The Great American History Blog: Dining With George Washington

Each morning Martha Washington met with the cooks to plan the menu for dinner, the main meal of the day served between 2:00 and 4:00. Mount Vernon dinners required two cooks aided by several assistants who performed tedious tasks like peeling vegetables and plucking turkeys. Martha Washington briefly hired German cooks but most of Mount Vernon’s cooks were slaves. A great bell was rung fifteen minutes before dinner at Mount Vernon. Guests changed into dressier clothes for dinner. George and Martha Washington welcomed thousands of guests to Mount Vernon in the more than forty years they lived there. A slave butler and waiters, in livery, were responsible for bringing food to the table quickly and efficiently. Dinner consisted of two courses.

The first course featured meat and vegetable dishes. Ham was almost always featured. A ham was boiled daily and Martha took great pride in her hams. Martha sent hams as gifts. In 1796 George Washington informed the Marquis de Lafayette that Mrs. Washington, “…had packed and sent…a barrel of Virginia hams.” He reminded his friend, “…you know the Virginia ladies value themselves on the goodness of their bacon.” In addition to ham, foods likely to be found on Martha Washington’s table included carrot puffs, chicken fricassee, pickled red cabbage, fish, and onion soup. Even though these foods appear familiar, the seasonings were very different from those used in modern cooking. Colonial cooks liked nutmeg and especially enjoyed a sweet taste. Salt and pepper were not heavily used. Some foods would make the modern diner blanche, rabbits and poultry, for example, were not only prepared with their heads and feet still attached, they were served at dinner that way as well.

The second course featured sweet dishes and frequently featured fruit, including exotic fruits such as pineapples. Locally grown fruits including apricots, strawberries, gooseberries and cherries might be made into jams or preserved whole. Ice Cream was a favorite dessert at Mount Vernon. Slaves cut chunks of ice from the Potomac River during the winter, which were covered with straw in the Mount Vernon ice house for future use during the summer months. A recipe of the time, used by Martha Washington, advised on the making of ice cream: “Take two pewter-basins, one larger than the other; the inward one must have a close cover, into which you are to put your cream, and mix it with raspberries, or whatever you like best, to give it a flavour and a colour. Sweeten it to your palate; then cover it close, and set it into the larger basin. Fill it with ice, and a handful of salt: let it stand in this ice three quarters of an hour, then uncover it, and stir the cream well together; cover it close again, and let it stand half an hour longer, after that turn it into your plate.” The Washingtons flavored ice cream with berries, as chocolate and vanilla were not added to ice cream in the eighteenth century.

In contrast to their homegrown fruits, grains, vegetables, meats and dairy products, the Washingtons imported most of their beverages, spices, and condiments. In a typical year Martha Washington ordered 126 gallons of wine, twenty five pounds of tea and fifty pounds of almonds. The Washingtons typically offered several hot beverages to their guests including coffee from the Middle East, tea from Asia, and chocolate from South America. All had been introduced to England and the American colonies late in the seventeenth century and quickly became popular, despite their expense. Tea was brought to Europe in 1610 by the Dutch and arrived in England in 1644. Tea merchants claimed that the drink was a cure for migraine, drowsiness, apoplexy, lethargy, paralysis, vertigo, epilepsy, colic, gallstones and consumption. Most tea came from China until the 19^th century.