Some weeks back I was poking around in an old junk shop and

ran across an old cook book.

It covered the time period of the Washington to Johnson

years.

It has been interesting to read and I want to share some of the things with you here at the Garden Party.

Each day i'd like to post a Tid Bit from the Past and hope that

I don't bore you to tears.

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George and Martha were very close and when the General was

away from home she found life so dull that she joined him

at his winter encampments with the Continental Army.

Martha would later state that she had heard the opening and closing guns of every campaign.

Washington's expense account is an impressive record of these journey's to and from these camps where accomodations were crude and makeshift.

Table expenses recorded during this time in Washington's account book were $1,000 dollars a month.

Washington wrote in a letter from West Point in August, 1779

that his cook had had the surprising sagacity to discover that apples will make pies.

One must remember that back in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century the art of cookery was more than the mastering of an inexact or vague recipe with such directions

as "stir in some milk and put it to the fire until it is enough."

It also meant a painstaking management of the fire, regulating the temperature by turning the dutch oven so your cake didn't slope on one side and be barely done while it burned on the other. It meant raising and lowering the heavy pots and kettles over the fire with pothooks. One had to know which kind of wood gave a quick light fire, and which burned with a slow even heat and made the best coals.

It meant a continual vigilance to avoid getting severely burned by an overturning kettle, or having long skirts and aprons catch fire.

Certain ingredients including sugar were expensive luxuries;

to make preserves and jams over an open hearth was a lavish use of sugar, as they were made on a pound to pound basis.

Eggs were much smaller, so that a good pound cake involved weighing the eggs rather than counting them, as a dozen eggs could vary greatly in size. Sugar was course and had to be pounded and sifted from the loaf or cone. Butter, especially in the winter months, was extremely briny and had to be washed repeatedly to free it of salt, and even then it might be rancid. Flour was very heavy so one had to use a third more to get the equivalent texture to a modern product.

Gelatin was made from calves' feet, or a product called isinglass, taken from the swim bladders of fishes. These products were fine for meat dishes, but in the molded

desserts they gave a meaty or fishy flavor to the pudding.

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Needless to say, I would have failed miserably as a cook in

those days!