Butcher fears end to legacy
Does anyone have the chops to run a Dutch market?
His bacon soaks for three weeks in salt, sugar and secret spices. Each tender strip is then smoked for three days before ever touching the customer’s tongue.
Marvin Frederick, 81, has spent a lifetime in the butcher shop with countless Dutch recipes stored away in the pantry of his mind.
Yet as his health wanes, the proprietor of Frederick’s Family Meats in Quakertown fears that legacy might be lost forever, with no one to carry on business behind the deli counter.
“This is hard work, long hours,” Frederick said. “You’ve got to be someone who isn’t afraid to work.”
You also need $850,000, according to the property listing.
The commercial real estate advert for Frederick’s Family Meats is like none other posted on the websites for Berkshire Hathaway and Century21. A “most famous butch shop” is on sale, it reads. Interested parties must sign nondisclosure agreements. “The sale includes all equipment, recipes and the customer list.”
The online ad doesn’t name the business. A real estate agent served up the secret, when contacted.
For now, Frederick’s advertisement promises one month of butcher training, though he expects to spend much more time in the kitchen with any new owners.
The business, itself, is booming. Located inside the Quakertown Farmers Market in Richland, Frederick’s Family Meats attracts carnivores willing to commute and sometimes wait as long as 45 minutes for custom deals. The “Plan A,” priced at $66, includes a total 14 pounds of beef roast, rope sausage, and chicken legs. The “Plan B” includes a collective 18 pounds of chuck roast, ground chuck, pork chops, rope sausage, chicken legs and steak for $92.
At noon on a recent Saturday, Colleen Cowdrick was in line for 20 minutes and far from losing patience. She stood among two dozen customers with an order ticket.
Cowdrick traveled 40 miles from her Bensalem home for quality beef at a decent price, she said. “If I come home without meat, my husband will not be happy. It’s a better quality at a very good price.”
Many things at Frederick’s you probably won’t find in a supermarket. Silver floss sauerkraut. Hot ring bologna. Bacon, mac and cheese bratwurst sausage. St. Louis style spare ribs and smoked pigs’ ears. The recent dips of the week were cheddar horseradish, raspberry walnut, and another spread designed to taste like pepperoni pizza.
Frederick pointed to a crowded display case filled with sausages of all kinds. The supermarket hot dog is all processed and mostly water, he insisted. “Our hot dog is all meat beef and pork.”
By request, Frederick also takes deer from area hunters and transforms that venison into bologna, hot dogs, jerky, kielbasa, and snack sticks. “It’ll taste just like bologna when I’m done with it,” he said, declining to give away secrets of his trade.
After a generation in the business, he is both butcher and guidebook.
“People call up, saying ‘I just bought this prime cut of meat and I don’t know how to make it,’ ” he recounted with a smile. “People call up on Christmas and Easter not knowing how to cook.”
His voice is deep, guttural and smoky. He speaks as a man in a hurry with so many deli orders to fill. But short breaths, regular coughs and a stiff leg give testament to his age.
America was home to many more butchers in 1960, when Frederick first started work in a now-shuttered Quakertown grocery store. At that time, the nation had an estimated 467,987 butchers, according to a 1960 U.S. Census. That number fell to 195,273 butchers for the 2020 census count. Frederick started his own family meat market in 1972.
Dutch butchery, of course, heralds back to a much earlier time.
Meat and cheeses were, at first, flavored with plants available in the Netherlands. “Gruit” spices included the minty horehound plant, mugwort flowers, yarrow daisies, and such items were also used to flavor beer at that time.
Later, the Dutch would be among the first with access to exotic spices delivered to Europe via a vast trading empire. The Dutch East Indian
Trading Company brought ginger, cinnamon, saffron and other spices to the ports of Amsterdam and this allowed Dutch chefs to make for even more creative edible delights.
Such an explosion of flavor led to Leyden, a rare Dutch hard cheese with cumin and carraway seeds. Another dish, zoervleis (pronounced “sorf-lace”) was a Dutch stew of bay leaves, cloves, peppercorns, apple syrup, gingerbread, and horsemeat. Today, the Dutch prepare zoervleis without the horse.
Frederick uses only USDA-certified Grade A beef and pork in his shop.
After six decades behind the counter, Frederick said he felt compelled to move onto retirement. “We just marked our 50th anniversary and I couldn’t imagine myself doing this for another 50 years,” he said.
Frederick has two sons. Each is also approaching retirement.
Whoever takes over his butcher shop will also find themselves in an uncommon environment.
Frederick’s Family Meats is but one stall in the sprawling 170,000-square-foot Quakertown Farmers Market, which locals call the “Q-Mart.” The market dates to 1932 and briefly operated as a discount department store.
Today, vendors sell everything from homemade artisan soaps to sticky buns, jewelry, pet food, and used cassette tapes. One store proffers only pickles.