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Feature article
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Lore of tangle britches remains elusive
By Fred Sauceman
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| Kenna Ellis has preserved her family’s heirloom recipe for the fried dough dish called tangle britches. |
The name sounds like a washing machine accident. But in actuality, it’s an imaginative way of describing what happens when tentacles of fried dough wrap around each other.
The dish is called tangle britches, and it’s a culinary cousin to pretzels, a distant relative of doughnuts. I had never tried one. Hadn’t even heard of tangle britches until Kenna Ellis brought a bowlful to my class last fall at East Tennessee State University.
The first assignment in “The Foodways of Appalachia” is to share an heirloom recipe with the class and explain its provenance. Kenna, of Bluff City, says when she learned of the assignment, she knew immediately what to talk about.
Making tangle britches is a Christmas tradition in her family, and the first person Kenna saw making the salt-sprinkled snack was her maternal grandmother, Kate Stokes. Mrs. Stokes fried them a few weeks after Thanksgiving and packaged them for friends and neighbors as Christmas gifts.
“Our extended family as far away as Florida always looked forward to receiving the package in the mail,” Kenna told the class. “My grandmother has long since passed away, so I picked my mom’s brain for the details on this family favorite.
“What she came up with was a faded, wrinkled index card written in my grandma’s shaky hand. I was relieved to see that there were precise measurements and not just a dollop here or a heap there. My mom recollects her grandmother frying these during the holidays.”
A social studies teacher at Blountville’s Holston Middle School, Kenna has long been interested in the past, so she took to the Internet to unravel the lore of tangle britches, but found few leads.
“What I found was scant, but I was surprised to learn that the dish was compared to Navajo fry bread and some German treat that entailed ‘dangly bits of dough.’ On a Web site touting the Isle of Wight Fair, a woman entered tangle britches and won second place. A recipe was not given, however.”
Kenna and I are on a quest to learn more about tangle britches. How common is the name in Southern Appalachia? Are there variations on the name? How widespread is the dish in the region? Has it died out?
If you have any knowledge of tangle britches, I’d appreciate hearing about it. Please send an e-mail to sauceman@etsu.edu.
Oh, and one more thing. Kenna concluded her class presentation with a candid confession:
“I do not like tangle britches, although I have been forced on many occasions to try them ‘one more time.’ I guess that makes me the black sheep of a family full of tangle britches fanatics.”
-------------------- Recipe --------------------
Tangle Britches
3 cups all-purpose flour
½ cup Crisco shortening
2 teaspoons baking powder
3 eggs
½ cup milk
Approximately 4 cups oil
Salt to taste
Mix flour and shortening. Add baking powder, eggs and milk. Mix dough to a medium consistency. Roll out thinly. Cut dough into 3- or 4-inch squares, then cut small strips in the center of the square, making sure to leave the edges uncut. Kenna types four capital I letters to illustrate the pattern. Fill a deep fryer half full of oil and turn on high. Fry 4 or 5 squares at a time until they are golden brown in color. Sprinkle on salt as desired while the tangle britches are still hot. Makes approximately 2 dozen.
--------GoTriCities--------
Food writer Fred Sauceman, author of the book “The Place Setting: Timeless Tastes of the Mountain South — from Bright Hope to Frog Level,” is senior writer and executive assistant to the president for public affairs at East Tennessee State University. E-mail him at sauceman@etsu.edu.
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