Garden to Table - Apple Tansey Recipe in 1742

Londoner Eliza Smith wrote in the beginning of her 1727 book on being a complete housewife that ladies might use the information in her book for their "private families, or such publick-spirited gentlewomen as would be beneficent to their poor neighbours."  

An early recipe for Apple Tansey appears in The Compleat Housewife: Or, Accomplished Gentelwoman’s Companion, a cookbook written by Eliza Smith.

The Compleat Housewife, or Accomplish'd Gentlewoman's Companion, originally published in London, England, in 1727, is considered the 1st cookbook published in the British American colonies.  The Compleat Housewife contained not only recipes, but also directions for painting rooms, removing mildew, and home remedies for treating ailments, such as smallpox.

The Compleat Housewife was published in early America for the first time in 1742, by William Parks, a Williamsburg, Virginia, printer. He printed and sold the cookbook, believing that there was a strong market for it with Virginia housewives who wished to be current with the London fashion. Parks was the founder of the Maryland Gazette, and published a number of minor books and pamphlets before printing The Compleat Housewife, which became his major book publication. The book that was published in America was the fifth London edition, which was a best seller there at that time.  During the 18C, British books including The Compleat Housewife were reprinted in Boston, New York and Philadelphia.

When he published Compleat Housewife in 1742, Parks made an attempt to have the cookbook altered to American "taste", deleting certain recipes, "the ingredients or materials for which are not to be had in this country."  In England, when Eliza Smith wrote The Compleat Housewife, she showed "her self-assurance to attack English attitudes toward food and women cooks." In the book's preface, Smith chides the male culinary writers of her time. She claimed that they concealed their best recipes from the public. The Compleat Housewife title page describes the book as a “collection of several hundred of the most approved receipts, in cookery, pastry, confectionery, preserving, pickles, cakes, creams, jellies, made wines, cordials. And also bills of fare for every month of the year. To which is added, a collection of nearly two hundred family receipts of medicines; viz. drinks, syrups, salves, ointments, and many other things of sovereign and approved efficacy in most distempers, pains, aches, wounds, sores, etc. never before made publick in these parts; fit either for private families, or such publick-spirited gentlewomen as would be beneficent to their poor neighbours."

Here is the 18C recipe as it appears in the manuscript:
 To make an Apple Tansey,
Take three pippins, slice them round in thin slices, and fry them with butter; then beat four eggs, with six spoonfuls of cream, a little rosewater, nutmeg, and sugar; stir them together, and pour it over the apples; let it fry a little, and turn it with a pye-plate. Garnish with lemon and sugar strew’d over it.

Plants in Early American Gardens - American Mountainash

American Mountainash (Sorbus americana)

The natural range of this North American species is from Newfoundland to Manitoba, south to Michigan and the southern Appalachians to Georgia. First introduced to Europe in 1782, John Bartram’s 1783 Broadside included Sorbus americana as a tree found in “moist rich Soil in rocky Mountains.” Philadelphia nurseryman Bernard McMahon listed it as “American Service Tree” in his 1804 Catalogue of American Seeds. In 1867, New York writer Robert Copeland commented that the American mountain ash was best planted in masses. Also known as Dogberry, the bitter fruits (or Rowan berries) are edible to birds and other wildlife.

For more information & the possible availability for purchase

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

Forgotten Weather Words & Early American Gardens

Olaus Magnus(1490-1557) - History of the Nordic Peoples Published in 1555 On different Effects of Thunderstorms and Lightnings

Forgotten Weather Words By Paul Anthoy Jones 6, 2015 on mentalfloss.com

Seems like we are becoming more aware of the recent extremes in weather lately.  Weather surely determines the growth & success of the majority of outdoor gardens, historic & modern-day.  I remembered an article from mentalfloss.com, that I read a few years ago, & tried to imagine which of these "forgotten weather words" might have made their way to the New World colonies along with our European ancestors.

