Garden to Table - Home-Made Fig Wine

 

John Greenwood (American artist, 1727-1792) Sea Captains Carousing, 1758.  Detail

Old-Time Recipes for Home Made Wines Cordials & Liqueurs 1909 by Helen S. Wright

FIG WINE
Take the large blue figs when pretty ripe, and steep them in white wine, having made some slits in them, that they may swell and gather in the substance of the wine. Then slice some other figs and let them simmer over a fire in water until they are reduced to a kind of pulp. Then strain out the water, pressing the pulp hard and pour it as hot as possible on the figs that are imbrued in the wine. Let the quantities be nearly equal, but the water somewhat more than the wine and figs. Let them stand twenty-four hours, mash them well together, and draw off what will run without squeezing. Then press the rest, and if not sweet enough add a sufficient quantity of sugar to make it so. Let it ferment, and add to it a little honey and sugar candy, then fine it with white of eggs, and a little isinglass, and draw it off for use.

Old-Time Recipes for Home Made Wines is a cookbook for those who want to make their own wines & liqueurs from available ingredients, including fruits, flowers, vegetables, & shrubs from local gardens, farms, & orchards. It includes ingredients & instructions for making & fermenting spirits, from wine & ale to sherry, brandy, cordials, & even beer. 

Colonial Era Cookbooks

1615, New Booke of Cookerie, John Murrell (London) 

1798, American Cookery, Amelia Simmons (Hartford, CT)

1803, Frugal Housewife, Susannah Carter (New York, NY)

1807, A New System of Domestic Cookery, Maria Eliza Rundell (Boston, MA)

1808, New England Cookery, Lucy Emerson (Montpelier, VT)

Helpful Secondary Sources

America's Founding Food: The Story of New England Cooking/Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

Colonial Kitchens, Their Furnishings, and Their Gardens/Frances Phipps Hawthorn; 1972

Early American Beverages/John Hull Brown   Rutland, Vt., C. E. Tuttle Co 1996 

Early American Herb Recipes/Alice Cooke Brown  ABC-CLIO  Westport, United States

Food in Colonial and Federal America/Sandra L. Oliver

Home Life in Colonial Days/Alice Morse Earle (Chapter VII: Meat and Drink) New York : Macmillan Co., ©1926.

A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America/James E. McWilliams New York : Columbia University Press, 2005.

History Blooms at Monticello - Marseilles

 ‘Marseilles’ Fig (Ficus carica cv.)

‘Marseilles’ Fig (Ficus carica cv.)

In 1809 Jefferson wrote to Dr. William Thornton, a close friend and architect of the Capitol in Washington: “I will take some occasion of sending you some cuttings of the Marseilles fig, which I brought from France with me, & is unquestionably superior to any fig I have ever seen.” 

This variety was planted in the “submural beds” at the base of the kitchen garden wall, which afforded a warm microclimate necessary to bear fruit. Jefferson had unusual success with figs and noted their appearance at the Monticello table in 1816 and 1820. He also shared ‘Marseilles’ figs with John Hartwell Cocke, owner of Bremo Plantation along the James River. Cocke sent his slave Jesse to Monticello in 1817 to collect some plants.

For more information & the possible availability for purchase

Contact The Tho Jefferson Center for Historic Plants or The Shop at Monticello 

History Blooms at Monticello - Red Crown Imperial Lily

 Red Crown Imperial Lily (Fritillaria imperialis 'Rubra Maxima')

The Crown Imperial Lily was brought to Western Europe from Southern Turkey and Kashmir as early as 1576. By 1770 Dutch bulb growers had developed 13 distinct varieties. 

Thomas Jefferson ordered this lily from Philadelphia nurseryman Bernard McMahon five times before receiving three "roots" of the orange and a rare "silver striped" form in 1812. It is also called "Stink Lily" and "Old Stinky," because of its foxy odor.

For more information & the possible availability for purchase

Contact The Tho Jefferson Center for Historic Plants or The Shop at Monticello 

Garden History - Tools

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Dear friends gave me an old dibble yesterday. To celebrate my great good fortune in both friends & dibbles, I am posting this non-American print of working in a more sophisticated European 18th-century garden. Enjoy, while I will be caressing my smooth, smooth old hand-carved wooden dibble.

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Plants in American Gardens - Jimmy Nardello's Sweet Pepper

Jimmy Nardello's Sweet Pepper (Capsicum annuum var. annuum)

This Italian heirloom variety was brought to America in 1887 by the Nardello family when they immigrated to Connecticut. Jimmy Nardello preserved his mother’s favorite strain of sweet frying pepper and, in 1983, his son James donated seed to Seed Savers Exchange. Known for disease resistance and broad climate tolerance, it ripens to fire-engine red, and is delicious fresh, sautéed, or roasted.

For more information & the possible availability for purchase

Contact The Tho Jefferson Center for Historic Plants or The Shop at Monticello 

Garden Labor - Family

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Family Garden Helpers

Surprisingly, landed gentry & small town merchants & artisans generally employed the same kinds of help in the garden during the latter half of the 18th century in the Mid-Atlantic & Upper South. (That region usually includes Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Washington DC, & Virginia; but my research seldom is all-inclusive for the entire area.)

While there are not many records of exactly who was working in the garden during the growing season, there are a few. Hard-working Annapolis craftsman William Faris used apprenticed & indentured white servants, free & slave blacks, & his own family to maintain his Annapolis garden. Here the use of garden labor between the artisan & the gentry differed.

At the homes of the gentry, the family seldom helped with garden tasks, except that the wives usually managed the daily activities of the kitchen garden and the poultry yard, as well as daily tasks of the house staff.

All of craftsman Faris' children, who were living close to home between 1792 & 1804, (when Faris was recording daily in his diary) helped in the garden, usually assisting a slave or temporary hired help.

Faris’ unmarried sons still living in Annapolis, who had apprenticed under their father before going out on their own as professional clockmakers & silversmiths, continued to serve as occasional garden labor for their aging father, who was 64 years old in 1792. One son was 27, & the other was 23 in 1792.
The craftsman’s unmarried daughters all helped in the garden, until they left home. Faris first mentioned his youngest daughter’s helping in the garden in 1794, when she was fifteen. His two oldest daughters, unmarried & heavily into the Annapolis social scene, also assisted in Faris’s garden in 1799, when the eldest was 25 & her sister was 24.

Notation of garden work by Faris’s wife, Priscilla, appears only once. In his diary Faris noted that she was usually employed at “woman’s work.” She fed & sewed clothing for her family & helped Faris with his need for extra hands by raising a large family.

British agriculturalist Richard Parkinson & his family rented a farm in Baltimore County for several years at the end of the century before returning to England, where he wrote of his American experiences. Parkinson also noted that his children helped with gardening & farming chores but that his wife did not.

Plants in Early American Gardens - Grapeholly

Grapeholly (Mahonia aquifolium)

As a member of the Barberry family, this shrub was initially known as Berberis aquifolium, before Thomas Nuttall honored Philadelphia nurseryman Bernard McMahon by renaming the genus. McMahon was the first nurseryman to successfully grow Oregon Grape-Holly from seeds brought back by Lewis and Clark. 

The great plant explorer, David Douglas, found this plant and a related species, Mahonia repens, during his travels through the Pacific Northwest between 1825 and 1827. He introduced it on a large scale and it was widely cultivated by 1828. This shrub is not attractive to deer.

For more information & the possible availability for purchase

Contact The Tho Jefferson Center for Historic Plants or The Shop at Monticello