As American as Shoofly Pie: The Foodlore and Fakelore of Pennsylvania Dutch Cuisine

Chapter 1. It Began in Bethlehem

CHAPTER 1 It Began in Bethlehem It was not my idea to drive to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in blowing snow. On the other hand the date was close to Christmas, the Christkindlmarkt (Christmas fair) was in full swing, and the town was alive with flickering candles in nearly every window and glowing Moravian stars on every other porch. Since 1937 Bethlehem has been the self-declared Christmas City, and I had been invited by the Moravian Bookstore to appear for a book signing for P e n n s y l v a n i a Dutch Country Cooking. Since this is said to be the oldest bookstore in the country (it opened in 1742), the invita- tion was intriguing; and since the store was always thronged with people during the fair, it seemed the place to be while the toasty spirit of the holidays was in the air. That is where the seeds for As American as Shoofly Pie were first planted, because when I left Bethlehem later that evening, I left a changed person. I imagine it all came down to the buzz I had created in the store because everyone there was soon caught up in the discussion of food, specifically Pennsylvania Dutch food, and opinions pro and con abounded. A well-dressed elderly woman came up to my table and glanced at my new book and its cover with a certain degree of FIGuRe 1. Moravian star. 12 Chapter 1 studied disengagement. I encouraged her to leaf through the colorful photography with the observation that the text contained recipes from all over the region and from all the major cultural groups that make up the Pennsylvania Dutch community—I had worked hard to be even-handed in that regard. She turned to me with a dark look of obvious disapproval and muttered, “I am not Pennsylvania Dutch. I am a Moravian. We are Germans.” With that she walked away. This lightning bolt illuminated a problem I had not foreseen: that the Moravian part of my Pennsylvania Dutch research would be shaped by their deep-rooted ideas about the Moravian place in the Pennsylvania Dutch universe. Yet to be totally fair, deep-rooted ideas abound in all the key groups that are part of Pennsylvania Dutch culture, ideas that cut across the verdant landscape and subdivide it into small parts like crackled glass. The core issues go far beyond food; they deal with complex perceptions of identity that have tormented the Pennsylvania Dutch ever since they transplanted to these shores in the seventeenth century. Those issues can be reduced to one question: Who are the Pennsylvania Dutch? Or more to the point: How do they know they are Dutch? What are the signs and symbols? What are the mutual understandings that draw them together to create a common mindset separate from the rest of their fellow Americans? On the other hand, another valid question could be asked: Is there a common mindset? If not, what holds the culture together? Certainly if there is a mutual understanding, it is not expressed in Pennsylfaanisch because a good portion of the Pennsylvania Dutch community no longer speaks the dialect. The dividing line between who is Dutch and who is not is drawn in food even as food differentiates Dutch from Dutch: rich from poor, rural from urban, one religious sect from the other, even to the extent that there are localized cultural identities based entirely on neighborhood foodways : for instance, Goschenhoppen (Montgomery County), the Tulpehocken Valley in Lebanon County, the Mahantongo region in Schuylkill and Northumberland Counties, Weaverland and the Eck in Lancaster County, Buffalo Valley in Union County, Kishacoquil- It Began in Bethlehem 13 las Valley in Mifflin County, the Bald Eagle and Buffalo Run Valleys in Centre County, the Glades in Somerset County, Morrison’s Cove in Blair and Bedford Counties, and Snake Spring Valley in Bedford County. The list of these unique culinary pockets is long and continues to grow as new foodways are documented through fieldwork in Pennsylvania Dutch communities locally and far beyond the boundaries of Pennsylvania. There really is no one Pennsylvania Dutch culture; it is a composite of many parts. This subregionalization is perhaps the defining theme of Pennsylvania Dutch cookery in that many dishes vary from county to county and even within a limited area, such as the fish pie of the Mahantongo Valley (a pie, incidentally, that contains no fish...