The Founding Fathers’ Dinner Table Was a Lie: Food of The American Revolution

Nancy A. May: So Sylvia, if you picture a dinner party with George

Washington or Thomas Jefferson,

w Probably like massive silver platters, exotic roasts, crazy French stuff?

Oh, 100%.

You know, powdered wigs, fancy wine, that whole deal

Nancy A. May: Right, but here's the spoilers.

The richest men in America literally lived on the simplest cornmeal

pancake breakfast every single day.

Wait, really?

George Washington would truly love IHOP if he lived today.

You know, sticky, syrup, things and all

Nancy A. May: Yes, but he'd probably have to endure the wait.

every morning he ate hoe cakes, just cornmeal, water, swimming

in honey, butter, and well, I guess that was his syrup.

So on that note, folks, welcome to Family Tree Food and Stories, where

every meal has a story, and yes, in this case, every story has a feast.

I'm Nancy May, your host

And I'm Sylvia France, your co-host.

Before we dig into why the guy on the dollar bill was obsessed with

pancakes, do us a quick favor.

Go to Podcast.FamilyTreeFoodStories.com.

Hit like, subscribe, and share this with a friend.

We're here every single Thursday, and every other day for downloads.

Nancy A. May: You got it.

We're glad that you're at our table today, especially for this episode, which is

episode three of the Revolutionary series.

Because today we are looking at what the ultra wealthy actually ate, or the

gentry as they were called in that day.

And it turns out it looked a lot like what was on everybody else's plate

But first, we're gonna start a new tradition.

It's toast time, so grab your coffee, your mimosa, sourdough

toast, whatever you've got.

Now raise it up

Nancy A. May: Woo-hoo.

Let's go.

Today we're pouring what they called liquid fuel in the

entire revolution, the Madeira.

described as drinking autumn, deep, sweet, I'll call it sticky,

complex and savory flavors

So to Madeira, the ultimate 18th century tax dodge.

Nancy A. May: got it.

We'll get to that story later

Okay, let's get back to the pancakes.

If Washington was eating hoecakes, isn't that like poor people food?

Like, wasn't that exactly what the enslaved cooks in his kitchen were eating?

Nancy A. May: Yes, exactly.

They were, Sylvia.

The base food wasn't rich.

It was the stuff on top, the butter, the honey, and all the other goo,

even the refined white sugar.

That's what cost serious money back then

Ah, I get it now.

It's the toppings, not the actual meal.

So the colonial rich weren't eating a totally different food, they

were just paying to customize it

Nancy A. May: Bingo

So breakfast is basic, but dinner, dinner was pure theater.

If you were wealthy in the late seventeen hundreds, a dinner party

was basically an advertisement for how much you had in your bank account.

Nancy A. May: Oh, and it was wild, they ate a la Francais, French style.

I gotta do the tongue twirl for sure.

Meaning every single dish came out at the exact same time.

The entire table was completely covered.

It was like this crazy Thanksgiving buffet, but you were

sitting down the entire time.

Thankfully, the plates were small, and you were not expected to eat everything.

I can't imagine unbuttoning the belt back then.

Or the corset and we're talking 20 plus

dishes for a single course.

It was soup, fish, a mountain of roast, turkey, ham,

venison and even calves' heads

Nancy A. May: Yuck, my food's staring back at me.

No, thank you.

Nancy A. May: right?

No thank you for sure.

And they also called that table the groaning board so that meant that

the wooden table was supposed to groan under the weight of the food.

If your furniture wasn't complaining, you were not trying hard enough

I just simply love that, and I love using fancy terms to sound

fancy, like boeuf a la mode, which is literally pot roast, or fricassee,

which is chicken in cream sauce.

Nancy A. May: Yeah, a la Campbell's.

Is that how your mom made it?

Nancy A. May: Absolutely.

