Monday, December 8, 2025

Mark Twain's List of 60 American Dishes He Missed the Most While Traveling Abroad

 Below, the list in its entirety, from his 1880 memoir "A Tramp Abroad."

  • Radishes
  • Baked apples, with cream
  • Fried oysters
  • Stewed oysters
  • Frogs
  • American coffee, with real cream
  • American butter
  • Fried chicken, Southern style
  • Porter-house steak
  • Saratoga potatoes
  • Broiled chicken, American style
  • Hot biscuits, Southern style
  • Hot wheat bread, Southern style
  • Hot buckwheat cakes
  • American toast. Clear maple syrup
  • Virginia bacon, broiled
  • Blue points, on the half shell
  • Cherry-stone clams
  • San Francisco mussels, steamed
  • Oyster soup
  • Clam soup
  • Philadelphia Terapin soup
  • Oysters roasted in shell-Northern style
  • Soft-shell crabs
  • Connecticut shad
  • Baltimore perch.
  • Brook trout, from Sierra Nevadas
  • Lake trout, from Tahoe
  • Sheep-head and croakers, from New Orleans
  • Black bass from the Mississippi
  • American roast beef
  • Roast turkey, Thanksgiving style
  • Cranberry sauce
  • Celery
  • Roast wild turkey
  • Woodcock
  • Canvas-back-duck, from Baltimore
  • Prairie liens, from Illinois
  • Missouri partridges, broiled
  • ‘Possum
  • Coon
  • Boston bacon and beans
  • Bacon and greens, Southern style
  • Hominy
  • Boiled onions
  • Turnips
  • Pumpkin
  • Squash
  • Asparagus
  • Butter beans
  • Sweet potatoes
  • Lettuce
  • Succotash
  • String beans
  • Mashed potatoes
  • Catsup
  • Boiled potatoes, in their skins
  • New potatoes, minus the skins
  • Early rose potatoes, roasted in the ashes, Southern style, served hot
  • Sliced tomatoes, with sugar or vinegar
  • Stewed tomatoes
  • Green corn, cut from the ear and served with butter and pepper
  • Green corn, on the ear
  • Hot corn-pone, with chitlings, Southern style
  • Hot hoe-cake, Southern style
  • Hot egg-bread, Southern style
  • Hot light-bread, Southern style
  • Buttermilk
  • Iced sweet milk
  • Apple dumplings, with real cream
  • Apple pie
  • Apple fritters
  • Apple puffs, Southern style
  • Peach cobbler, Southern style
  • Peach pie
  • American mince pie
  • Pumpkin pie. Squash pie
  • All sorts of American pastry

2 comments:

  1. I approve of about 90% of his list. I've had a considerable number of them. My missing items usually have a city name in front; I did not know that Missouri Partridges were different from every day partridges. Missing: Pulled pork, Brunswick stew, and hushpuppies.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I love Mrs. Fearnow's Brunswick Stew but is it really Brunswick stew without rabbit?

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