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On its surface, this blend of dark beer, rum, lime juice, and nutmeg doesn't seem to differ much from the other rum-based drinks of the day. Yet it packed a wallop from its proportions: three to four ounces of hard liquor (usually an equal split between rum and brandy) are dropped into a pint of strong porter, tarted up with the juice of half a lime and then showered with shaved nutmeg. This bad-ass drink is a dangerously smooth and stultifying concoction.

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While it is a shameful chapter in our national past, the fact of slavery during the Revolutionary Era is inescapable, and part of understanding how the people of this nascent country ate is exploring how the slaves were fed. Sources are exceptionally scarce and contemporary recipes are nonexistent, but we can reconstruct some idea of what the table in the slaves' quarters might have offered to maintain these unfortunate souls in their labors.

Most sources agree that the slaves were generally expected to get by on what was left from the slaveholders' larders, supplemented with what they could raise on their own, provided that their owners permitted it. What documentation exists of what rations slaveholders provided is typically from later periods, but it would be in their own interest to ensure that their labor force was well-nourished enough to work effectively.

The cooking traditions of the slaves were, as with most newcomers to these shores, a creative amalgamation of what they knew from their homelands and what was available to them here. We'll cook three representative dishes, each of which can help us understand a slightly different aspect of the food experiences of the Revolutionary Era slave.

Black-Eyed Peas and Rice

Though the modern dish of the Carolinas, Hoppin' John, was not described in print until the publication in 1847 of Sarah Rutledge's , its roots are believed to lie in the Senegalese dish, . Black-eyed peas were introduced in the Americas around the middle of the 18th century, and were noted in some of Washington's writings and other contemporary sources.

However, because the availability of ham and even bell peppers, typical of the later dish, would likely have been limited, we've stuck with a much more limited selection of ingredients for our recipe. Bacon grease or other pork fat would have been relatively easy to come by, and if chicken stock weren't available on a given day, this recipe would still work, with the addition of some extra salt. Onions could be grown in the yard, alongside the black-eyed peas.

Heat in a Dutch oven or other large pot with a cover:
2 tbsp (30 ml) bacon fat

Sautée until soft:
1 onion, diced

Add:
6 cups (1 1/4 liter) chicken stock
1/2 tsp (3 ml) salt
4 cups (900 ml) black-eyed peas

Bring to a boil, lower the heat to a simmer, cover and simmer, stirring occasionally to prevent it from scorching, until peas are tender (30 minutes to an hour if using fresh or frozen peas; up to two hours for dry).

Serve with plain white rice, perhaps cooked with a little extra water, so that it softens a bit more than usual, and if you have it, dash some pepper sauce over it to liven up the flavor.

Baked Sweet Potato

Root crops figure heavily in modern African cuisine, and yams were likely well-known in the cultures from which American slaves were taken. The sweet potato, indigenous to North America, is quite similar in texture and appearance (to the point that many modern cooks have trouble distinguishing them), and it's believed that slaves simply used them just as they had yams in Africa.[iii]

Again, simple preparation is likely to be the most authentic, and interviews with slaves of later periods[iv] indicate that they would simply wrap the sweet potatoes in leaves, place them in the coals and let them roast. We'll substitute aluminum foil and an oven.

Preheat oven to 400° F (200° C). Wrap in foil:
One or more sweet potatoes or yams

Place on a roasting pan, and bake until soft, perhaps an hour or two, depending upon the size of your sweet potato. A sure indicator that they're done is that they start to leak caramelized sugars into the pan.

Cool enough to handle, and then peel the skins off and discard. Serve in slices, or mash it up with a little salt.

Hominy Grits

Grits are today considered a staple of the "Southern" diet, but they were, in fact, a classic merger of the Old World and the New. The process for converting plain corn to the more-digestible hominy, which involves soaking in lye (extracted from ashes), was taught to the earliest settlers by the Native Americans.

Boiling ground grains into a porridge called polenta was a longtime Roman and Italian practice, which they quickly adapted to corn when that originally came over from America. It was only a matter of time before hominy was ground and boiled, and the result became an easy (and cheap) food to sustain both slaves and slaveholders. Both unprocessed and processed corn was used, but we'll go with the hominy version of it for our recipe.

We should acknowledge, too, that the corn and rice would not likely have appeared on the same plate together. Most slaves were fed heavily on corn, and there were just a few areas in the new nation where rice was so plentiful that it supplanted corn in their diets. However, the historical roots of both dishes have so much to teach us about the slave experience that it's worth including them together here.

