Mary Randolph | Gherkins & Tomatoes

Tomato and tomato gravy dark contrasts 2

* The Legacy of a Typo: A Meditation on Tomato Gravy

January 21, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Stirring the flour into bacon drippings, creating a blond roux, and sautéing finely chopped yellow onions in the mixture turned out to be quite an adventure. No, I didn’t burn myself – for once – on the lethal combination of hot fat and flour. No, in the seemingly simple and slow act of making tomato gravy, to serve over biscuits or fried chicken, I started thinking about the role of gravy in Southern cooking, and by extension, in American cooking […]

Categories: Cookbooks, England, Gardens, Local foods, Photography, Southern Food, Tomatoes • Tags: Colin Spencer, Cuisine of the Southern United States, Kate Burridge, Mary Randolph, Southern cooking, The Virginia House-wife, Thomas Jefferson, Tomatoes

Thomas Jefferson: The Francophile Who Became the First U.S. “Foodie”

February 21, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Thomas Jefferson. President. Scientist. Writer. Man of many passions, some hidden, some not. In his writings and in his actions, food clearly revealed itself as one of those passions. Above all, Jefferson was a Francophile. From the design of his dining room in his house, Monticello, to the gardens surrounding him in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, from Paris to the White House — Jefferson’s obsession with food and its preparation inspired him to train his African slaves, particularly […]

Categories: American Cooking, Desserts, French Cooking, Recipes, Southern Food, White House • Tags: American Presidents, Cooks, Cuisine Francaise, Etienne Lemaire, Food, France, French Cooking, Fritters, James Hemings, Karen hess, Mary Randolph, Monticello, Southern cooking, The Virginia House-wife, Thomas Jefferson

Edna Lewis, Chef (Used with permission.)

Ladies of the Pen and the Cookpot: Edna Lewis

September 2, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Who was Edna Lewis? Why call her an American Idol? Before she wrote The Edna Lewis Cookbook, The Taste of Country Cooking, In Pursuit of Flavor, and co-authored that recent jewel of a book, The Gift of Southern Cooking with chef Scott Peacock, well, Edna Lewis did many things in her long, experience-rich life, including campaigning for Franklin Roosevelt. But she always cooked — what Southern girl from her background didn’t? After all, she was the granddaughter of freed slaves […]

Categories: Cakes, Recipes, Southern Food • Tags: Cooking, Cooks, Edna Lewis, Food, Malinda Russell, Mary Randolph, Southern Food

Not Your Mama’s Lettuce

August 16, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I don’t know about you, but I grew up with the ‘berg in the fridge, with a jar of Hellman’s on the side. That was as green as it got (and still gets) in my mom’s kitchen. Iceberg lettuce. Crisp, colorless, flavorless. Usually just a tired limp leaf garnishing a shrimp cocktail or stuck haphazardly in a sandwich, lettuce is one of those things taken for granted. A part of the landscape, so to speak. A piece of furniture. A […]

Categories: Greens, Recipes, Salads • Tags: Cooking, Food, Greens, Iceberg Lettuce, Lettuce, Mary Randolph, Salads, Southern cooking, The Virginia Housewife

Honey, I’m Cooking!

October 1, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

As an infant, Zeus, the Greek god of gods, fed on milk and honey, or so the story goes. And in Exodus 3:8 (KJV), Moses states, “And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey … “ By these ancient words, we know that honey served as an important food […]

Categories: American Cooking, Cakes, Cooking, Desserts, English Cooking, Honey • Tags: Apicius, Bartolomeo Scappi, Cheesecake, Cooks, Gingerbread, Honey, Martha Washington, Mary Randolph, Scappi's Opera, Zeus

Good Golly, Miss Molly: Mary Randolph’s Boarding House

September 23, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

In March, 1808, readers of The Richmond Virginia Gazette would have read the following advertisement in the pages of that newspaper: “Mrs. RANDOLPH Has established a Boarding House in Cary Street [Richmond], for the accommodation of Ladies and Gentlemen. She has comfortable chambers, and a stable well supplied for a few Horses.” Author of The Virginia House-Wife and affectionately named “Queen Molly” by her friends,* Mary Randolph opened her doors to paying customers when her Federalist husband, David Meade Randolph, […]

Categories: American Cooking, Milk, Rice, United States, Virginia • Tags: American Cooking, Boarding Houses, Cooks, David Meade Randolph, History, Karen hess, Mary Randolph, Refrigeration Invention, Samuel Mordecai, Southern cooking, Thomas Jefferson, Virginia, Virginia House-Wife

American Cookbooks: History 101 (II)

April 30, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Continued from April 28, 2009: By the 1820s other cookbooks followed, The Virginia Housewife among them, written by Mary Randolph, a member of one of Virginia’s first families. These cookbooks were different from what we know today. They failed to mention of the size of the dishes used in baking, the number of portions the recipe made, the temperature at which to cook the dish, or even details about the addition of flour. All (or nearly all) cooks at that […]

Categories: American Cooking, Bibliographies, Cookbooks • Tags: Charity Cookbooks, Cookbooks, Cooking, Eliza Leslie, Food, Mary Randolph, Miss beecher's Domestic Receipt Book, Southern cooking, The Virginia Housewife

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