Don't forget my favorite piece of the elite drama, Potage de Tortue,

which is really turtle soup.

they'd ship live green turtles up from the Caribbean and if the host couldn't get

one, they'd just boil a calf's head with spices on it and call it mock turtle soup.

Although, I think we talked about, I know we talked about

Cooter soup, which still gets me.

She can't make fun of that anymore.

so it's actually was a luxury knockoff in 1776.

, . That is absolutely hilarious.

But the catch with that style of dining is that you could only reach

what was right in front of you.

It was just a visual weapon to intimidate

Nancy A. May: Yes, no reaching over, bad manners.

But speaking of visual weapons, sugar.

Believe it or not it didn't come in a bag.

It came as a rock hard cone the size of your forearm and it was wrapped

in blue paper and it's a sugar loaf and I'm gonna guess those forearms

back then were pretty big because they were lifting pounds of sugar

Right?

And you need those giant iron pliers called sugar nippers, I like that,

just to break off a chunk for your tea.

And because it was so expensive, the host kept the sugar locked up

in a chest with a literal padlock

Nancy A. May: All right, so we've got a safe in our back, closet, but

I can't imagine putting sugar in it,

especially padlocking it, right?

Well, you told me about those, um, circus peanuts that

you might need to put them for Bob

Nancy A. May: right.

but there's one more ultimate show-off item.

You know what that was, Sylvia?

I have no idea.

Nancy A. May: It was the pineapple.

You always hear about the old New England story about sea captains spiking

a pineapple on on their fence post just to show off that they were home

and they were welcoming back visitors,

Oh, I t- I've heard it hundreds of times.

It's everywhere.

It's the ultimate symbol of hospitality

Nancy A. May: Yes except there's a hook.

It is completely and absolutely fake

Wait, seriously?

Fake?

Nancy A. May: Yes.

Hard to believe this one caught me, 'cause I thought it was true for years.

Well, it's zero historical record.

one pineapple back then actually cost more than a servant's entire year's salary.

People didn't eat them.

The middle class families would rent a single pineapple for a night just to put

it on the table and look la-la-di-da rich.

then they would pass it on to the neighbors who rented it out for

the next night until it rotted

Renting fruit?

It sounds like a modern-day side hustle to me, like an Uber driver.

Nancy A. May: Right.

I'll try and rent a pineapple today.

but I've got more forklaw, as we call it.

The fence post story was actually invented in 1935 by a magazine ad

trying to sell Hawaiian pineapples.

It's just a great 20th century marketing scam

Since have both been in advertising, we know that firsthand.

But it makes sense British lords and American founders were chasing

the exact same French trends.

The British elites were collecting French porcelain while Jefferson

was importing every French thing he he could actually get his hands on

Nancy A. May: Meanwhile, do you remember Amelia Simmons from last week?

I do

Nancy A. May: while the rich guys were out ordering off the French menu,

Amelia, the young orphan girl, wrote the first American cookbook using

cornmeal, squash, and cranberries as some of the main ingredients.

The elite imported their style, but she actually defined the country's

food, and we just can't forget her

And we won't, which brings us right back to the Madeira wine.

It loved the heat of the cargo ships.

The weeks of rocking and swaying and sweating in the hold

actually made it taste better.

Sea captains would brag about how many times a barrel crossed the equator

Nancy A. May: And the real reason the founders drank it like

water, you know what that was?

No, I don't.

Do tell.

Nancy A. May: I will.

Of course.

It was a massive tax loophole because it came directly from Portugal and

bypassed the British trade taxes.

It sailed straight into Boston and completely tax-free.

I guess that was our first duty-free tax shop.

Anyway, it was basically giving King George the middle finger, liquid style

Spite and the tax loophole.

God bless America.

Nancy A. May: for sure.

Though we do have to talk about the dark side of that trade.

Those same Madeira shipping routes were the exact ones

trafficking enslaved people.

The wealth in those glasses were completely tied to that system

Nancy A. May: So that's the party side.

Well, maybe not.

