Subject: Re: Hang Town Fry precursor?

From: [email-masked] (Mary Shafer)
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 1995 04:11:15 GMT

On 26 Jan 1995 19:19:19 GMT, [email-masked] (steve hix) said:

steve> Hang Town was a community in the Sierra Nevada foothills that
steve> was developed during the gold Rush period.

It's now called Placerville.  When I was a kid, in the mid-50s, you
could still the the tree they did the hanging on.  I don't remember
whether they did an inordinate amount of hanging there--maybe they
just had a convenient tree.  I think the tree is gone now.

Remember that oysters were very common in the 1800's.  My husband's
great-grandmother used to order barrels of oysters to be sent by train
to Iowa for Christmas, in the 1870s or so.  This was not regarded as
anything but routine.  There are a lot of recipes for oyster dressing
in the cookbooks of the period, too.

(I think that oysters appear in "The Little House on the Prairie"
books, too.")

--
Mary Shafer                                                   DoD #362 KotFR   
SR-71 Chief Engineer         NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, CA
[email-masked]                        Of course I don't speak for NASA
URL http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/People/Shafer/mary.html

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From: [email-masked] (Joan Smith)
Date: 28 Jan 1995 04:54:10 GMT

In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Jodie Kain) writes: 

specific information as to its origin. Especially where the name came 
>from. "Hang Town" certainly sounds like it could've come out of an 
>American mouth trying not so hard to say the Chinese words :-)
>Omission

Jodie:

****  The story I heard, and it may be later day rumor is as follows:

Hang Town is Placerville, site of some big gold finds.  It had such a 
busy hanging tree it picked up the nickname "Hang Town."

Those lucky few who made it big in the gold fields (& avoided the 
hanging tree) headed to San Francisco where the dollars were expected to 
change hands as quickly as possible.

Anyway, to indulge the newly rich a local delicacy of then very 
expensive ingredients became the Hang Town Fry:

	Eggs -- the farmers were now harvesting gold
	Champagne -- 
	Oysters

It's still on menus around here.

		Joan, San Francisco   Go '9ers
-- 
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[email-masked]  (Joan Smith)    "Let us not be guilty of the good
San Francisco, CA                                   things we did not do."

                                                                                           Voltaire
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From: [email-masked] (steve hix)
Date: 26 Jan 1995 19:19:19 GMT

In article [email-masked], [email-masked] (Jodie Kain) writes:
:I was reading a piece on turn of the century San Francisco & a popular 
:oyster dish was mentioned - Hang Town Fry. It was supposedly dished up by 
:Chinese cooks in Western resteraunts. It consists of oysters lightly 
:floured & sauteed then cooked with a lightly scrambled egg - or omelette 
:type egg. I've looked in my Chinese cookbooks where I've found "classic" 
:omelettes similar to this, but I was wondering if anyone had more 
:specific information as to its origin. Especially where the name came 
:from. "Hang Town" certainly sounds like it could've come out of an 
:American mouth trying not so hard to say the Chinese words :-)

Hang Town was a community in the Sierra Nevada foothills that was
developed during the gold Rush period.

Lots (relatively) of Chinese worked the gold fields, either mining, or
providing support services, such as laundries, food preparation and
so on, later on working on the transcontinental railroad construction.
(My wife's grandfathers were among that group.)

Anything interesting that developed in the gold fields would have
shortly popped up in San Francisco....