When I found this ad (by chance, natch), I suspected that there’s more to an Ann Page Bean Bake than meets the eye. And I don’t mean the dish’s invisible ingredients (onion, oregano, and “salad oil”). I mean the phrase “brown October.” It comes from John Greenleaf Whittier’s 1866 poem “Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl”:
The mug of cider simmered slow,This poem of course was once beloved, wildly popular stuff. (And no doubt still is, here and there.) I assume the ad involves an allusion, meant to be recognized. You can keep brown October’s Bean Bake, but pass the cider and nuts, please.
The apples sputtered in a row,
And close at hand the basket stood
With nuts from brown October’s wood.
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comments: 3
I can't help admire an era in which a national supermarket chain advertising in a mainstream magazine would intentionally allude to a Whitter poem from the prior century, and reasonably presume that readers would get the hint.
I would imagine that many a reader would have memorized a chunk of the poem in grade school. Would anything have similar resonance today?
Well, I was made to memorize the Preamble to the Constitution, but I can't come up with a recipe that would tie it in...
And then there was William Cullen Bryant's -Thanatopsis- (and again, no recipe suggests itself, which is perhaps just as well.)
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