articles are of good quality, well cooked and seasoned.16 The sauerkraut man worked at night, his shift starting at the close of the normal workday, when customers poured into the saloons for an hour or two of relaxation. Hauling his pewter box (it could hold up to fifty sausages, seven pounds of sauerkraut, and seven of potato salad), the peddler made his rounds stopping at bars, bowling alleys, and meeting halls, wherever hungry Germans gathered.
To round out our look into