By Mark Kurlansky
ISBN-10: 0848833112
ISBN-13: 9780848833114
Sooner than manhattan urban was once ny, it may were known as the large Oyster. Now award-winning writer Mark Kurlansky tells the notable tale of recent York by way of following the trajectory of 1 of its so much attention-grabbing population the oyster, whose effect at the nice city is still unparalleled.
For centuries big apple was once well-known for its oysters, which till the early 1900s performed the sort of dominant a task within the urban s economic climate, gastronomy, and ecology that the considerable bivalves have been Gotham s such a lot celebrated export, a staple foodstuff for the rich, the bad, and travelers alike, and the first normal safeguard opposed to pollutants for town s congested waterways.
Filled with cultural, old, and culinary perception besides old recipes, maps, drawings, and pictures this dynamic narrative sweeps readers from the island looking floor of the Lenape Indians to the loss of life of the oyster beds and the increase of the USA s environmentalist flow, from the oyster cellars of the rough-and-tumble 5 issues slums to Manhattan's Gilded Age eating chambers.
Kurlansky brings characters vividly to lifestyles whereas recounting dramatic incidents that modified the process ny background. listed below are the tales at the back of Peter Stuyvesant s peg leg and Robert Fulton s Folly ; the oyster service provider and pioneering African American chief Thomas Downing; the beginning of the enterprise lunch at Delmonico s; early feminist Fanny Fern, one of many highest-paid newspaper writers within the urban; even Diamond Jim Brady, who we find was once no longer the connoisseur of renowned legend.
With the massive Oyster, Mark Kurlansky serves up heritage at its such a lot engrossing, enjoyable, and scrumptious.
Read or Download The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell PDF
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Extra resources for The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell
Sample text
Also puzzling is why these people ate so many oysters. Oysters are not an efficient food source. Between 90 and 95 percent of their weight comes from the inedible shell, so gathering bags of oysters from the beds and dragging them to the middens for shucking yielded fairly little food for the effort. The Lenape approach of gathering oysters in dugout canoes, which may have also been used by earlier peoples, somewhat reduces the labor. Probably to lessen the amount of hauling, no midden has been found more than 160 feet from water.
Red deer, a European species, are larger than the indigenous whitetail. Europe had larger deer and smaller oysters than New York. To calculate the food value of New York oysters relative to the native whitetail deer, one would have to know whether the oysters came from the top or bottom of the midden. It is significant that the deeper archaeologists dig in a midden, the larger the shells they find. The large bottom shells are older than the smaller top ones, which shows that, contrary to popular belief, even before Europeans arrived, people were overharvesting oysters.
One modern 1 8 • T h e B i g O y s te r researcher estimated that it would take 52,267 oysters to supply the same number of calories to be had by eating one red deer. An intriguing idea emerges. It is clear not only by logic but by the evidence of the kitchen remains that have been found that no Hudson people ever had a diet principally based on oysters. There is a tendency to think of early humans as struggling for survival and therefore eating what was nutritious, easily available, and efficiently exploited.
The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell by Mark Kurlansky
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