But on a normal Thursday, even the wealthiest gentry ate simple, plain food.

Old George called his daily dinner plain but substantial.

It was just boiled pork, cabbage, and pickles

And Jefferson mostly ate vegetables from his garden.

He literally wrote that he viewed meat as a condiment.

The guy started a salad trend centuries long before it was a thing

Nancy A. May: Yeah.

He was our original foodie first Father Rabbit.

Well, you know what I mean.

but your region still totally dictated what was on your plate.

Down South, it was the most lavish with tons of local ham, low

country rice, and hours of drinking Madeira on the veranda, darling

And In the middle colonies like Philly and New York,

it was super cosmopolitan because they were massive trading ports.

you got the fresh turtle soup, ducks, and these crazy puddings

Nancy A. May: Hmm.

And in my area, New England, back home, we were restrained, the

rocky soil and heavy Puritan vibes.

Remember the Pilgrims?

Oh, yes

, Nancy A. May: Showing off our wealth up north didn't mean fancy French dishes.

It just meant serving massive quantities of high-quality cut meats.

think four-inch steaks.

in New England, we don't do flair.

We just give you lots more of it

We don't show off, we just have more.

Classic New England.

But let's talk about summer dessert.

This highlights the absolute massive gap in infrastructure back then

Nancy A. May: This one got me and I found it rather interesting because

in our research we found that ice houses, yep, ice houses in the

South and ice houses in 1776 even.

They built these deep underground pits lined with brick and straw.

Washington had one and Jefferson had one, and they cut the ice from the frozen

ponds in January and pack it underground, and it would keep all through August.

But, you know, nobody thinks about Virginia getting that cold.

It does

Doesn't get this cold in Florida

Nancy A. May: No, it doesn't.

So they were eating fresh ice cream in July while

the rest of the country didn't even have cool drinking water

Nancy A. May: Yep.

That's the case.

And Jefferson's famous personalized ice cream recipe?

The one written in his own handwriting that everyone talks about, it was actually

mastered and prepared by a brilliant chef that he had named James Hemings.

We're gonna talk about James after the break

But first, shout out to Abigail Adams.

While John was away debating independence, Abigail single-handedly

ran their entire farm in a war zone.

Years later, she goes to Paris, sees the French aristocracy dining tables,

and writes home about how absolutely scandaled she was by the ungodly waste.

Nancy A. May: Gotta love Abby.

I think we'll call her Abby for here but she is the ultimate reality Yankee chick

Yeah, totally.

Before we hit the break, one more quick story.

The American South became famous for its massive wealthy dining

style, but the colony of Georgia actually tried to ban it.

When it was founded in the 1730s, they outlawed slavery, banned hard liquor

like rum, and put a legal cap on land ownership so lazy, ultrarich ultra-rich

class elite class would never form

Nancy A. May: and did it work?

Nope.

Within 20 years the system collapsed under economic pressure.

The bans were lifted, and Georgia became one of the wealthiest

plantation economies in the world.

The one place that tried to outlaw the rich became the, ultimate symbol of it

Nancy A. May: Wow, that's quite a story.

But speaking of those tables, who was actually back in the heat of

those kitchens making all this stuff?

it definitely wasn't those guys with their names on the plaques on

the front doors of their houses.

But before we get there, we're gonna take a quick break, and we'll get back to Who

the real chefs were when we come back

and we're back.

So Nancy, you ask who was actually in those kitchens

Nancy A. May: I did.

But before we name them, we have to realize that these dining

tables weren't just to show off.

They were actually war rooms or war zones for the revolution,

kind of like we do today

Yes, I hear stories in Silicon Valley how

many deals were done on a napkin.

Nancy A. May: Right?

So Look at May 1781.

. Washington and the French General Rochambeau sat down at a dining table at

the Webb House in Connecticut for days fiercely arguing over the end of the war.

Washington wanted to attack New York.

Rochambeau said, "No, no, no. March on Virginia." Virginia won out.