BLENKY
To blenky means “to snow very lightly.” It’s probably derived from blenks, an earlier 18C word for ashes or cinders. (BWS See: Boston Gazette Monday, Mar 18, 1782 Boston, MA Issue: 1438 Page: 4)

BOWS OF PROMISE
Rainbows were nicknamed "bows of promise" in Victorian English, in allusion to the story in the Book of Genesis. (BWS See: Salem Observer Saturday, Sep 13, 1828 Salem, MA Vol: VI Issue: 37 Page: 2)

DROUTH
This is an old Irish-English word for the perfect weather conditions in which to dry clothes. Probably related to an identical Scots word for an insatiable thirst drouth was borrowed into American English in the 19C, where it eventually became another name for a drought. (BWS See: Charleston Courier Monday, Aug 20, 1810 Charleston, SC Vol: VIII Issue: 2356 Page: 2)

FLENCHES
If the weather flenches, then it looks like it might improve later on, but never actually does. (BWS See: Columbian Centinel Saturday, May 03, 1794 Boston, MA Vol: XXI Issue: 16 Page: 4)

FOXY
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, if the weather is foxy then it’s “misleadingly bright”—or, in other words, sunny & clear, but freezing cold.

GLEAMY
If, on the other hand, the weather is gleamy then it’s intermittently sunny, or as one 19C glossary put it, “fitful & uncertain.” (BWS See: Hampshire Gazette Wednesday, Aug 20, 1806 Northampton, MA Page: 1)

HEN-SCARTINS
This is an old northern English word for long, thin streaks of cloud traditionally supposed to forecast a rain. It literally means “chicken scratches.”

MARE’S TAILS
Mare's tails are cirrus clouds—long, thin wisps of cloud very high up in the sky—that are traditionally said to “point” toward fine weather.

MOKEY
Moke is an old northern English word for the mesh part of a fishing net, from which is derived the word mokey, describing dull, dark, or hazy weather conditions.

MOONBROCH
This is an old word from the far north of Scotland for a hazy halo of cloud around the moon at night that was supposedly a sign of bad weather to come.

PIKELS
Pikels are heavy drops or sheets of rain. The word pikel itself is an old Lancashire dialect name for a pitchfork, while the local saying “to rain pikels with the tines downwards” means to rain very heavily indeed.

SMUIR & BLIND SMUIR
This is an old Scots word meaning “choke” or “smother,” which by extension also came to be used to refer to thick, stiflingly hot weather. A blind smuir, oppositely, is a snow drift.

SUGAR-WEATHER
Sugar-weather is a 19C Canadian word for a period of warm days & cold nights—the perfect weather conditions to start the sap flowing in maple trees.

SWULLOCKING
This is an old southeast English word meaning “sultry” or “humid.” If the sky looks swullocking, then it looks like there’s a thunderstorm on its way.

THUNDER-HEAD
Herman Melville used the old English word thunder-head in Moby-Dick (1851). It refers to a thick, rounded mass of cloud on the horizon, usually indicating that a storm is on its way.

TWIRLBLAST & TWIRLWIND
Both twirlblast & twirlwind are old 18C names for tornados.

YOWE-TREMMLE—literally an “ewe-tremble”—is an old Scottish dialect word for a week of unusually cold or rainy weather beginning in the final few days in June that is literally cold enough to make the season’s freshly-sheared sheep “tremmle,” or shiver.

Plants in Early American Gardens - New England Aster

New England Aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae)

North American asters ranked as the premier native plant introduced into Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. British patron Peter Collinson wrote to Philadelphia plant collector and nurseryman John Bartram, “…your country in inexhaustible in asters,” and Lady Jean Skipwith included “asters of various kinds” in her southern Virginia garden during the late 1700s. New England Aster was included on the 1806 list of Philadelphia nurseryman Bernard McMahon and in the 1818 catalog of the William Prince Nursery on Long Island, New York. This species remains a choice perennial in today’s flower border as it is attractive to butterflies and makes a good cut flower.

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 -

Peggy Cornett at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello tells us that 

Cabbage abounds in the Monticello vegetable garden. Throughout his lifetime Jefferson cultivated eighteen varieties including French, Milan, Savoy, Ox-heart, Roman, Scotch, Sugarloaf, York, and Winter. Cabbage was the second most commonly purchased vegetable bought by the Jefferson family from the gardens of Monticello’s enslaved African Americans.