Mary Foote Henderson's castle

There is an interesting illustrated article HERE about cookbook author Mary Foote Henderson's entertaining and her huge mansion, Boundary Castle, built in 1888 in DC. Not your average cookbook writer's home. 


Henderson was the author of Practical Cooking and Dinner Giving in 1877 [one of 76 digitized at the Feeding America site HERE] and Diet for the Sick, A Treatise on the Values of Foods HERE in 1885.

"She also became an impassioned evangelist of healthy living... writing a 1904 book, The Aristocracy of Health HERE... Mrs. Henderson was famous for her elegant dinners featuring strictly vegetarian cuisine and no alcohol. A 1905 fete included a fruit soup, mock salmon in hollandaise sauce, broiled slices of pine-nut Protose (Protose was a meat substitute made of peanut butter, wheat gluten, and corn starch, among other things), unfermented Catawba wine, iced fruit, and Kellogg Gelatine for dessert.... the printed menu cards for this dinner included figures corresponding to each item on the bill of fare, showing the ... 'calories' contained in each dish. Like all meals prepared by Mrs. Henderson's accomplished English chef, it was said that the uninitiated couldn't tell that they weren't eating meat or fish." [from the online post link above]

©2011 Patricia Bixler Reber
hearthcook.com