table talk / By Joseph Byrd

Dinner with George and Martha

A History of American Cuisine, Part IV

(Feb. 28, 2008)  Recent quarter-page displays in local newspapers have advertised The Martha Washington Cookbook, by mail, $24. The headline says “Old Cookbook Reveals Amazing Detail’s of Washington’s Dining Habits.”

There is such a relic, but it is not a cookbook. Several annotated editions have been published since the original manuscript was given to the Pennsylvania Historical Society in the 1940s, most implying the book is a compendium of recipes by Martha Washington herself, just as The Martha of our own time has set down commandments for cookery and entertaining.

George luvs Martha.

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In fact, however, it was already an antique when the young Martha Custis was given it as a wedding present in 1749. It was not a book but an heirloom, a privately bound set of hand-written recipes and domestic formulas from the 1600s. It is doubtful that Martha Washington ever used it, as it was out of date by a half-century when she received it. And, of course, it contains nothing of George Washington’s dining habits.

The Washingtons, like most of the Virginia plutocracy, entertained freely. Roads were poor and towns sparse in the southern colonies, so visitors to the plantations were occasion enough for celebration. It is from this that we get the famous “Southern hospitality” — the often-lavish display of food and drink to welcome a guest, expected or not.

There exist descriptions of life at Mount Vernon, before and after Washington’s presidency:

At three, dinner was on the table, and we were shown by the General into another room, where everything was set off with a peculiar taste and at the same time neat and plain. The General sent the bottle about pretty freely after dinner… After Tea General Washington retired to his study and left us with the rest of the Company… We had a very elegant supper about nine o’clock. The General with a few glasses of Champagne got quite merry…

— from the diary of John Hunter, London merchant

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