The dinner argument became the Battle of Yorktown, which literally won the war

Nancy A. May: So the strategy that secured independence was hammered out over dinner.

Hmm, pretty interesting, right?

And even after the war, they were cutting deals over dessert.

The famous dinner table bargain of 1790, hammered out by Jefferson, Hamilton, and

Madison took place over a private dinner.

That's what settled the massive fight or debate over where to put

the capital of the United States

So the table decided everything, but here's the thing

history - books love to leave out.

The Founding Fathers didn't cook a single bite of this food.

Nancy A. May: Nope, but they ate it.

these kitchens were run by highly trained elite professional enslaved

cooks like James Hemings, Jefferson took Hemings to Paris specifically to have

him trained in French haute cuisine, kinda like haute couture, but in food.

He spent three years apprenticing under the best chefs in the world at the time

Which means things like baked mac and cheese, vanilla ice

cream, french fries or pommes frites.

the stuff history books credit to Jefferson's brilliance were actually

mastered and introduced by James Hemings.

Jefferson took the bows, Hemings did the work

Nancy A. May: Yes, he did.

And in Washington's kitchen, Well, that was run by a man named Hercules Posey.

I love that name.

Hercules was an absolute culinary legend in Philly and in Mount Vernon.

He was a perfectionist, highly celebrated, And he actually made his

own fortune on the side, gotta have a side hustle, by selling kitchen

gourmet leftovers to elite citizens.

and on Washington's 65th birthday, get this, Sylvia,

Wait

Nancy A. May: well, Hercules walked out of the estate, and

he decided to self-emancipate.

Good for him.

Nancy A. May: Talk about the ultimate quit, right?

. Sylvia France: On the president's birthday?

Wow, love the timing.

but he did it on his terms, which was highly unusual those days.

And it wasn't just men.

Think about Edith Fossett.

Everyone called her Edy.

Jefferson sent her to train under a French chef when she was only 15.

She ran the entire kitchen at Monticello for years along

another enslaved chef, Fanny Hern

Nancy A. May: there was a modern historian who said it best.

These women were operating at the absolute peak of their craft, even at 15.

Can you imagine?

No

Nancy A. May: Right?

today they'd be household names, like Julia Child's.

But back then, the elite society just dismissed them in letters as, "The girls."

So when people say Founding Fathers were foodies what they actually

mean is they legally owned brilliant professionals whom they refused to free

Nancy A. May: That's rather greedy, but look at Martha

Washington's recipe for great cakes.

This is really interesting.

it calls for 40 eggs, four pounds of butter, four pounds of

sugar, and five pounds of flour.

Talk about muscles,

I can't imagine the calories

Nancy A. May: Oh, I know.

it took a whole team of enslaved cooks a full day of brutal physical

labor just to beat the batter by hand and manage stoking the wood ovens

The recipe survived because Martha's granddaughter wrote it down, but

the actual cooks who made it year after year, their names weren't on the card.

the cake got remembered, the people were erased

Nancy A. May: That is so sad.

But speaking of Washington and food, you know, Sylvia, there's a little

thing I think we need to clear up, and that, well, maybe we, we should chomp

on is probably the better word for it.

That has to do with Washington's wooden teeth and the myth of that

Oh my goodness, yes.

Did you know he didn't have a single splinter of wood in his mouth?

Nancy A. May: No

His dentures were so painful.

They were a horrific contraption of hippopotamus ivory, gold wire,

and real human teeth purchased from impoverished people and enslaved workers

Nancy A. May: I can't imagine.

disat- Blah.

And it was a medical disaster on top of being disgusting.

He was in constant pain, and that is why his daily breakfast was

soft, mushy cornmeal hoe cakes.

He literally couldn't chew hard bread.

And when you understand this reality, the history makes perfect sense

Right?

And that ties directly to what we can actually do in

our home kitchens this week.

The whole history is about food outliving the names of the people who made it.

