Sotterley Oyster Pie

Last month I gave a talk at the Charles County Archaeological Society's meeting about James Swann and his oyster house. Afterwards, the discussion stayed focused on oysters and everyone's love and/or hate of the little creatures.

Recipes started to be discussed and Jane Keller starting telling us about an oyster pie recipe she had come across.

Here is the recipe from The Great American Seafood Cookbook and where it came from:

Sotterley Oyster Pie
"This is a traditional Maryland recipe, researched and recreated by William Taylor, a Maryland caterer and historian. Mr. Taylor relives the history of Maryland through its cuisine, catering lavish banquets usind traditional recipes, often in histoic homes such as Sotterley Mansion, for which this pie is named. Oyster pie is wonderful - it sounds unusual and it is...

Pie Pastry

2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
2/3 cup chillde unsalted butter
1/2 to 3/4 cup ice water

Bechamel Sauce

2 to 2 1/4 cups milk
1 bay leaf
4 tbsp unsalted butter
1/4 cup all purpose flour
Liquor reserved from oysters
salt and freshly ground white pepper
pinch of cayenne pepper
generous pinch of ground mace

Filling

2 dozen small oysters, drained
3 hard boiled large eggs, peeled and thinly sliced
1 can (14 1/2 oz) white or golden hominy
salt and freshly ground white pepper
Mace

Instructions:

Pastry: Combine flour and salt in large bowl and shave fine slices of butter onto the flour and toss with fork to mix. Sprinkle in 1/2 cup (125 ml) of the ice water while tossing with fork until pastry is moist enough to form into a ball. Add more water if necessary. Wrap in waxed paper and chill for at least 1 hour. Roll out two thirds of the pastry, cut to 12 inch circle and line bottom of 10 inch tart pan (type with removable bottom). Roll remaining pastry into 11 inch circle for top of pie and place on baking sheet. Chill crusts for 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 400 deg F. Cover bottom crust and top crust with foil and weigh down with baking weights or dried beans (keeps flat). Bake both crusts for 8 minutes then remove foil and weights and contine baking for 8-12 additional minutes uncovered, 'til golden brown, then cool.

Sauce: In small suacepan, scald 2 cups (475 ml) of milk with the bay leave over med heat. Let steep (off heat) for 5 minutes then discard bay leaf. Melt butter in heavy-bottomed pan over med heat being careful not to brown. Whisk in the flour and cook, whisking constantly, for 3 minutes. Pour in the warm milk and continue cooking, whisking constantly until thickened. Whisk in the oyster liquor and additional milk if necessary to make a thick but pourable sauce. Season with salt, white pepper, cayenne, and mace to taste. Remove sauce from heat and add oysters, stirring gently to mix in. Cover bottom crust (still in tart pan) with egg slices. Sprinkle hominy over the eggs and season with salt and pepper. Pour in the hot oyster sauce spreading evenly to edge of pastry. Dust with additional mace. Gently set the top crust in place and set the pie on a baking sheet. Bake at 400 degrees (200 C.) F. until pie is hot through, (12 to 15 minutes). Be careful not to brown the pastry or over-cook the oysters. Remove from oven and remove the sides of tart pan. Serve immediately.

Enjoy!

Peter

The real LeCroy

Scott is indeed correct! Last week's mystery point was a rhyolite LeCroy point from Elizabeth Hills in St. Mary's county, though I have to admit Scott seems suspiciously knowledgeable about the site...almost as if he worked on it... Anyway, Lecroy projectile points are typically associated with Early to Middle Archaic sites, and have been found along most of the Eastern coast and into the Midwest.



For this week's mystery artifact we are diving back into historic artifacts. The one pictured below was found this past fall when we were working in the area around the Swann House foundation. This one should not be too tough, so feel free to guess!




Kelley

No takers on bones? Bring on the points!

Alright, I will admit that identifying bones sounds like an impossible task at times, but surely a couple of you recognized last week's mystery bones as belonging to none other than a wild turkey! After all, these are the bits that you see sitting on the platter following most holiday meals! What other sort of creature could have such a long drumstick? Ah well, we hope that you will take notice of the bones as you gnaw on your next turkey leg, and perhaps recognize them out in the field. As a general rule bird bones are easier to identify because they are much lighter weight-wise, with many of the bones being hollow. Those hollow bones sure make it a lot easier for a bird to fly, though it also means that birds are much more fragile (though keep in mind that turkeys are a bit more robust than your average sparrow!)

This week I thought I would give you all a chance to work on your projectile point identification skills. I have provided all of you with some tools in previous blog posts, and hope you will put them to use one this week's mystery artifact.
While this point was found in St. Mary's county, not Port Tobacco, it should still provide you with an excellent chance to sharpen your skills! Also, do not worry if you have trouble pinning down one particular name for this point (some of the categories can be vague)--I welcome any efforts to describe the point's characteristics. I hope to hear from you!