Grits purists will be gratified to hear that, again, we will take a very straightforward approach to this dish, eschewing cheese, ham or other additions or embellishments.

In a large pot, bring to a boil:
6 cups (1.25 liter) water
1 tsp (5 ml) salt

Add, stirring constantly:
2 cups (450 ml) grits (regular, not instant)

Reduce heat to a low simmer and cook for five minutes, stirring occasionally. Serve immediately, with pepper sauce if desired.

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Feeding the Slaves - Journal of the American Revolution

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While it is a shameful chapter in our national past, the fact of slavery during the Revolutionary Era is inescapable, and part of understanding how the people of this nascent country ate is exploring how the slaves were fed.

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Over the course of time, many fashions change. The hem lines on women's skirts rise and fall, folks give up hula-hooping for jogging, and emus replace llamas as the trendy exotic livestock to raise.

So it is with food fashions, as well. Reading "receipt books" - cookbooks - of the Revolutionary era, one is struck by the many changing trends in cooking. Puddings are often savory main-course dishes, and are frequently tied up in a cloth and steamed. In meats, much of what we today grind up and use in dog food or bologna was routinely used in the kitchen. The spices called for in these recipes are, for the most part, familiar, although they're used in unfamiliar ways and sometimes called by unfamiliar names.

For example, "Jamaica pepper" (allspice) does, indeed, look like peppercorns ("Siam pepper"), although, of course, allspice has a completely different flavor from black pepper - and you wouldn't want to confuse the two in a recipe! More importantly, the ways in which these spices are used has seen some change over the past couple of hundred years, and today's menu reflects some of those changes.

We're going to explore how sweet and savory have shifted from being part of a continuum of flavors as used on the Revolutionary table, to having pretty strictly-defined roles today. Where sweet spices and sweetened dishes are largely confined to the dessert menu today, they were used throughout the meal then.

Furthermore, sugar was quite dear, and much more difficult to use, as it was generally supplied in hard loaves of white sugar or very large cones of brown sugar, from which the cook had to carve the appropriately-sized chunk, hand-grinding it to powder in order to make it usable in a recipe. Molasses and maple syrup were widely used, but these have distinctive flavors of their own, and so are not simply substitutes for the cheap, easily-used granulated white sugar in your countertop canister.

So our main course will use somewhat more sweet spicing than a modern palate expects, and the dessert course will be somewhat less sugared. The side dish gets a sweetness boost from being made from sweet potatoes, and dessert uses barley in a dish where we would not today expect to see it.

Sweet Potato Pudding[i]
We'll start with a dish that's called a pudding, keeping in mind that many "puddings" were made with various meat, suet and so on. This one is closer to our modern conception of a pudding than some, and while it's relatively sweet, it complements the main course nicely.

Preheat the oven to 350° F (175° C) and grease a 2-quart casserole. Peel and cube:
2 cups (450ml) sweet potatoes

Boil until they're softened, and then remove them from the water and mash them. Separate:
3 eggs

Beat the egg yolks lightly and stir in the mashed sweet potatoes until smooth. Stir in:
1/4 tsp (2ml) ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp (2ml) ground cloves
1/2 tsp (3ml) ground cinnamon
1/2 cup (115 ml) sugar
1/2 c (115 ml) butter, melted
2 tbsp (30 ml) red wine
2 tbsp (30 ml) brandy
1/2 cup (115 ml) milk

Blend thoroughly. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks, but not dry, and then gently fold them into the sweet potato mixture. Heap the mixture into the greased casserole and bake for one hour, until lightly browned on top.
Beef Royal[ii]

For the main dish, we're turning to one of the most popular cookbooks of the day, Hannah Glasse's venerable The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy: Which Far Exceeds Any Thing of the Kind Yet Published. (And I thought that my book titles were unwieldy!) We'll follow the original recipe for the seasoning of the meat, but we'll depart from it somewhat for the gravy, as truffles are prohibitively expensive and ox palates fall into the category of bologna ingredients today.

To break up the proteins in the meat and tenderize it, start by beating with a mallet:
2-3 lb (1-1 1/2 kg) beef sirloin or rump roast, boneless

If it is a lean cut of meat, you may choose to lard it, which means simply poking holes into the roast and threading bacon or other fatty lardoons through the meat, so that it doesn't cook up too dry. What I had available was actually a chuck (shoulder) roast, which was quite well-marbled, and so it did not require this treatment.

