18th-Century Hearth Cooking Workshop

Over the weekend, our regiment's very own expert in eighteenth-century foodways led a workshop in hearth cooking at a lovely 1765 house owned by another couple from our group.  It was a prodigiously educational day and I learned enough to finally feel like I'll actually be comfortable not only preparing meals during events, but even intelligently conversing with visitors about what I'm doing!  Yes, folks, progress has been made with me and cooking!  ;-)

We began our day with a lesson in how to date 18th-century houses based on the location of their fireplace bakeovens, and in how to heat, test, and use a bakeoven to make a variety of different baked goods.  We then turned to how to build and maintain a fire, a skill relevant to both hearth and camp cooking which I have yet to master (one day...!).  Then Luisa, our instructor, split us into teams and assigned us each two period receipts that allowed us the opportunity to practice different cooking techniques.  There were six total groups, and between the thirteen of us, we prepared quite a feast.  In just over five hours, we ended up with three meat dishes (mostly prepared by Luisa, which included chicken, cornish hens, and a pork tenderloin), a host of vegetable sides (green beans in a creamy sauce, carrots with lemon and ginger, corn pudding, and a couple others I'm forgetting now...), an onion pie, spoon bread, and apples and bacon, in addition to a cranberry pudding and a cherry pie for dessert.  It looked like way too much food for our modest gathering, but very little was left over when it came time to clear the table afterwards!

D feeding the fire to help bring his pot to boil.

Because there were so many of us working and we were preparing so many dishes simultaneously, we took full advantage of being in a period house and used two of the three original fireplaces on the ground floor.  On the smaller hearth in the front room, we perched the hens and the pork, which both cooked in reflector ovens.  Luisa hung a chicken on a string from the crane and demonstrated the proper techniques to manage it as it cooked to ensure it was done evenly and would not become dry.

Cooking pork and two types of poultry in the front room's fire.

The larger hearth in the house's designated kitchen became the primary cooking area for the rest of our dishes.  From the large crane hung a collection of bulge pots and tin pots that kept coming on and off of the fire as their ingredients were perfected and their cooking progress monitored by their respective teams.

Dinner cooking...mmmm!

My cooking partner C (a newly-inaugurated member of our unit!) and I were assigned the task of preparing an onion pie and a dish of apples and bacon.  Despite one minor mishap involving too much eggs and cream, our pie turned out most beautifully, and I can now count the successful managing of a Dutch oven, properly called a bake kettle in the eighteenth century, amongst my period accomplishments.  Huzzah!

Me tending to the onions, preparing them for the pie.

Red-hot coals piled on top of the bake kettle, our onion pie nestled inside.

Our beauteous onion pie, perfectly baked in the Dutch oven.

Me removing the pie (ever so carefully!) to cool.

Our apples and bacon also turned out most heavenly indeed, loaded with cinnamon and maple syrup.  They were the perfect complement to the roasted pork and definitely one of my favorite products of the day's efforts.

The pork relocated to finish cooking in the kitchen hearth, with our
apples and bacon just starting to melt beside it.

 

Slicing the pork out of the reflector oven.

 

I unfortunately didn't manage to get a picture of our finished repast, all laid out on the dining room table, but it was quite a spread indeed and tasted all the better for knowing we'd all just spent five and a half hours hard at work making it!

 

A huge thank you to Luisa for sharing your immeasurable knowledge and skills with us, and to P and D for opening your lovely period home (and hearths!) for the purpose.  It was a day spent in true eighteenth-century style with good company and good food, the ideal way to help wish away those chilly New England winter winds.

A Revolutionary Lady's Adieu to Her Tea-Table

In sorting through old posts recently, we've discovered several drafted during the past few months that somehow never got posted! Pray forgive the slight delay and the relative time lapse of some of them, but we hope you'll enjoy them nonetheless for their tardiness!


While Ashley was in Williamsburg in November for the conservation conference, I permitted myself a couple of hours off from research one afternoon to indulge in some of CW's special program offerings. One of these I was particularly keen to see, as it's a seasonal program that we've never before been lucky enough to catch. "The Polite Academy" explores the socio-cultural lives and roles of women in the colonial and early-Revolutionary capitol of Virginia. Using the domestic space of the parlor as its setting, four ladies in first person move through all of the graces and accomplishments any woman of gentility would be expected to demonstrate as a respectable member of polite society. From the proper serving and consumption of tea, to the admirable elocutionary exercises of poetry-reading, to the demonstration of musical talents like singing and playing an instrument, to deportment and dance, the ladies educated their twenty-first-century guests on nuances of the true art of being a lady in the mid-to-late eighteenth century.

The discussions surrounding the ritualized tea ceremony were particularly fascinating. The ladies discussed the degree to which tea - and that includes the physical tea service and all of the accountrements necessary to serve a cup of tea, in addition to the actual tea leaves themselves - was very much a status symbol in colonial America. Serving tea was just as much about showing off one's ability to afford commodities like a tea pot, china cups, and a (locked) chest full of tea, as it was about demonstrating in a social setting one's carefully (and often expensively) acquired manners.

When addressing the prickly social situation that arose when politics began to infringe on the female world of polite parlor manners, one of the ladies in the group offered to share this very clever poem, which was published in numerous newspapers across several colonies immediately following the Boston Tea Party. Though a woman couldn't make a public political statement, a subtle and highly symbolic change to her very English tea ceremony could speak just as loudly and passionately for the cause.

A Lady's Adieu to Her Tea-Table

Farewell the Tea-board with your gaudy attire,
Ye cups and ye saucers that I did admire;
To my cream pot and tongs I now bid adieu;
That pleasure's all fled that I once found in you.
Farewell pretty chest that so lately did shine,
With hyson and congo and best double fine;
Many a sweet moment by you I have sat,
Hearing girls and old maids to tattle and chat;
And the spruce coxcomb laugh at nothing at all,
Only some silly work that might happen to fall.
No more shall my teapot so generous be
In filling the cups with this pernicious tea,
For I'll fill it with water and drink out the same,
Before I'll lose Liberty that dearest name,
Because I am taught (and believe it is fact)
That our ruin is aimed at in the late act,
Of imposing a duty on all foreign Teas,
Which detestable stuff we can quit when we please.
Liberty's the Goddess that I do adore,
And I'll maintain her right until my last hour,
Before she shall part I will die in the cause,
For I'll never be govern'd by tyranny's laws.


If you'd like to read more about this fantastic program, check out this Colonial Williamsburg podcast, which features a lengthy and enlightening interview with the creator of "The Polite Academy."