Regional culinary innovators

New England boiled dinner with cabbage, potato, white turnip, rutabaga, carrot, onion, and parsnip.

“Aunt Fanny’s headstone in the roadside graveyard is moss-stained …but her reputation as queen of the kitchen still lingers of the village of Franconia (N.H.), for she was one of those natural cooks who are ‘born with a mixing spoon in one hand and a rolling pin in the other.’ New England has produced many. They invented baked Indian pudding and apple pandowdy. They established the boiled dinner as a Thursday institution, and Boston baked beans and brown bread as the typical Saturday night supper.’’

— Ella Shannon Bowles and Dorothy S. Towle, in Secrets of New England Cooking (1947)

View of Franconia, N.H., from the northeast.

Ascended Dreamer photo