Michael Eckert: Michigan's flavorful towns share secret ingredient

Michael Eckert
Port Huron Times Herald

What came first, the chicken or the lederhosen?

If you're asking about Frankenmuth, the answer is chicken. But the arrival of two other things might be more important.

In the beginning, hard-working Germans from Franconia came to the new world looking for room to farm and to practice their particular strict sort of Lutheranism. One group found a fertile valley on the Cass River and created a settlement that would become Frankenmuth.

Then the highway came. Call this Significant Event No. 1. Before there was an Interstate-75, the hard-working town of Frankenmuth was halfway between Flint and Bay City. In the latter part of the 19th century, a dozen hotels in the settlement catered to travelers along the road connecting the two cities.

Travelers spread the word one of the hotels (we won't go into which one, since they all want to claim credit, even though it's beside the point) served an especially good chicken dinner. By about 1915, travelers would make a point of stopping in Frankenmuth for a chicken dinner at that particular restaurant.

It took a couple of decades for the other hoteliers to recognize people were coming to Frankenmuth to eat chicken. But by the 1940s, they all were serving travelers chicken dinners. That was Significant Event No. 2, the recognition of mutual self-interest. Thus the Flavor of Frankenmuth was born.

You've seen the corner where there is a McDonald's next to a Burger King next to an Arby's next to a Wendy's next to a Taco Bell? They learned it from Frankenmuth.

The look of Frankenmuth -- imitation Bavarian architecture, waiters in funny leather shorts -- didn't arrive until the 1960s. Frankenmuth didn't have its first Oktoberfest until 1990.

Question No. 2: Why is Mackinac Island fudge famous?

Three reasons, all of which have echoes in the Frankenmuth experience.

Chicken dinners weren't the only thing newly liberated travelers discovered in the early 1900s. Vacationers -- the first tourists -- discovered a pristine island in the strait between Michigan's two peninsulas.

And merchants on the island discovered them. At first, they could sell them anything. You've been there; you know what it's like.

Soon, though, the market was saturated. How many T-shirts (or the early 1900s equivalent) does a tourist need?

Henry Murdick, hoping something different would attract customers, decided to sell them candy. Brilliant idea, because he could sell them more every day. Bad idea, because people didn't buy candy 100 years ago; they made their own.

But Murdick's fudge was better than homemade. He probably didn't intend to make better fudge, and it's likely he didn't even know why his was better.

It turns out sugary candies, such as fudge or salt-water taffy, have different physical and chemical properties depending on the environments in which they're made. Fudge made in the perpetually humid weather of Mackinac Island is silkier, creamier, more chocolatey than confections made at home in Detroit.

So travelers started talking about the wondrous fudge on Mackinac Island.

When people got off the ferry, demanding to buy fudge, Murdick and his fellow merchants heard them. As in Frankenmuth, businesses decided if people were traveling all that way to buy fudge, then they'd sell them fudge.

And so the Flavor of Mackinac Island was born.

You've seen the corner where there is a McDonald's next to a Burger King next to an Arby's next to a Wendy's next to a Taco Bell? They've seen the fudge shops on Mackinac Island. Mutual self-interest.

One of Murdick's competitors was Harry Ryba. He had the next brilliant idea.

Ryba installed fans to blow that fudge-making fragrance out onto the sidewalk, where it is as easy to ignore as gravity. I've always thought Backyard Soaps in downtown Port Huron should do the same.

Question No. 3: Who invented the pasty?

That's a little like asking who discovered fire, because not long after, somebody was using the heat to bake meat pies.

Sometime later, Cornish miners (I don't want to argue, if you insist it was some other ethnic group, I'll concede the point.) brought them to the iron and copper mines of the Upper Peninsula.

The mining industry was huge in the middle and late 1800s, and attracted thousands of immigrants from all over the world.

Each successive wave of immigrants adopted and adapted both the mining techniques and the off-the-job customs of their predecessors. Pasties were a great way to do lunch, so eventually everyone did, but with local and ethnic variations.

For fear of starting an argument, I won't even mention rutabagas or potatoes.

There was self-interest, certainly. Everyone wanted a hot, convenient lunch.

But there wasn't mutual self-interest. Different bakers didn't get together to create the Pasty Capital of the U.P. No group instituted a dress code.

You've seen the corner where there is a McDonald's next to a Burger King next to an Arby's next to a Wendy's next to a Taco Bell? Pasty makers don't get it.

So nobody drives to the Upper Peninsula to get a pasty. (I can tell you some good spots, though.)

Above the bridge has a flavor. But it's not a flavor with a capital "F."

Michael Eckert is assistant managing editor at the Times Herald. When he brings back fudge from Mackinac Island, his sons don't save him any.