Colonial Virginia's Cooking DynastyMore diverse in scope than their modern counterparts, the cookbooks of colonial and antebellum America contained recipes, medical cures, and housekeeping information that women of that time deemed necessary for family life. The keepers of these domestic manuals recorded recipes and cures for their own use and the use of friends, daughters, and extended families. Because they reflect a range of daily living practices, such manuscript cookbooks serve as important social history documents. In Colonial Virginia's Cooking Dynasty, Katharine E. Harbury brings to light two cookbooks from eighteenth-century Virginia. Notable for their early dates and historical significance, these manuals afford previously unavailable insights into lifestyles and foodways during the evolution of Chesapeake society. One cookbook is an anonymous work dating from 1700; the other is the 1739-1743 cookbook of Jane Bolling Randolph, a descendant of Pocahontas and John Rolfe. In addition to her textual analysis that establishes the relationship between these two early manuscripts, Harbury links them to the 1824 classic The Virginia House-wife by Mary Randolph. Harbury provides an introduction to and analysis of |
Contents
Tidewater Society in Colonial Virginia | 3 |
The English and Colonial Virginia Prescription | 10 |
MeatsOne | 73 |
Meats Two | 79 |
Condiments | 92 |
Common terms and phrases
Almonds Anchovies Anonymous 1700 bacon bake beat beaten beef boil bread Cakes clean Cloves cold Compleat Housewife Contemporary Recipe Cookery Book cooking Cream Currants dinner dish Eggs fire flour garnish Ginger half a pint half a pound handfull Henrico County herbs hour Ibid Jane Bolling Jane Randolph Jelly juice Kidder's Receipts 1720 Lemon let it boyle let it stand Lett Liquor Mace Mary Randolph meat milk mutton Nutmeg Onion ounce Oven oysters pepper Pickle pott pound of butter pound of Sugar Pudding puff paste putt quart quarter Quinces ragooe Randolph her Cookery roast roul Sack Samuel Pepys sauce savory spice season Secret Diary seeds shred Slic'd sliced Spoonfulls spoonfuls stew stir strain strong broth Sugar sweet Take a pound thick thicken Unidentified cookbook Veal vinegar Virginia Housewife white wine William Byrd women yolks