Snail Salad, Pepper Biscuits, Rabe, Weiners & Baking Powder

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   "Snail salad" is not in John Mariani's ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN FOOD AND
DRINK.  Will it be in the next volume of DARE?
   "Rabe" is in Merriam-Webster, with a first date of only 1976.  "Rabe" is
not in the OED.  Well, "rabe" is _sort of_ in the OED.  It says that "rabe"
is "rabbi."  Correct this at once.  MY RABBI IS NOT MADE OF BROCCOLI!


   12-2-1992, PROVIDENCE JOURNAL, pg. F-02:
_FOODWISE R.I. cuisine from traditional to ethnic_
by Donna Lee
(...)  That led to talk about Rhode Island food.  My husband, a Rhode Island
native, asked which foods I had never tasted before I moved from
Massachusetts 10 years ago.
   It was a long list.
   First was spinach pie.  In my north-of-Boston town, it meant quiche made
with spinach--not Rhode Island's spinach-filled turnover.
   I had eaten marinated squid and octopus in Boston but never heard it
called snail salad.  We had sugared fried dough at fairs, but didn't call
them doughboys.  The list included coffee syrup, Del's frozen lemonade,
pepper biscuits, rice pie at Easter, deep-fried smelts, jonnycakes, French
pork pie, plain tomato pie instead of cheese-topped pizza.  I never tasted
any of these until I moved south of the Bay State border.
   We had clam fritters, but nothing like the mostly dough clam cakes of
Rhode Island.
   As a Bostonian, I never encountered a N.Y. System wiener.  I'm still not
converted; I'd rather have a Saugy (another Rhode Island discovery) than the
squishy-soft N.Y. System wiener.  A decade later, I' still trying to
understand why some spell it "wiener," some spell it "weiner" and some shops
spell it both ways on the same store front.
   Rabe--which I learned to cook by tasting the great version at Mike's
Kitchen at the VFW Post in Cranston--was new to me 10 years ago.
   Since then, Boston's culinary horizons have broaded, and rabe wouldn't be
so unusual.  But 10 years ago, innovative restaurants such as Biba,
Hamersley's Bistro, Jasper's, Olives, East Coast Grill and Michela's were
still in Boston's future; Yankee standards such as Parker House scrod and
Durgin Park Indian pudding were the norm, and not many Yankees ate rabe.


   10-18-1988, PROVIDENCE JOURNAL, pg. F-01:
_WHAT'S UP ON THE HILL:_
_We owe "our own" clam cakes and red chowder to the earliest Italian
immigrants_
by Donna Lee
   Many of Rhode Island's favorite foods can be traced to Italy.
   Even those doughy deep-fried balls known as clam cakes have an Italian
heritage.  "Neapolitans called them 'pizzette' and served them in fish
restaurants," says Nancy Verde Barr of Providence, who is completing a book
of souther Italian cooking to be published by Knopf.
   Rhode Island and Manhattan each have a red clam chowder.  Manhattan
chowder starts with vegetables and contains no milk.  One of Rhode Island's
versions combines milk, clams, potatoes and tomatoes.  Guess who put tomatoes
in the chowder?  "The Italians," says Barr, who has taught Italian food
history ar Brown University Learning Community.


   4-27-1994, PROVIDENCE JOURNAL, pg. G-02:
_Baking powder history_
   Baking powder is what makes muffins, banana bread and cakes rise.
   Rumford Baking Powder was launched 140 years ago right here in Rhode
Island, developed by Eben Horsford.  He was a chemistry professor at Harvard
University, a position endowed as the COunt Rumford chair.
   While another brand had been introduced around that time in Boston,
Rumford's endured.
   The East Providence Historical Society is marking the anniversary of
Rumford Baking Powder with displays throuhgout May. (...)
   When George F. WIlson and Horsford started Rumford Chemical Company in
1854 in what is now East Providence, the name of Horsford's benefactor was
used for the company.  As the business grew, the community in East Providence
became known as Rumford.  Rumford Baking Powder is now manufactured in Terre
Haute, Ind.


      10-15-1997, PROVIDENCE JOURNAL, pg. C-04:
   The Rumford Chemical Works was historically important because it was the
first company that made baking powder, according to Edna Anness, curator of
the East Providence Historical Society.
   Gearoge F. Wilson, a businessman, and Eben N. Horsford, a scientist,
established a plant here in 1856, and over the years it employed thousands of
people.   (...)  Rumford got its name from the plant and came to be known as
the "kitchen capital of the world."

(The first company to make "baking powder" or not?  It was made in 1854 or in
1856?  Did the PROVIDENCE JOURNAL and the East Providence Historical Society
forget _everything_ in the three years between articles?--ed.)