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.

Collecting America's Native Plants - Meriwether Lewis "No Regular Botanist"

"Like most people of his day, Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809) was knowledgeable about plants. His mother was an herbalist, & as an agriculturist he was interested in plants of economic importance. Thus, when Jefferson assigned Lewis the task of naturalist it was natural that Lewis would focus, as Jefferson instructed him, on medicinal plants, plants of economic value such as corn, wheat, grasses, fodder, & plants that would have been of horticulture interest, as Jefferson had a large garden & was very much interested in horticulture plants.

"For Jefferson, the decision not to send a true naturalist, but rather one that was semi-trained was both fortunate & unfortunate. For the botanical community the fact that Jefferson did not send a naturalist meant that only a few select specimens were collected. Nonetheless, the more than two hundred specimens that reached Philadelphia, from the activities of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, signified the richness of the flora of the Pacific Northwest & particularly the states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho & Western Montana.

"Lewis’s collection activities were limited to opportunities when he had a chance to collect. As captain he had many other duties besides looking for new plants. Thus it was, we know from his journals, that not only did he collect, but so did some of the other men. There are even indications that Sacagawea or Saka Kawea collected plants as well.

"Lewis's collecting activities were not described by him, but looking at contemporaries, it is clear that Lewis used a small hand press. This allowed him to collect small samples that he would then dry over a period of days. Because he had no other means of drying these plants other than sunshine he was very careful what he collected. For example; he avoided cactus & all kinds of succulent plants except for two—both sedums, or rock plants. He collected lots of grasses, because they were economically important as food. He collected crop plants that were grown by the native people. And he collected a bountiful number of wildflowers, particularly in 1806 as he crossed the Rocky Mountains.

"Some of the plants that Lewis collected were found along the Lolo Trail in late June of 1806, & then across Lewis & Clark Pass in early July of 1806. Many of those species are represented in his herbarium & may be seen even today along the Lewis & Clark Trail.

"Lewis's tendency was to collect specimens that he could, in a small sample, show all of the detail that he needed to show. Thus, he tended to collected plants in good flower & occasionally, if he felt it was important as a medicinal plant, in fruit, so he could then grow seeds from the plant once he returned the material to Philadelphia.

"Seeds were commonly collected in 1805 particularly along the Columbia River. Very few seeds were collected in 1806 on the return trip. Numerous specimens & seeds were collected as they ascended the Missouri River in 1804.

"Lewis's interest in the wildflowers of what we now call the Rocky Mountains was much as any individual's today. They are abundant & beautiful & easy to collect. The success of his collection resulted in the discovery of three new genera, one named for him, one named for Clark, & another named for the character of the plant. Several new species were collected. And, most that you see surrounding us here today were collected by Lewis & were named from his specimens.

"Lewis's plant press was probably in the form of a book. A very large book, probably twelve by eighteen inches. It may or may not have been bound on the one side. This is a traditional plant press that you find in China. It is made out of bamboo & consists of a flat strong surface that specimens can be placed in. Lewis used paper much like you used as a youngster in kindergarten. A kind of construction paper. It was folded in half & the specimen placed in between. Now, Lewis's paper was twelve by eighteen when folded, this is half that. You'll notice that the paper is absorbent. This way the specimen's moisture would go into the paper, be absorbed by the paper, & then the specimen could be slowly dried. But in drying, everyday Lewis had to open his press, remove the old pages that were damp, lay them in the sunshine, allow them to dry, & move his plants into new paper so they would continue to dry.

"Modern botany is quite different from Lewis's day. We use very large presses & in a good operation you'll run three to five presses, filling each during the course of a day. Each press consists of about room for one hundred different specimens. We are able to dry these very rapidly using what is known as a Holmgren drying frame, by putting a heat source underneath, a coleman stove or electric light bulbs. The heat rises through the corrugates, the holes in the corrugates, & will dry plants overnight, if not during the course of twenty-four hours.

"Today we are in Packer Meadow on the Clearwater National Forest. This was a lunch stop for the Lewis & Clark Expedition in late June of 1806. Very likely, because Lewis had collected so many plants coming up the Lolo Trail, he took time out during that lunch break to work his plant specimens. Lewis would open his press & open up, in his case, each individual page of his press. Coming on to his first specimen he would then take a look at it, make sure that the leaves were flat & that all the diagnostic characters of the flowers were shown so they could be studied. He would repeat this for each specimen &, if necessary, would replace the paper with new paper.