So how do we stop that from happening in our own families?

Nancy A. May: Well, it's a little easier than you might think, because we came up

with a quick guide on how to save your family recipes and preserve the cook.

Well, even American Revolution-style.

So rule one, write the name of the cook at the top

of the card before the ingredients

Nancy A. May: Yes, for sure.

then ask them who taught them that recipe.

Trace the lineage back as far as you can

recipes have ancestors.

Rule three, keep their original words.

If they wrote a handful of this or until it looks right, keep it.

Don't sanitize it into cups and grams until a footnote later

Nancy A. May: Everything takes place in the footnotes for sure, but take a

picture of the original handwritten card.

There's nothing nicer than seeing somebody's handwriting again,

even though that's a dying art.

But the grease stains and the vanilla splatters and yes, that handwriting,

that's the vital historical record

And rule five, actually cook with them.

The real recipe lives in the muscle memory of their hands, not the ink.

And Nancy, this hits close to home for me

Nancy A. May: So tell me about that, Sylvia

Yeah, my grandmother, Mrs. Knight, she did everything right.

She wrote down her southern syrup cake recipe and actually

named it after herself.

But she left out half the instructions because she knew

just how to do it by heart.

Sh- I know.

I miss my grandma.

She passed away when I was 11.

Years later, I tried to make it, and I was guessing some of the baking steps.

My mom still talks about how incredible that cake was, but I never stood

there and watched her hands mix it, the puzzle that is just gone.

Nancy A. May: That's so sad

Well, it's, happy because she still lives with me in my cookbook.

So she signed it, and there was still guesswork, which leads to

our final and most important rule

Nancy A. May: Yep.

last rule, rule number six, Say their name out loud

every time you cook that dish.

And that's how the cook stays seated at the table.

I say that with my mom's recipe.

In fact, I actually call one of her favorites Mom's Special Chicken

Aw.

Oh, you'll have to cook it for me sometime.

Nancy A. May: will.

Food is the ultimate equalizer because at the end of the

day, no matter how much money you have, you still have to sit down and eat.

the rich just had the locked sugar cone and the tax-free wine, but the

same exact cornmeal mush underneath

Nancy A. May: And the famous names on the documents get 100% of the credit.

Very sad.

We have to change that one here.

But the footnotes are where the real human stories live.

This week we want you to remember the people who did that heavy lifting for you.

So what do you say, Sylvia?

Glasses up everyone.

Santé to their health and to their memory

Nancy A. May: And of course, to the cooks.

ching, ching.

So here's your assignment this week.

Just one thing.

Pick one recipe in your family collection.

Write it down exactly who cooked it, where they learned it, and one specific

memory of them standing over the stove

Nancy A. May: And if you don't know who the recipe came from, call your

oldest living relative tonight, or maybe your sister, because

tomorrow, well, that's not promised

then come tell us about it in our Facebook group.

Tell us whose recipe still carries a proud name, and whose got lost along the way.

We're going to read our favorites live on the air next week

Nancy A. May: and if you liked hanging out with us today and hearing

these stories, Head on over to Podcast.FamilyTreeFoodStories.com.

Leave a comment, Hit like and share it with somebody that you love, It's the

number one way we get new listeners and help you find an extra seat at the

table for those that you care about

So next Thursday is our grand finale of the America 250 series.

Nancy A. May: Woo-hoo!

we're stopping the talk and stepping into a modern kitchen

to actually cook recipes from 1776.

We're going to attempt George Washington's favorite peanut soup, fry some authentic

hoecakes, and other authentic recipes

Nancy A. May: recipes from 1776, for sure.

And Sylvia, if your great-grandmother's syrup cake recipe is any kind of warning,

it's going to be quite a challenge for us

I'm sure it will be.

Okay, Happy cooking everyone

Nancy A. May: And see you next Thursday or whenever you download

this 'cause every meal has a story and every story is a feast.

Take care, be well, and happy birthday, America