Tag Archives: women

“To a Lady of any delicacy”: A visual exploration of the sway of English dining etiquette on early American identity

By Jennifer Wells

Gilbert Stuart, Abigail Adams (c. 1810-1815), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

In the summer of 1784, Abigail Adams sailed for London to join her husband as the wife of the first Ambassador of the United States to Britain. In her diary, she confessed, “With the best accommodations [the voyage] will be dreadfull, to a Lady of any delicacy.” She bemoaned the ship’s drab lodgings and noted that her silver porringer was the only cup or bowl in sight. She also complained in a letter that the ship’s Black cook had “no more knowledge of cookery than a savage; nor any kind of order in the distribution of his dishes, but hickeltapickelta [higgledy piggledy].” She criticized his supposed missteps on course order, grumbling, “on they come with a leg of pork all Brisly, a Quarter of an hour after a pudding, or perhaps a pair of roast fowls first of all, and then will follow one by one a peice of Beaf and when dinner is nearly compleated a plate of potatoes.”

Paul Revere, Porringer (c. 1760). Image Credit: The Met, New York. 

Adams’s frustrations reveal the fledgling nation’s distinctions in race and class and indicate the significance of mealtime rituals to elite and aspiring Americans. Her anecdote makes clear that dinner was not the place for experimental expositions or risk-taking jaunts but a choreographed performance, with every detail scrutinized. For Americans like Adams, sophistication materialized through the precise ordering of ingredients and synchronized flow of dishes. 

In the nascent shine of independence, print culture celebrating American distinctness flourished. Americans juxtaposed their supposed virtue with the corruption and follies of Europe, but their claims of superiority belied deep insecurities. Because much of Europe, particularly England, regarded the fledgling nation as a provincial backwater, white Americans searched for ways to establish themselves as cultural equals in the eyes of their former kinsmen. Their desire for validation manifested in part through the emulation of English standards of etiquette that appeared in early American cookbooks.

Front piece and Title Page to Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (London: Printed by L. Wangford, c. 1777). Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons. 
The Art of Cookery constantly lambasted so-called French extravagance while including French recipes in her Cookbook. Note, for example, Chapter III: “How expensive a French Cook’s Sauce is.” 

Colonists in British North America had long consumed English cookbooks, devouring rhetoric extolling the virtues of honest English fare when compared to French lavishness. Their popularity on both sides of the Atlantic tells of long-simmering obsessions with self-image and station within shifting social hierarchies. Manners, clothing, household furnishings, and table settings became markers of rank during the early modern period, and markets emerged for printed works to help readers traverse the fluctuating landscape. Cookbooks arose to aid housewives and housekeepers in their quest to project posh. 

Directions for a Grand Table, 1st Course and 2nd Course to Elizabeth Raffald, The Experienced English Housekeeper (Manchester: Printed by J. Harrop, 1769), Google Books. 

Social climbers throughout the British Empire believed that the correct execution of politeness distinguished the well-bred from the low-born, materializing in countless small ways, especially at the dinner table. Elizabeth Raffald’s The Experienced English Housekeeper (1769) enjoyed enormous success with its print life spanning nearly five decades, including an edition of  The Experienced English Housekeeper printed in Philadelphia in 1818. Raffald promised “Economy with Neatness and Elegance.” Her index provided “Directions for a Grand Table” and sketched out course arrangements to “make a pretty appearance” and “be entertaining to the Company.” She also noted what serving dishes to use and when, such as “Sweetmeats and Fruits dished up in China Dishes, or Fruit Baskets,” and added tips for garnishing. By heeding Raffald’s advice, the upwardly mobile strived to gain entry into privileged spheres.

Roberts’s index included extensive directions for meal service, see pages 42 to 64. Index to Robert Roberts, The House Servants Directory (1827), (Boston: Munroe and Frances, 1827), MSU Libraries. Image Credit: MSU Libraries, East Lansing. 
Henry Sargent, The Dinner Party (c. 1821), MFA Boston. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

