Some Notes on Dining
with the Washingtons
A Culinary History

"The domain of soup-making is one which comes in for more than its fair share of attention from the 'creative' cook, a saucepan of innocent-looking soup being a natural magnet to the inventive, and to those who pride themselves on their gifts for inspired improvisations." – Elizabeth David, from French Provincial Cooking









In her wonderful adventure in all things French Provincial cooking, David goes on to the talk about the difference between the soup that has been followed closely by a long-standing recipe and one that has been tinkered with by the license of the inspired cook. For her own preference, anyway, she regretfully has to say that "it may be more fun for the cook, but is seldom so diverting for the people who have to eat his products, because those people who have a sure enough touch to invent successfully in the kitchen without years of experience behind them are very rare indeed." The cookbook as we know it then, and all those recipes that either make it in its table of contents, or the ones that are collected loosely by hand and tucked into its cover, show us the history of trying to introduce uniformity in both production and production of tried and true dishes.  By the late 18th century, there were only a small sampling cookbooks available to either the common cook of a householder or the kitchen supervisor of an estate. Hannah Glass's book The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy, is an exact example, written in almost abruptly common language and often quite vague in step by step instruction, but in its structure, sequence, and index, very much resembles the beginnings of today's standard cookbook assembly.  No doubt inspired by the idea of putting together recipes inside one cover, Martha Washington, along with family and friends, became regular exchangers of recipes, some of them finding their way "through a branch of the Jefferson family...contains twenty-five recipes attributed to Mrs. Washington or the kitchen at Mount Vernon." With Glass as pioneer in the new field of cookbook creation – and the likes of the Washingtons and Jeffersons as famous spreaders of its popularity – other books of its kind came along, and the women creators pushing more of its creative rights. The Experienced English House-keeper, by Elizabeth Raffald (1773-1781), was able to use her name and image "finally selling copyright to her publisher for 1400 lbs." And the Virginia Housewife, written by Mary Randolph (1762-1828) quickly became a southern household name and reprinted in many editions well into the 1860's. Although we can now see the cookbook culture as a long overdue step, at the time they would have been very important steps in the progression of those representing the craft, trade, and work of the cook and kitchen worker. As men might have been out in the field, or the case of the Revolutionary War, soldiering and gaining credit and news, a quite revolution was happening on the domestic front, where food had finally become codified, so to speak, and used as a sort of currency of value and eventually legacy.