Garden to Table - Home-Made Beer & Ale from Pea Shells

 

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

BEER & ALE FROM PEA-SHELLS
Fill a boiler with green shells of peas, pour on water till it rises half an inch above the shells, and simmer for three hours. Strain off the liquor, and add a strong decoction of wood-sage, or hops, so as to render it pleasantly bitter; ferment with yeast, and bottle.

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.

Thomas Jefferson & the great Pea competition

Portrait of Thomas Jefferson by Tadeusz Andrzej Bonawentura Kosciuszko (1746 - 1817)

Thomas Jefferson was known to have a passion for peas.  For several years, he would organize a competition among his Virginia neighbors to see who could produce the 1st peas of the year. The winner would invite all the other competitors to his home for dinner, to eat peas, of course.

1782 William Redmore Bigg (1755-1828)  A Girl Shelling Peas

Thomas Jefferson was particularly fond of the English or Garden pea.  He mentions planting it frequently at Monticello devoting a relatively large amount of kitchen garden space (3 entire "squares") to his precious peas.  According to family accounts, every spring Jefferson competed with local gentleman gardeners to bring the first pea to the table.  The winner then hosting a community dinner that included a feast on the winning dish of peas. Among the 19 pea varieties Jefferson documented sowing were Early Frame, which was planted annually from 1809 until 1824; Hotspur, named for its quick, frantic growth; Marrowfat, a starchier, later variety; and Blue Prussian, which Jefferson obtained from Philadelphia seedsman Bernard McMahon.  Jefferson's pea consumption seemed to slump during his presidency, however.  Jefferson's butler, Lemaire recorded purchasing peas for the President's House only 6 times in 1806 for the elaborate state dinners Jefferson hosted.

Jefferson's eldest grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph recalled this competition in a letter to Mr. Randall, "A wealthy neighbor [Mr. George Divers], without children, and fond of horticulture, generally triumphed. Mr. Jefferson, on one occasion had them first, and when his family reminded him that it was his right to invite the company, he replied, "No, say nothing about it, it will be more agreeable to our friend to think that he never fails."

This is apparently the case in an April, 1815 letter from Mr. Divers to Jefferson: "We returned home yesterday from a visit of several days and I did not examine into the state of our peas till late in the evening, when I found them quite ready…We should be glad you will come up and partake of our first dish today & that Mr. Maddison would come with you."

1795 Fresh Gathered Peas Young Hastings after Giovanni Vendramini (1769-1839)

History Blooms at Monticello

‘Old Blush’ China, which appears in silk paintings dating to 1000 AD, remains one of the finest of the old garden shrub roses. Also called Parson’s Pink China & Pink Monthly, it became a parent of the Noisette Class of roses when it crossed with the European Musk Rose in the Charleston, SC, garden of John Champneys sometime after 1802.

Single moss rose (Rosa muscosa simplex), an 1807 Jefferson-era variety with deep pink flowers on an upright shrub.

Rosa ‘Belle Vichyssoise’ is a climbing Noisette rose, hybridized in 1858, with good reblooming qualities & medium fragrance.

Plants in Early American Gardens - Snowball Bush

Bare Root Snowball Bush (Viburnum opulus roseum)

This sterile garden form was known in Europe by 1554 and has been a favorite ever since. The flowers, described in 1770 as "balls of snow, lodged in a pleasing manner all over its head," have inspired other common names such as Whitsun-boss, Love-roses, and Pincushion-tree. On April 16, 1807, Jefferson planted V. opulus rosea on the "N.W. brow of the slope" of Monticello Mountain. That same day he also planted the species Gelder Rose or Cranberry Viburnum, V. opulus.

For more information & the possible availability
Contact The Tho Jefferson Center for Historic Plants or The Shop at Monticello 

1820 Pennsylvania Farmhouse & Garden

1820 William Schlicter possibly Montgomery County, PA.

Hand-drawn; hand-colored; hand-lettered. The drawing depicts a farm, with a two-story stone house to the left and a barn to the right. A stone wall with a path and gate is before the house, and a dirt road runs in front of the two buildings. The buildings are surrounded by a charming, rather formal garden on the side of the house, plus lawns, trees, fields, and fences. They are topped by a sky with clouds. Free Library of Philadelphia’s digital collection of Pennsylvania German Fraktur and Manuscripts.