After Independence, Americans sought approval by mastering preset codes of civility. While images rarely appeared in American cookbooks before the late-1830s, an emphasis remained on table settings as representations of prestige in and of society. Maria Rundell’s American Domestic Cookery (1823) (a revised version of an English cookbook for an American audience by the same author titled New System of Domestic Cookery (1807)) stated that an elegant table “gives respectability to her who presides.” Mary Randolph’s The Virginia House-wife (1824) affirmed, “a dinner justly calculated for the company, and consisting for the greater part of small articles, correctly prepared, and neatly served up” creates a “pleasing appearance” for all in attendance. Robert Roberts’s The House Servants Directory (1827), one of the earliest books written by a Black American in the United States, had explicit instructions on “Regulations for the dinner table,” “Dinner on the table,” “The first course removed,” “Second course removed,” and “Placing on the desert.” And Eliza Leslie’s The House Book (1844) dedicated nearly fifty pages to “The Dining-Room:—Table Furniture, Waiting on Table, Carving, &c.” Henry Sargent’s The Dinner Party (1821) illustrates that sweet spot Americans craved—quiet luxury through tasteful display.

Half a Calf’s Head to Frances Harriet Green, The Housekeeper’s Book (Philadelphia, William Marshall & Co., 1837). Image Credit: HathiTrust. 

 Frances Harriet Green’s The Housekeeper’s Book (1837) was one of the first American cookbooks to include multiple illustrations. Her images focused on presentation and performance, notably the skills required for carving and serving meats. With seats at either end of the table, hosts and hostesses were expected to perform the task in front of a crowd. When dishes like calf’s head were placed before them, all eyes met theirs in eager anticipation. The show could turn into a debacle if done without finesse. As Eliza Leslie’s The Cook’s Own Book, and Housekeeper’s Register (1840) remarked, “nothing can be more disagreeable to one of a sensitive disposition, than to behold a person, at the head of a well-furnished board, hacking the finest joints, and giving them the appearance of having been gnawed by dogs.” American cookbooks aimed to spare such humiliation by incorporating images with step-by-step instructions. 

Turkey for Roasting,” to Frances Harriet Green, The Housekeeper’s Book (Philadelphia, William Marshall & Co., 1837). Image Credit: HathiTrust.

Green also provided readers with the “most approved” method for presenting roasted turkey through a tale of caution. Green recounted that she was once invited to a dinner where the unappetizing bird was “brought to the table with the head on as well as the feet.” She tsked, “such trussing is exceedingly ugly and altogether unworthy of a good cook.” Her disapproving tone indicates the implications of not following her suggestions—an accusation of lousy cooking and inept hosting that verged on buffoonery.

Green’s text followed precedents set by English cookbooks as authoritative sources that set culinary standards and assuaged nervous readers. Her comments also reveal how following precise procedures led to assumptions about status. While adhering to polite culture opened opportunities for self-elevation for some, it simultaneously barred others who did not conform to its exacting standards. 

America’s newcomer status meant that many of its inhabitants wanted to prove their worth to themselves and the wider world. Cookbooks and other prescriptive English texts had set guidelines for taste long before the first shots rang out at Lexington and Concord. During the early national period, Americans continued to purchase English cookbooks and began to author ones of their own based on the English model. While Abigail Adams might have wanted to adopt a stars-and-stripes attitude toward the early republic’s distinctness from England, the proof was in the pudding—the mother country’s parameters of decorum largely dictated America’s cultural norms of the time.


Jennifer Wells is a Ph.D. candidate in History at Texas A&M University specializing in British colonial North America, the American Revolution, and the Early American Republic during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Her research explores the social ambiguities of the urban South following the Revolution, a transformative period when questions of national identity and belonging swirled. Her dissertation studies the petition of Christopher McPherson, a free man of color who attempted to repeal an ordinance prohibiting Black Americans from owning or riding as passengers in carriages in Richmond, Virginia. Using the petition as a lens into the early national period, she investigates veteran affairs, the influence and limits of polite culture on class and race, educational reforms, apocalyptic prophets, and the history of early American psychiatric institutions. You can read a recent article she wrote about Christopher McPherson here.

Reference List:

Berg, Maxine. Luxury and Pleasure: In Eighteenth-Century Britain. Oxford: University Press, 2005. 

Bickham, Troy. “Defining Good Food: Cookery Book Illustrations in Britain.” Journal for Eighteenth Century Studies, 31 (2008): 473-489. 

Bickham, Troy. Eating the Empire: Food and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain. London, Reaktion Books, Ltd., 2020. 

