Monday, August 31, 2015

4 French mustard recipes, 1725

Dijon mustard or Anjou mustard, mustard seeds soaked overnight in water, dried mustard cakes and a mustard lasting eight days were four recipes from a French book revised by Richard Bradley in 1725.  And the source of the name 'moutarde' or 'moult tarde'? An article related a story of the Duke of Burgundy in 1382 and mustard, by an author who jested that the Dijonese didn't know Latin... 

Monday, August 24, 2015

Making a stove in sand at Hopewell Furnace

Cast iron 6 panel or 'box' stoves from the 18th century heated rooms and perhaps a kettle on the top.  Then came more panels to make an oven and the heating stove also became a cooking stove.  Cast iron plates were made by iron ore, limestone and charcoal chunks added to the furnace, as air blasts from the wonderful water wheel with bellows super heated the fire, then the molten ore was poured onto molded sand to form the panels for stoves. 

Monday, August 17, 2015

DC markets in the heat of summer

Few people were in Washington, D.C. during the summer 1822, so the markets were "cruelly ill-supplied."  Bad potatoes, lamb, rock fish and catfish (cheap, but good fried). The bright sun, wind, no rain then floods meant no fruit gardens.

Monday, August 10, 2015

Mary Randolph's family - Bizarre scandal, Pocahontas, Jefferson, eccentrics and Spanish foods

Famous for The Virginia Housewife, 1824, Mary Randolph was from an interesting and prominent family. Thomas Jefferson was raised with her father and his daughter married Jane's brother; an affair, a murder trial, one sisterone sister’s husband was US Consul in Spain, one sister was also an author, almost all faced financial crisis and all were descendants of Pocahontas (left).

Monday, August 3, 2015

Food History Conferences, Symposiums, Exhibits 2015, pt 3

16 events in Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, DC, NY, CT, TX, MS, IN, VA