Blend together:
2 tsp (10 ml) salt
1 tsp (5ml) pepper
1/2 tsp (3 ml) ground mace
1/2 tsp (3 ml) ground cloves
1 tsp (5 ml) nutmeg
1 tsp (5 ml) grated lemon peel
1 tsp (5 ml) thyme flakes
1 tsp (5 ml) sweet basil flakes
1/2 tsp (3 ml) rubbed sage
1/2 tsp (3 ml) tarragon

Pat onto all sides of the meat and set it aside for a moment. In a large pot, melt:
3 tbsp (45 ml) butter

Whisk in until smooth:
3 tbsp (45 ml) flour

Put the meat into the pot and brown it on all sides. Add to the pot:
4 cups (900 ml) beef broth
1 bay leaf
1 cup (225 ml) diced mushrooms

Cover tightly and stew until tender (approximately 2 hours). Remove the meat from the broth and add:
2 cups (450 ml) red wine
2 tbsp (15 ml) Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup (60 ml) sweet relish

In another small saucepan, melt:
4 tbsp (60 ml) butter

Whisk in until smooth:
4 tbsp (60 ml) flour

Whisk the butter mixture into the broth and continue stirring until it has thickened into a gravy. Return the meat to the pot to warm it through, and serve with the gravy poured over the meat.
Pearl Barley Pudding[iii]
We'll scale this recipe down a bit, to make an amount appropriate to our table. Preheat the oven to 350° F (175° C). In a large Dutch oven, mix together:
1 1/8 cups(250 ml) pearl barley
6 cups (900 ml) whole milk
1/2 cup (115 ml) granulated sugar
3 tsp (15 ml) grated nutmeg

Cover and bake for approximately an hour, until the barley is tender. Beat until foamy:
3 eggs

Temper the eggs by slowly whisking some of the hot milk from the barley mixture into them, and then mix the tempered eggs into the barley and milk. Return the pudding to the oven for another hour to hour and a half, until the top is browned and set. Serve warm.
Conclusions
All of the dishes in this meal served a table of eight quite adequately, and we enjoyed it with a loaf of homemade pumpernickel bread and some steamed peas - if we were being completely faithful to the period, we'd've had pease porridge instead - and a nice cabernet sauvignon. The sweet potato pudding and beef were very popular, and, not surprisingly, the barley pudding underwhelmed our palates' desire for sweet when presented as a dessert.

Over the course of time, many fashions change. The hem lines on women's skirts rise and fall, folks give up hula-hooping for jogging, and emus replace llamas as the trendy exotic livestock to raise.

So it is with food fashions, as well. Reading "receipt books" - cookbooks - of the Revolutionary era, one is struck by the many changing trends in cooking. Puddings are often savory main-course dishes, and are frequently tied up in a cloth and steamed. In meats, much of what we today grind up and use in dog food or bologna was routinely used in the kitchen. The spices called for in these recipes are, for the most part, familiar, although they're used in unfamiliar ways and sometimes called by unfamiliar names.

For example, "Jamaica pepper" (allspice) does, indeed, look like peppercorns ("Siam pepper"), although, of course, allspice has a completely different flavor from black pepper - and you wouldn't want to confuse the two in a recipe! More importantly, the ways in which these spices are used has seen some change over the past couple of hundred years, and today's menu reflects some of those changes.

We're going to explore how sweet and savory have shifted from being part of a continuum of flavors as used on the Revolutionary table, to having pretty strictly-defined roles today. Where sweet spices and sweetened dishes are largely confined to the dessert menu today, they were used throughout the meal then.

Furthermore, sugar was quite dear, and much more difficult to use, as it was generally supplied in hard loaves of white sugar or very large cones of brown sugar, from which the cook had to carve the appropriately-sized chunk, hand-grinding it to powder in order to make it usable in a recipe. Molasses and maple syrup were widely used, but these have distinctive flavors of their own, and so are not simply substitutes for the cheap, easily-used granulated white sugar in your countertop canister.

So our main course will use somewhat more sweet spicing than a modern palate expects, and the dessert course will be somewhat less sugared. The side dish gets a sweetness boost from being made from sweet potatoes, and dessert uses barley in a dish where we would not today expect to see it.

Sweet Potato Pudding[i]
We'll start with a dish that's called a pudding, keeping in mind that many "puddings" were made with various meat, suet and so on. This one is closer to our modern conception of a pudding than some, and while it's relatively sweet, it complements the main course nicely.

