Hearthside Cooking Nancy Carter Crump Early American Southern Cuisine Hearthside Cooking Updated for Today’s Hearth & Cookstove SECOND EDITION Foreword by Sandra Oliver L L I H L E P A H C s s e r P a n oli Car TheUniversity of N orth © 2008 Nancy Carter Crump All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Designed by Kimberly Bryant Set in MT Garamond by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. This volume is a revised edition of the book published in 1986 by EPM Publications. Line drawings are by Emily Whaley. Frontispiece: Weights and measures as tested and arranged by Miss Eliza Leslie from her 1857 New Cookery Book. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Crump, Nancy Carter. Hearthside cooking : early American Southern cuisine updated for today’s hearth and cookstove / Nancy Carter Crump ; foreword by Sandra Oliver. — 2nd ed. p. cm. Originally published: McLean, Va. : EPM Publications, c1986. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8078-3246-2 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Cookery, American—Southern style. 2. Cookery— Virginia—History. 3. Fireplace cookery. I. Title. TX715.2.S68C78 2008 641.5975—dc22 2008018152 cloth 12 11 10 09 08 5 4 3 2 1 University of North Carolina Press books may be purchased at a discount for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information, please visit www.uncpress.unc.edu or write to UNC Press, attention: Sales Department, 116 South Boundary Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27514-3808. This one is for my children: Nancy Erin, Jacqueline Lindsay, Michael Carter, and Anne Courtenay Mes raisons d’être This page intentionally left blank Contents Foreword ix Preface xi The Pleasures of Hearthside Cooking 1 Fires, Tools, and Techniques 7 Traditional Virginia Cuisine 19 Bills of Fare 41 Recipes Breads 55 Beverages 71 Soups 81 Entrées 105 Vegetables 161 Cakes and Little Cakes (Cookies) 195 Sweet Pies, Puddings, and Cheesecakes 219 Custards, Creams, Ices, and Fruit 239 Sauces 261 Salad Dressings 277 Catchups and Condiments 283 Notes 293 Bibliography 303 Acknowledgments 319 Sources for Supplies 323 Index of Recipes 329 General Index 333 This page intentionally left blank Foreword Nancy Carter Crump is a pioneer in American food history, or at least one of the earliest settlers in the field. She has been my mentor in Virginia food history, always generous and kind. This book is a revised edition of Hearthside Cooking, one of food history’s earliest handbooks for modern cooks using the hearth for cooking. When it first appeared in 1986, it was part of a mere trickle of books about food and history that would, in twenty years, turn into a mighty stream. Many of food history’s early practitioners had begun, like Nancy and myself, as museum-associated educators. Academia did not yet deign to regard food history as a topic worth serious research and writing about, but writing a cookbook was perfectly all right. Cooking, using period technology and instructions, has always been an essential part of truly understanding the history of cookery and the people who cooked. Reading recipes or looking at antique cooking equipment is informative, but these activities cannot provide the understanding that is gleaned from using the early implements themselves. We who grew up, as almost anyone under the age of sixty- five has done, accustomed to precise recipes specific in every detail, learn a great deal about the cookery of the past by actually getting down and doing it. Since people have begun to rediscover the joy of cooking on the fire, some modern homes are being built with cooking hearths. For those who don’t have a cooking fireplace, however, the recipes provide alternative directions for the modern kitchen. Hearthside Cooking provides the original recipe as written in the his- torical source, then Nancy’s interpretation of it, side by side, so we can readily see what her choices and adaptations are. When Nancy did not have early Virginia voices to instruct her about how to prepare some- thing, she then referred to one of the standard cookbooks of the time: Mary Randolph’s The Virginia House-wife, Philadelphian Eliza Leslie’s Directions for Cookery, or the Englishwoman Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, for instance. These cookbooks continued to be published well into the nineteenth century. ix The study of early Virginia kitchens includes many fascinating top- ics, such as the dynamic interaction between slave cooks and the mis-