“I 'member choppin' cotton on Clabber branch when I wus a little boy before de surrender. When de surrender come I didn't like it. Daddy an' de udders didn't like it, 'cause after de surrender dey had to pay marster fer de meat an' things. Before dat dey didn't have nuthin' to do but work. Dere were eight slaves on de place in slavery time. Clabber branch run into Swift Creek. Lord have mercy, I have caught many a fish on dat branch. I also piled brush in de winter time. Birds went in de brush ter roost. Den we went bird blindin'. We had torches made o' lightwood splinters, and brushes in our han's, we hit de piles o' brush after we got 'round 'em. When de birds come out we would kill 'em. Dere were lots o' birds den. We killed' em at night in the sage fields[5] where broom grass was thick. Dem were de good times. No sich times now. We killed robins, doves, patridges and other kinds o' birds. Dey aint no such gangs o' birds now. We briled 'em over coals o' fire and fried 'em in fryin' pans, and sometimes we had a bird stew, wid all de birds we wanted. De stew wus de bes' o' all. Dere aint no sich stews now. We put flour in de stew. It was made into pastry first, and we called it slick. When we cooked chicken wid it we called it chicken slick.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
Dress, clean, and cut up a fowl. Put in a stewpan, cover with boiling water, and cook slowly until tender, adding one-half tablespoon salt and one-eighth teaspoon pepper when fowl is about half cooked. Thicken stock with one-third cup flour diluted with enough cold water to pour easily. Serve with Dumplings. If desired richer, butter may be added.
Sources: The passage is from United States. Work Projects Administration, Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from , free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Farmer, The Boston cooking-school cook book of 1896, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — teal cloth, sheaf stamp.