Preheat the oven to 350° F (175° C) and grease a 2-quart casserole. Peel and cube:
2 cups (450ml) sweet potatoes

Boil until they're softened, and then remove them from the water and mash them. Separate:
3 eggs

Beat the egg yolks lightly and stir in the mashed sweet potatoes until smooth. Stir in:
1/4 tsp (2ml) ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp (2ml) ground cloves
1/2 tsp (3ml) ground cinnamon
1/2 cup (115 ml) sugar
1/2 c (115 ml) butter, melted
2 tbsp (30 ml) red wine
2 tbsp (30 ml) brandy
1/2 cup (115 ml) milk

Blend thoroughly. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks, but not dry, and then gently fold them into the sweet potato mixture. Heap the mixture into the greased casserole and bake for one hour, until lightly browned on top.
Beef Royal[ii]

For the main dish, we're turning to one of the most popular cookbooks of the day, Hannah Glasse's venerable The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy: Which Far Exceeds Any Thing of the Kind Yet Published. (And I thought that my book titles were unwieldy!) We'll follow the original recipe for the seasoning of the meat, but we'll depart from it somewhat for the gravy, as truffles are prohibitively expensive and ox palates fall into the category of bologna ingredients today.

To break up the proteins in the meat and tenderize it, start by beating with a mallet:
2-3 lb (1-1 1/2 kg) beef sirloin or rump roast, boneless

If it is a lean cut of meat, you may choose to lard it, which means simply poking holes into the roast and threading bacon or other fatty lardoons through the meat, so that it doesn't cook up too dry. What I had available was actually a chuck (shoulder) roast, which was quite well-marbled, and so it did not require this treatment.

Blend together:
2 tsp (10 ml) salt
1 tsp (5ml) pepper
1/2 tsp (3 ml) ground mace
1/2 tsp (3 ml) ground cloves
1 tsp (5 ml) nutmeg
1 tsp (5 ml) grated lemon peel
1 tsp (5 ml) thyme flakes
1 tsp (5 ml) sweet basil flakes
1/2 tsp (3 ml) rubbed sage
1/2 tsp (3 ml) tarragon

Pat onto all sides of the meat and set it aside for a moment. In a large pot, melt:
3 tbsp (45 ml) butter

Whisk in until smooth:
3 tbsp (45 ml) flour

Put the meat into the pot and brown it on all sides. Add to the pot:
4 cups (900 ml) beef broth
1 bay leaf
1 cup (225 ml) diced mushrooms

Cover tightly and stew until tender (approximately 2 hours). Remove the meat from the broth and add:
2 cups (450 ml) red wine
2 tbsp (15 ml) Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup (60 ml) sweet relish

In another small saucepan, melt:
4 tbsp (60 ml) butter

Whisk in until smooth:
4 tbsp (60 ml) flour

Whisk the butter mixture into the broth and continue stirring until it has thickened into a gravy. Return the meat to the pot to warm it through, and serve with the gravy poured over the meat.
Pearl Barley Pudding[iii]
We'll scale this recipe down a bit, to make an amount appropriate to our table. Preheat the oven to 350° F (175° C). In a large Dutch oven, mix together:
1 1/8 cups(250 ml) pearl barley
6 cups (900 ml) whole milk
1/2 cup (115 ml) granulated sugar
3 tsp (15 ml) grated nutmeg

Cover and bake for approximately an hour, until the barley is tender. Beat until foamy:
3 eggs

Temper the eggs by slowly whisking some of the hot milk from the barley mixture into them, and then mix the tempered eggs into the barley and milk. Return the pudding to the oven for another hour to hour and a half, until the top is browned and set. Serve warm.
Conclusions
All of the dishes in this meal served a table of eight quite adequately, and we enjoyed it with a loaf of homemade pumpernickel bread and some steamed peas - if we were being completely faithful to the period, we'd've had pease porridge instead - and a nice cabernet sauvignon. The sweet potato pudding and beef were very popular, and, not surprisingly, the barley pudding underwhelmed our palates' desire for sweet when presented as a dessert.

[i] O'Connor, Hyla. The Early American Cookbook. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1974. 114. Print.

[ii] Glasse, Hannah. The art of cookery, made plain and easy. London: W. Strahan, J. and F. Rivington, J. Hinton, 1774. 42. Web. http://books.google.com/books?id=xJdAAAAAIAAJ.

[iii] Glasse, Hannah. The art of cookery, made plain and easy. London: W. Strahan, J. and F. Rivington, J. Hinton, 1774. 210. Web. http://books.google.com/books?id=xJdAAAAAIAAJ.

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A Fashionably Sweet Dinner - Journal of the American Revolution

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Over the course of time, many fashions change. The hem lines on women's skirts rise and fall, folks give up hula-hooping for jogging, and emus replace llamas as the trendy exotic livestock to raise. So it is with food fashions, as well.