But the Devil Sends Cooks
A 2020 review of 18th century recipes published in 1938
I have a lot of books, but not that many cookbooks. I don’t remember why I bought The Williamsburg Art of Cookery. I was at a now-closed used bookstore in Charlotte, The Last Word. The copy was a bit ragged and cheap ($3!) and I had a few extra bucks leftover in store credit. It was a lark purchase. I’m not a prolific home cook. But I do love me some food culture and old books. Seemed like a fun match.
It’s a humble little object at 72 years old. In addition to the recipes, the font is also a throwback. The S’s look like F’s, which is a fun remix of a way to pronounce things like recipes for “favory tomato foup.” Which is to say there’s plenty of bibliofile goodness to nerd out to no matter what copy you get, it’s all reproduced to look like the bygone era it catalogs.
The word “cookery” is in the title. I love this word. Go on, say it out load. It’s a great word! Also, there’s more than one title to this book, which my affection for multiple titles is a mix of my own indecision and something vaguely to do with Vonngegut. The second title is better: the “Accomlish’d Gentlewoman’s Companion: Being a Collection or upwards of Five Hundred of the most Ancient & Approv’d Recipes in Virginia Cookery.” Ancient! And you gotta love the rounding up. Cooking has never been an exact science, ok?
Now the title page, bound within the first few pages, is preceded only by the reproduced printing of a woodcut kitchen scene. It’s clearly idealized, as in the center of the picture is a buxom white woman surrounded by subservient people of color. So there’s some white-washing going on. How many slave-owners would have been in the kitchen handling the food? None, the answer is none. (Note: I am not a historian).
But these Revolutionary and Antebellum recipes came from somewhere. You’ve got to think some from England and Western Europe for people who wanted to be reminded of home. And some from the people who actually cooked the food, who also wanted to be reminded of home for different reasons entirely.
Helen Bullock, a 20th century historian, collected these recipes and anecdotes. Buck was born in 1905 on America’s west coast but found herself on the other side of the country early in her career. She published this book while working for Colonial Williamsburg, still a big docent-filled tourist attraction in Virginia, in her early thirties. Her enthusiasm for the work is clear in the preface where she includes a warning against “swell head” (aka a hangover) after imbibing too much of General Taylor’s House Punch. She ends the preface with an amazing quote, and I mean a real tattoo worthy adage here: “Heaven sends good meat, But the devil sends cooks.” I have no idea what it means, but I love it and I can hear Tom Colicchio muttering it on a Top Chef tasting.
The first chapter title “Of Hospitality” makes any Southern cook of any background nod. I mean, this is just the most Southern way to open a cookbook ever. It’s what we’re all going for down here at home or if we open a restaurant. It’s our brand. If the South had one single Chamber of Commerce it would host quarterly panels on hospitality. It’s the South’s thing.
From Southern Hospitality the “upwards of” 500 recipes takes off. Beginning with soup, lots and lots of soups. There isn’t much time spent on any single dish. Sometimes just a couple sentences. It’s fun to read or flip through, especially for the uncommon dishes like pigeon “pye” (hiya King Joffrey), barbecued squirrel (the only mention of the word the barbecue) and turtle soup (see Shredder was just a Colonial Foodie).
It’s also fun to think about the preparations and the palettes of Southern cuisine. You’ve got to think who much of this food was for. The ruling class, the working class, the slave class? It’s hard to parse all these things within the covers of this compendium alone. There are glimpses into everyday life with these dishes, but of whose daily life do we get a sense? My guess is it’s a little mixed up. Some of these chapters are for the rich while others are peasant dishes. You’ve got to figure there’s a fair amount of appropriation happening, too.
But a recipe is a recipe and we can still try them out today. There’s a chapter titled “Of Health Drinking” lending a sort of intellectual air to the act of boozing it up even Michel de Montaigne (a witty vitner whose style was adopted for the chapter titles) would heartily toast. The “morello cherry bounce” sounds delightfully refreshing. The recipe even calls out price the of “cheap” rum at the time for 50 cents a gallon. There are multiple chapters on sweets. One whole chapter is dedicated to preserves and pickles. Christmas dinner gets its own chapter. Even vegetarians get a shoutout in the chapter “Of Garden Stuff.”
They say food tells a story. Well, to McLuhanize the whole business, I think it would be more apt to say the food is the story. Especially when it comes to a cookbook, a genre which recently embraced more traditional narrative techniques. Bullock’s collection is not an example of these new efforts. But its still got a story to tell. Actually many stories to tell, though muddled.
