Deacon Porter's Hat & Freshman's Tears (1939)

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   Greetings from South Hadley, Massachusetts.  At least, I think that's where I am.  I woke up from the bus and it wasn't Hawaii and it wasn't Cuba.

SUNDAY THROAT--Preachers do their business on Sunday.  They talk a lot.  It's a throat necessary for the "big one"--or the problems as a result of it.  It probably relates to that.


THE YANKEE COOK BOOK:
AN ANTHOLOGY OF INCOMPARABLE RECIPES FROM THE SIX NEW ENGLAND STATES
by Imogene Wolcott
from the files of YANKEE magazine
Coward-McCann, Inc., NY
1939

Pg. 182:
   "FRESHMAN'S TEARS"
(A cream tapioca pudding popular in Western Massachusetts)
3 tablespoons pearl tapioca
1 cup water
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 eggs, separated
3 1/2 cups milk, scalded
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
(...)
   Tapioca pudding was appropriately named "Freshman's Tears" by the undergraduates at Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Mass.  This particularly delicious version is from Mrs. Silas Snow, Williamsburg, Mass.  In the home of Mrs. Clifton Johnson, Hockanum, Hadley, Mass., "grandma" made this pudding until she was nearly ninety.

Pg. 202:
   DEACON PORTER'S HAT
(Recipe from the Office of the Steward, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Mass.)
1 cup ground suet
1 cup molasses
1 cup raisins
1 cup currants
3 cups flour, sifted
1 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cloves
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1/2 cups milk
3/4 cup chopped nuts (optional)
   Combine suet, molasses, raisins, and currants.  Mix and sift dry ingredients.  Add the suet mixture alternately with milk, beating until smooth after each addition.  Turn into a greased 2-quart mold, cover tightly, and steam 3 hours.  Serve hot with hard sauce.  Send to the table whole.  Serves 10 to 12.

   This dessert is well known to students of Mount Holyoke College.  Deacon Porter, an early trustee of the college, wore a stovepipe hat, style 1837.  This pudding, when it came to the table whole, was given this epithet by some college wag.  A light-colored steamed pudding, made in a similar mold, was called Deacon Porter's Summer Hat.  Mount Holyoke College, when it was Mount Holyoke Seminary, used to be called "The Minister's Rib Factory" because it turned out so many wives for ministers and missionaries.

(The yearbooks here start at 1896, which is too late for "fudge"...Any "Deacon Porter's Hat" in the papers of James Knox Polk?--ed.)