of Lisbon and Oporto sometimes breakfast better, but the bulk
of Portuguese subsist by manual labor, the men hauling nets
or tending the fields, the women gutting and preserving the fish
or working alongside their men on the farm. Rising before
dawn to get busy in the old-time Ben Franklin fashion, naturally
there is little dallying over breakfast. In the cities, too, the
women do most of the work, dressed in jaunty pancake hats
they even conduct the street cars. The fishwives of Lisbon are
as famous as the herring women of Scotland, and as strong
smelling. Waggish mermaids ashore, they get themselves up
gaudily in flat bonnets sometimes trimmed with sea-shells,
anemones, starfish, coral or seaweed, always picturesque, from
acid green shoulder shawl to colorful sea-wetted skirt. They
lug around great baskets of dripping whitebait or sardines, go
hawking them up and down the residential hills, setting up
raucous siren cries and hurling oaths for caresses at one another.
Or they load a cart with soggy baskets of the morning catch
from the scaly deep and propel them by donkey power to the
canning factories. Shrimps and cod are their special care, once
the men drag their nets ashore. Expertly the women gut and
preserve the shining, flipping mess, setting aside all smaller fry
of little commercial value to take home and feast upon, as do
the Maine fishermen who have thereby come to believe that
baby lobsters and even tender minnows are the tastiest of sea-
fruit.
Besides being blasphemous, these voluble Lusitanian fish-
wives are very religious. Saint Anthony is their patron, and
oddly enough he protects both fishermen and cooks alike. In
every seacoast town there is a shrine to this saint who does double
service, and there the temporarily widowed fish wives rush at
the first sign of an approaching storm to drop on their knees in
fish-scaly skirts and pray for the safe return of their mates out
of the angry sea.
PORTUGUESE 221
A wooden or plaster statue of Antonio, as the saint is called
at home, is set on every kitchen shelf to beam his benign bless-
ings down on the concoction of the day's fish chowder. He
counts the onions and carrots that go into the stew and stays the
cook's hand when just the right amount of pepper has been
added. So if the dish doesn't turn out exactly right it is Santo
Antonio's holy fault and the housewife hotly yanks the saint
down from his perch, turns him up like a bad boy and spanks
him with her slipper for the failure. If a dish burns or dis-
pleases the master she takes Antonio out to the well and hangs
him head down in it, in dire disgrace — for the fault is obviously
his and never hers.
Page 91
Presented as published in 1936. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
AI-modernized reading of the original text
of Lisbon and Oporto sometimes breakfast better, but the bulk of Portuguese subsist by manual labor, the men hauling nets or tending the fields, the women gutting and preserving the fish or working alongside their men on the farm. Rising before dawn to get busy in the old-time Ben Franklin fashion, naturally there is little dallying over breakfast. In the cities, too, the women do most of the work, dressed in jaunty pancake hats they even conduct the street cars. The fishwives of Lisbon are as famous as the herring women of Scotland, and as strong smelling. Waggish mermaids ashore, they get themselves up gaudily in flat bonnets sometimes trimmed with sea-shells, anemones, starfish, coral or seaweed, always picturesque, from acid green shoulder shawl to colorful sea-wetted skirt. They lug around great baskets of dripping whitebait or sardines, go hawking them up and down the residential hills, setting up raucous siren cries and hurling oaths for caresses at one another. Or they load a cart with soggy baskets of the morning catch from the scaly deep and propel them by donkey power to the canning factories. Shrimps and cod are their special care, once the men drag their nets ashore. Expertly the women gut and preserve the shining, flipping mess, setting aside all smaller fry of little commercial value to take home and feast upon, as do the Maine fishermen who have thereby come to believe that baby lobsters and even tender minnows are the tastiest of seafruit.
Besides being blasphemous, these voluble Lusitanian fishwives are very religious. Saint Anthony is their patron, and oddly enough he protects both fishermen and cooks alike. In every seacoast town there is a shrine to this saint who does double service, and there the temporarily widowed fish wives rush at the first sign of an approaching storm to drop on their knees in fish-scaly skirts and pray for the safe return of their mates out of the angry sea.
A wooden or plaster statue of Antonio, as the saint is called at home, is set on every kitchen shelf to beam his benign blessings down on the concoction of the day's fish chowder. He counts the onions and carrots that go into the stew and stays the cook's hand when just the right amount of pepper has been added. So if the dish doesn't turn out exactly right it is Santo Antonio's holy fault and the housewife hotly yanks the saint down from his perch, turns him up like a bad boy and spanks him with her slipper for the failure. If a dish burns or displeases the master she takes Antonio out to the well and hangs him head down in it, in dire disgrace — for the fault is obviously his and never hers.