recipe box
A Tale of Two Cooks
Elizabeth Ellicott Lea and Maria Brooke Watkins
BY Claudia Kousoulas
It ’ s fun to look at historic cookbooks — perhaps recalling a fampleted as a church fundraiser .
Cookbook of Tested Recipes , comily favorite , chuckling over odd Lea began her manuscript in ingredients , and wondering at 1821 as a newly married woman in terse instructions . But old cookbooks can be a mine of historical ily and contemporary published
Delaware with recipes from fam-
information , revealing economics , sources . These types of personal cookbooks , passing recipes technology , and social life . Cookbooks by two Montgomery County through generations , are a long authors are good examples . tradition of women recording
Elizabeth Ellicott Lea was the their households and are valuable mistress of Walnut Hill in Sandy records of cooking through time . Spring and , in 1847 , wrote Domestic Scholars speculate that recipes Cookery , Useful Receipts and Hints in Martha Custis Washington ’ s to Young Housekeepers , which personal recipe book were inherited from her first mother-in-law today , is described as a portrait of Middle Atlantic cooking in the and its recipes can be traced to 17 th early 19 th century . Her very practical manual to running a farm is an passed to her granddaughter , Nel-
century England . It was eventually
interesting comparison to Maria lie Parke Custis Lewis .
Brooke Watkins ’ s 1897 Up-to-Date When she was left a young widow , Lea ’ s book took on a particular urgency . Historian and author William Woys Weaver has combed through Lea ’ s book and her notes . In A Quaker Woman ’ s Cookbook , The Domestic Cookery of Elizabeth Ellicott Lea , he supposes that Lea had a personal reason for continuing the cookbook . Her early widowhood left her unprepared for new responsibilities and she didn ’ t want her newly married daughter to face the same situation . Writing in her introduction , Lea hopes that
Elizabeth Ellicott Lea , Courtesy Sandy with attention to the recipes and Spring Museum Archives housekeeping advice in her “ humble little volume ... many of the cares attendant on a country or city life , may be materially lessened .”
By 1842 , her personal cookbook had expanded , and two manuscripts were created — one for her and one for her married daughter . In 1845 it was commercially printed by a Baltimore doctor and in 1847 a publisher took it on . A second edition enlarged the book from 180 to 247 pages . The 1851 third edition had 310 pages and included nonculinary advice such as how to work with servants . By 1879 it was out of print , after 19 editions .
The household skills she records were vital to the farm ’ s success and the family ’ s prosperity . If a batch of dried corn or green beans preserved in brine is spoiled , the family would do without that season and shouldered the expense of ruined crops and wasted work . The farmwife oversaw smokehouses , milled flour stores , a springhouse for butter and dairy , and managed chickens , gardens and orchards . They needed to be skilled or at least to oversee the drying , pickling , and salting to preserve a year-round supply of food .
Lea was thorough . Potatoes , carrots and radishes were kept layered in sand . Cabbages and cauliflower were layered with straw and buried ; corn , peas and beans were dried , onions and garlic strung and dried . Vegetables were made into sauces and ketchups or pickled in vinegar . Butter was salted and eggs were coated in paraffin . Apples were dried or stored , but most fruits were preserved with sugar in jams and preserves or with brandy . As one might expect from a Quaker who didn ’ t own slaves , Lea seems willing to take on more work
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