SOMETIMES IT IS best to tell the partial truth, and nothing but the partial truth. One of those occasions might be the first time you serve folks a bowl of burgoo.
"What is it?" first-timers will ask.
"It hails from Kentucky," the host will answer, adding, "It is like a stew. It is brown. Try some."
That is pretty much what happened recently when Lewis. C. Strudwick, a Baltimore attorney, served burgoo -- a free-form concoction that contains vegetables, spices and meats of questionable origins -- to a group of unsuspecting eaters during a luncheon meeting in downtown Baltimore.
Strudwick had given Curtis Eargle, executive chef at the Maryland Club, a recipe that produced 1,200 gallons of burgoo. The chef had scaled the proportions until it produced a mere 25 gallons.
Strudwick wanted to serve the dish, sometimes described as "hunter's stew," to his colleagues in the Wednesday Club, an organization formed 75 years ago composed of men from various occupations who meet twice a month for lunch.
Strudwick decided to sneak the burgoo on the group when it met at the Maryland Club. He vowed not to tell the lunchers what was in the dish, until after they had eaten it.
Strudwick invited me to the burgoo feed. There were several reasons, I think, that I was chosen for this honor.
First, he knew I had a strong stomach. Most states, it seems, have a native dish that scares the squeamish. In Kentucky, it is burgoo. In Maryland, it is terrapin.
Several years ago, I had eaten terrapin at Strudwick's home and emerged unscathed, if somewhat unsteady. When Strudwick invited me to the burgoo event, he seemed to be on the prowl for big eaters. Also, he had 25 gallons of burgoo on his hands. I got the impression he was inviting anyone who was willing to pick up a spoon and not ask many questions. I fit the bill.
On the appointed day, Strudwick met me at the club and led me through a warren of passageways to the kitchen. We conferred with the chef, who, following Strudwick's instructions, poured a miniature bottle of Knob Creek bourbon into the heaving pot of burgoo while reciting a incantation that went something like, "May all the bones begone!"
Strudwick then escorted me to a dining room. There, seated under gleaming chandeliers, I spotted local attorneys, real estate brokers, musicians, businessmen, physicians, a headmaster or two, and a winemaker.
The burgoo, a brown mixture dotted with pieces of corn and carrots, arrived at the tables in gleaming soup bowls. The eaters dug in.
After the first spoonfuls, a few questions were raised. "Is this last night's stew?" one fellow asked Strudwick. Strudwick smiled but said little until the spoons could be heard hitting the bottom of the soup bowls.
Then he rose and announced to the group that they had just eaten burgoo, a dish popular in Kentucky, where it is said to be made with anything that isn't squirming. Strudwick then read a partial list of ingredients that were in this burgoo: "Beef chuck, bear breast, lamb shank, wild boar shank, venison neck, muskrat, rabbit, pheasant, chuckers, ducks (mallards and buffleheads), chicken, country ham, antelope liver," he said.
The lunchers reacted to this recitation with a mixture of disbelief, laughter and relief. "I think there was a feather in mine," one fellow offered. Another fellow wrote down the list of ingredients, hoping that his wife would make the dish for him at home.
Still, another fellow hollered out, "Where's the squirrel?" a reference to the favorite ingredient in some versions of the dish. I liked this version, without squirrel. Its rich flavors and peppery notes reminded me of the burgoos I had eaten when I lived in Kentucky. I did encounter a few pieces of bone, which means, I guess, that the burgoo could have used a little more bourbon.
Like most of the eaters, I was happy to have eaten burgoo, and happier still that I had not known precisely what I was eating until it was too late.
Pub Date: 03/10/99