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To Kill a Mockingbird

by Harper Lee

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Calpurnia's Cooking in To Kill a Mockingbird

Summary:

In To Kill a Mockingbird, Calpurnia prepares various dishes that reflect Southern cooking traditions. Notably, she makes a "charlotte," a French-style dessert with lady fingers, cream, and fruit, popular in the 1930s for its no-bake preparation. Calpurnia also makes an open-faced sandwich with butter and sugar as a reward for Scout, crackling bread with pork skin, meat with vegetables, potato salad, and ham. After the trial, she serves chicken and rolls for breakfast.

Expert Answers

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What is the dish Charlotte that Calpurnia presents in Chapter 24 of To Kill a Mockingbird?

A charlotte is an old-fashioned French-style dessert. Lady finger cookies, sweetened creams, custard, and fruit (often raspberries) are combined in a cake pan and then chilled until firm enough to unmold. You can picture something with the consistency similar to tiramisu but with a flavor of fruit and cream rather than coffee and chocolate. It could be considered a type of "icebox," or no-bake, cake. Icebox cakes of all varieties were very popular in the 1930s, when To Kill a Mockingbird takes place, because they required no baking and made fun use of the new convenience of refrigeration in the home. Charlottes are sometimes individually portioned in small molds and sometimes made in a big cake pan. They take a little more effort and look a little more elegant than other no-bake cakes. Therefore, a housewife in the 1930s would more likely make them on special occasions or when she wanted to impress her guests.

I've included a few recipe links below.

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In To Kill a Mockingbird, what dishes does Calpurnia cook?

Scout mentions that she enjoys whenever Calpurnia makes her an open-faced sandwich with butter and sugar on it as a reward for reproducing her penmanship satisfactorily. Scout also enjoys Calpurnia's crackling bread, which is a Southern dish consisting of pork cracklings (cooked pork skin and fat) that are baked into a type of cornbread. In chapter 3, Jem invites Walter Cunningham Jr. over for dinner and Calpurnia makes meat and vegetables. Although Scout does not elaborate on the specific type of meat, she is disgusted that Walter Cunningham Jr. drowns his meal in syrup, which prompts a spanking from Calpurnia. Following the Tom Robinson trial, the black community expresses their appreciation of Atticus's defense by leaving a massive amount of food on his back porch. On the morning after the trial, Calpurnia makes chicken with rolls for breakfast and proceeds to show Atticus the food that the black community gave him.

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In To Kill a Mockingbird, what dishes does Calpurnia cook?

What an interesting question!  And, a tough one, because there aren't very many mentions, and when they are mentioned, it is very brief.  I found a couple.  The first is in chapter 2 when Scout is saying that Calpurnia is to blame for her being able to read and write.  She would sit Scout down and force her to write something well, and if she did, Scout was awarded with "an open-faced sandwich of bread and butter and sugar."  There is also, later, a mention of crackle-bread that Calpurnia makes for Scout, in a moment of kindness.  During the trial they go home for supper, and in chapter 21 it mentions Cal serving "potato salad and ham."  She was the one that did most of the cooking in the household, so there are a lot of mentions of them eating, or her getting supper or lunch ready, and those dishes mentioned above are a few of the specific ones named.  I hope that helps!

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