The Return of Tamale Pie (which never did go away)
Several years ago, I noticed that Ruth Evans Brown, a well-known cookbook writer in the 1950s, had something against tamale pie. She mentioned it, but she wouldn't give a recipe because she didn't think anyone should make it. It seemed a strange stance to take in a cookbook. Especially because many of her contemporary writers did include tamale pies. Two versions appeared in the California Cook Book: An Unusual Collection of Spanish Dishes and Typical California Foods for Luncheons and Dinners which May be Quickly and Easily Prepared, published in 1925, but this certainly wasn't the earliest appearance of the dish, which became popular in the early twentieth century and was included in an "Emergency Leaflet" issued in 1917 by the Iowa State Extension Agency to help cooks deal with food shortages during the First World War. It appeared in the Betty Crocker Picture Cook Book, one of the most popular cookbooks of the 1950s.
Even M.F.K. Fisher ate tamale pie--in Paris of all places! Sure, she forever afterwards associated the dish with a bout of severe melancholy she experienced soon after eating it, but she didn't blame the tamale pie.
Then just this week, I discovered another food writer with a strange relationship to tamale pie. In the New Yorker, famed/adored/revered American food writer Calvin Trillin wrote that in Greenville, MS, he ordered "something called tamale pie." Something? Something called tamale pie? Has the man never heard of such a thing? Does he think his readers have never heard of such a thing? The internet, of course, if full of recipes for and pictures of tamale pies, in all their variety and glories, existing in spite of what some people think. Tamale pie is a perfect American food in some ways, blending not cultures so much as ideas (and stereotypes) about cultures, existing in multiple versions--some with chips, some without, some with olives, some without, some with tamales, some without. It's very forgiving in the way that messy recipes can be. And yet it's somehow also invisible.
Several years ago, I noticed that Ruth Evans Brown, a well-known cookbook writer in the 1950s, had something against tamale pie. She mentioned it, but she wouldn't give a recipe because she didn't think anyone should make it. It seemed a strange stance to take in a cookbook. Especially because many of her contemporary writers did include tamale pies. Two versions appeared in the California Cook Book: An Unusual Collection of Spanish Dishes and Typical California Foods for Luncheons and Dinners which May be Quickly and Easily Prepared, published in 1925, but this certainly wasn't the earliest appearance of the dish, which became popular in the early twentieth century and was included in an "Emergency Leaflet" issued in 1917 by the Iowa State Extension Agency to help cooks deal with food shortages during the First World War. It appeared in the Betty Crocker Picture Cook Book, one of the most popular cookbooks of the 1950s.
Even M.F.K. Fisher ate tamale pie--in Paris of all places! Sure, she forever afterwards associated the dish with a bout of severe melancholy she experienced soon after eating it, but she didn't blame the tamale pie.
Then just this week, I discovered another food writer with a strange relationship to tamale pie. In the New Yorker, famed/adored/revered American food writer Calvin Trillin wrote that in Greenville, MS, he ordered "something called tamale pie." Something? Something called tamale pie? Has the man never heard of such a thing? Does he think his readers have never heard of such a thing? The internet, of course, if full of recipes for and pictures of tamale pies, in all their variety and glories, existing in spite of what some people think. Tamale pie is a perfect American food in some ways, blending not cultures so much as ideas (and stereotypes) about cultures, existing in multiple versions--some with chips, some without, some with olives, some without, some with tamales, some without. It's very forgiving in the way that messy recipes can be. And yet it's somehow also invisible.
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