Kelley

Progress on the trail

As Jim previously mentioned, we are in the process of creating at least three signs to be part of an interpretive trail winding through Port Tobacco and neighboring historical sites. A lot of progress has been made on the design of the signs since Jim last posted an image. We now have three completed signs that are ready to be made and placed in front of the courthouse. For an updated image of one of the introductory sign click on the image below (sorry for the small size, but hopefully this helps to give you an idea of the layout and topics we discuss).

As an additional part of this project Pete, Anne, and I have been working to pull together information on each of the important people, places, or objects mentioned or pictured on each sign. This information will be incorporated into a website that will accompany the interpretive trail. This website will not only make the information on the signs accessible for those unable to see them in person, but will also provide additional information on each subject mentioned on the signs. By clicking on a link embedded in a general write-up of the main text that appears on the sign, a person will be able to read more specific information about a topic. For instance, there will be additional pages for people like George Atzerodt and John Wilkes Booth, as well as places like the Smoot and St. Charles Hotels, that will be reached through the main text from the sign discussing the connection of Port Tobacco to the Lincoln assassination. Also, if there are any particularly helpful books or websites related to one of the topics they will be listed at the bottom of each page. As such, I have spent the day working on writing up some of these topics and gathering images to accompany the text. The real magic will happen when Jim starts to pull all of these documents together and incorporating them into a website...which will also make everything I just explained much easier to understand! We will keep you posted on our progress!

Kelley

High Adventure

Yes, I know...our blogs have been irregular lately. The GAC crew has been investigating a plantation site in a nearby county, testing new techniques...not just for investigating sites, but for getting our equipment to them. We have had to use back packs to haul in digging and surveying equipment over hill and dale, through a heavily forested tract.

These techniques should prove useful for our work in the Port Tobacco area. This coming year the PTAP and the Charles County Archaeological Society hope to expand research beyond the town. We'll have to pack equipment into some of the sites. Volunteer technicians and mules welcome.

Jim

Guess these bones!

Indeed Valerie and our other blogger were right about last week's mystery artifacts! We have identified these as gunflints, though the one pictured on the left is actually made from quartz, not quartzite.

The flint on the right is English flint (French gunflints tend to be a lighter more honey-brown color), while some earlier gunflints, known as gunspalls, were generally made from chert or obsidian.

Both edges of these gunflints have been worn from repeated striking. For a bit more information about gunflints, take a look at some of our previous blogs.


For this week's challenge I invite you to take a look at the bones pictured below and identify the species to which they belong. If you are up for it, feel free to identify the specific bones as well! I figured a hint on this one would be too easy, but do not expect it to be some sort of exotic creature--this is a local fellow.


Good luck!
Kelley

Grains of Sand

For archaeologists, soils brim with information. During our initial training, we learn how to glean some of that data and make sense of it. But lots of archaeologists lots of the time throw away useful information with each shovel full of soil that falls through the screen.

Grains of sand, for example, can be classified and the sediment of which they are a part can be interrogated. Where did the sediment come from? How was it modified? How did that sediment play a role in the human use--or avoidance--of a particular landform.

A very useful and remarkably inexpensive tool rarely seen on archaeological sites is the sand grain size and shape chart. This handy little tool folds up to the size of a wallet--and, unfortunately, as thin as many wallets-- and conveniently fits into the jacket pocket of a Munsell soil color book.

The chart illustrates sand grains of different sizes, allowing the field worker to describe the material as fine, medium, or coarse. Examine sediments under magnification of, say, X10 (ten diameters, or ten times the actual size), and compare the grain shapes to the Roundness chart. Large, angular grains probably haven't been transported very far, while small, spheroid grains may have been carried great distances. Large (coarse) grains probably were deposited in a high energy, high velocity environment (wind or water) while finer sediments settle out in lower energy environments.

As a case in point, there are many relict sand dunes in northern Anne Arundel County and on Maryland's Eastern Shore that formed several thousand years ago during a stretch of dry weather. The sand grains that dominate these deposits tend to be coarse and well rounded, a product of wind erosion in an increasingly arid environment. When those winds encountered any obstruction--an existing dune, a clump of trees--the obstruction sufficiently sapped energy from the wind to allow the heavier particles to precipitate, forming an elongate sandy rise that continued to accumulate additional material. These typically appear on aerial photographs and topographic maps as crescent-shaped rises aligned northeast to southwest. They were favored occupation sites for many Archaic period peoples, probably because they typically were associated with wetlands with rich resources.

Grain size and shape in the various deposits encountered at Port Tobacco also can reveal information about how they formed and, by extension, how the various landforms in and around Port Tobacco were created and modified over the millennia.

Jim