"This is the common camas that Lewis & his men experienced in 1805. Tradition says that Lewis & Clark & his men became ill from eating the bulbs. That's probably not true. More likely the culprit was salmonella poisoning associated with the dried—poorly dried—salmon.

"It's interesting that Lewis collected the Canadian Dogwood or Cornus candadensis. This is a plant he knew well from Virginia. It's interesting to speculate whether he collected it because he knew it, collected it because he wanted to show that something from Virginia also grew in the Rocky Mountains, or what. Maybe he was homesick. The other specimen that I have here is the new genus of mariposa lily collected by Lewis & Clark along the Lolo Trail in Idaho & Montana in late June & early July. This is Calicortis pulcella, or "beautiful mariposa lily".

"Two specimens that Lewis would have handled during the stop in Packer Meadow is a skyrocket, this little high elevation blue flower which occurs near the summit, & also near the summit is this species of menzesia, named for the surgeon naturalist Archibald Menzies who preceded Lewis & Clark in the Pacific Northwest in the late 1790's. Menzies collected only along the coast, & this is one of those species that goes from the coast to the high mountains in the Rockies. Lewis was very judicious in what he collected. He made only small specimens. Even though this is a large shrub he would have collected only a little bit of it. The reason is simple, someone had to carry it to Philadelphia.

"A specimen has three dimensions: odor, good color & a feel of surroundings, not seen on a flattened dried specimen. And yet, all the technical details necessary for identification, the number of petals, sepals, stamens, the condition of the ovary & fruit, the leaves, even the habitat of the plant can be nicely preserved in any specimen. Occasionally if you have a tree or a shrub it is necessary to make notes indicating the size of the tree or the shrub. This Lewis did on occasions, & we now have his original notes to go by.

"This plant has bulbs. They are thick & fleshy. Drying one of those would be very difficult. Thus, Lewis rarely collected any succulent plant & certainly none of the bulbs that would require days, if not years, to dry. In fact, the reason Lewisia rediviva is called Lewisia rediviva is the genus name honors Lewis but the species name, or epithet, rediviva means revived. That's because the specimen that Lewis made at Travelers' Rest July 1, 1806, was still alive when it reached Philadelphia in September of that year. The specimen that Lewis returned to Philadelphia with, that would later be called Lewisia rediviva, was removed from his collection paper & grown in Philadelphia. It was observed for almost a full year before it suddenly died. Very likely, as everyone knows, over watering plants can be dangerous & deadly, & certainly that's the case with Lewisia.

"Meriwether Lewis described his plants in his journals. He had his training from Barton in Philadelphia, but he also had with him two volumes of John Miller's book on Linnaeus's system of botany. One was an illustration of the terminology of the Linnaean system & the other was on the system itself. So what Lewis could do is, he could use these two books & write his descriptions in a very technical way, so botanists who read the journals would be able to have that information.

"As a naturalist, Lewis has been fairly highly regarded by the modern community. He worked under trying & difficult situations. While it is clear that he was only able to devote a portion of his time to the effort, what he did is widely respected. It should be noted however, that in 1811, Thomas Nuttall of England, went up the Missouri River & collected several hundred more specimens than Lewis & Clark did in 1804. In 1834 & 1835 Thomas Nuttall came to the Rocky Mountains of Idaho, Oregon & Washington & collected hundreds of specimens. Many of the plants that Lewis & Clark found, that were not named in Lewis' time were subsequently named by Thomas Nuttall from his own collections."

By James L. Reveal, Professor Emeritus, Botany University of Maryland, Supported in part by a grant from the Idaho Governor's Lewis & Clark Trail Committee

History Blooms at Monticello

Peggy Cornett at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello asks...

The Tuscany, or Old Velvet Rose, is a distinctive variety of the Apothecary Rose (Rosa gallica ‘Officinalis’) with highly perfumed, velvet-textured, deep wine-red blossoms, dating to the 16C. Could this be the “Black Rose” Thomas Jefferson received in 1808 from his friend Margaret Bayard Smith? Margaret Bayard Smith (1778-1844) was a friend of Thomas Jefferson & chronicler of early life in Washington, D.C. She met Jefferson through her husband, Samuel Harrison Smith, a Republican newspaperman & founder of the National Intelligencer. Mrs. Smith's recollections of Washington society life in the early 19C constitute one of the major sources of information on Jefferson's social life as President. After Jefferson's retirement from political life, Smith visited him at Monticello. Her account of this visit is another source of information on Jefferson's daily life.