Breen, T.H. “Baubles of Britian’: The American and Consumer Revolutions of the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present, 119 (1988) 73-104. 

Lehmann, Gilly. The British Housewife: Cookery Books, Cooking and Society in Eighteenth Century Britain. Prospect Books: Totnes, 2003. 

Theophano, Janet. Eat My Words: Reading Women’s Lives through the Cookbooks They Wrote. New York: Palgrave, 2002. 

Yokota, Kariann. Unbecoming British: How Revolutionary America Became a Postcolonial Nation. Oxford: Oxford University, 2011.

 

Recipe Organization: It’s not as easy as A, B, C.

By Elaine Leong

In my last post, I bemoaned the lack of a flexible search engine and information management technologies in the ‘favourites’ recipe box of the Epicurious iPhone app.  While still declaring my adoration for the app, I would like to talk a little more about issues of categorization in alphabetical information organization.

Now some of you might wonder, is she seriously offering a post about information categorization and alphabetization? Well, yes I am! And I bet this will even spark debate around your dinner table tonight!

Why don’t I start by sharing with you some of the recipes in the ‘B’ section of my Epicurious app recipe box: Baked pork chops with a parmesan sage crust, Baltimore crab cakes, Barbecue turkey burgers, Bass with herbed rice, Beef stroganoff and Blueberry buttermilk pancakes.

Of course, this is a historical recipes blog and so why don’t we pair this with a look a few of the recipes under ‘B’ in Johanna St John’s alphabetically organized mid-seventeenth century recipe book: for a kanker in a woman’s Brest, Dr Mathias for the whites and the weaknes in the Back, for a Bone ach excellent,[1] for Bleeding at the nose, For a Blast or the poison of the Toad,[2] for any knob or hardnes in the Brest or milk quard,[3] For the Bitting of a mad dog never failing and Mr Boyles Balsame of Sulphire.[4]

As you can see, inadvertently, the electronic search engines of the Epicurious iPhone app used several different knowledge categories to create the list of my favourite recipes beginning with ‘B’.  Here we have cooking method (baked, barbecue), locality (Baltimore) and ingredient (bass, beef and blueberry).  Johanna St. John, too, uses several different categories: parts of the body (breast, back, bone), action (bleeding), type of medicament (balsame), and external actions on the body (blast, dog bites).

Alphabetization and categorization is not as simple as A, B, C. While it is obvious that the Epicurious app merely assumed that the first word of each recipe title represented the key word, Johanna St. John’s parameters for categorization are not so clearly laid out. In fact, it appears that she herself was unsure about particular groupings and, in a later reading of the books, re-categorized a number of recipes.  Take a look at this folio, from the ‘W’ section, below:

Wellcome Western MS 4338, fols. 210v-211r.

 Many of the recipes on this page are to be used during childbirth. Some ease the experience of the mother-to-be, while others address potential complications.  In my mind, these recipes were first collected in the ‘W’ section as St. John saw them as a cohesive body of knowledge dealing with Women’s health concerns. However, if you look closely, you can also see a number of letters written to the right of the recipe titles.  Thus, a ‘D’ is written next to ‘To hasten delivery’, a ‘R’ next to ‘For an immoderate flux of the Redds’ and a ‘G’ next to ‘A Glister to be given in labor’ and so on…

Initially, these letters baffled me but after a bit of pondering, I realized that they are records of St. John’s second attempt to categorize her book of medical knowledge. Evidently, the second time round, she decided that a remedy to haste Delivery should be filed under ‘D’ rather than ‘W’, and that the ‘Redds’ and ‘Glister’ are the keywords in the other two recipes. St. John’s first pass at categorization suggests that, for her at least, there is a defined body of knowledge dealing with women’s health issues. In her second pass, this knowledge was folded into the rest of her collection.

So, where recipes are concerned at least, our methods of categorization are revealing of how we imagine and view bodies of knowledge. They also, as we now know, play a crucial role on whether we can ever find the required recipe again.  After all, I don’t immediately look under ‘B’ for pork chops or crab cakes, do you?

[1] Wellcome Library, Western MS 4338, fol. 14r.  For emphasis, I have capitalized and put in bold what I think are the relevant ‘B’s in these recipe titles.

[2] Ibid., fol. 14v.

[3] Ibid., fol. 16r.

[4] Ibid., fols. 17r and 18r.