The History of Food in ‘Housekeeping in Old Virginia’

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Please welcome guest author Sherry Joines Wyatt, Curator, Montgomery Museum of Art & History, Christiansburg, VA. As curator, she is responsible for managing the museum’s collection, which includes a 3,000-item archive and library on local and regional history; 2,900 objects relevant to county history; and over 10,000 historic photographs. Ms. Wyatt also creates new history exhibits that are installed several times a year. Founded in 1983, the Museum strives to be an integral part of our community by preserving history and presenting art for all of Montgomery County, Virginia.

The early cookbook, Housekeeping in Old Virginia, was compiled by Lynchburg-native Marion Cabell Tyree, a granddaughter of Patrick Henry. The cookbook was originally printed in 1879; the copy owned by the Montgomery Museum of Art & History in Christiansburg, Virginia is a second edition from 1884. The book contains 1,700 recipes along with Mrs. Tyree’s own advice essays.

She solicited recipes from 250 friends and acquaintances, or as she styled them, “Virginia’s noted housewives,” via her social network of prominent white Virginians. The book, published during the Reconstruction era, has a decidedly Confederate bent and includes several wine-making recipes from Mrs. Robert E. Lee. No recipes appear to have been gathered from African American women.

Five Montgomery County, Virginia women have recipes that are included in the book. Lucinda Redd Preston, for example, was married to William Ballard Preston, the son of Gov. James Patton Preston and Ann Taylor Preston of Smithfield Plantation. He served in the Virginia House of Delegates, Senate, U. S. House of Representatives and was Secretary of the Navy in 1849-1850.

Mrs. Preston contributed a recipe for Peach Conserves. A recipe for Green Tomato Sweetmeats was contributed by Fanny Cazenove Minor. She was the wife of Charles L. C. Minor, who became the first president of Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Virginia Tech) in 1872. Charles and Fanny Minor had two children and later lived in Winchester, VA. 

Housekeeping in Old Virginia is a time capsule of our Southern food traditions. While some of the recipes for souse cheese, calf’s head soup, and tongue toast are probably not to our modern tastes, there are also multiple recipes for marble cakes, devilled crab, and fruit preserves. The 50 pages of recipes for pickles and catsups illustrate the need to prepare foods for long-term storage without refrigeration. Among the many heritage-preserving recipes in Housekeeping in Old Virginia is a recipe for the Appalachian staple, salt rising bread, several recipes for chow-chow, four different Brunswick Stew recipes (all but one called for squirrel) and the earliest known published recipe for sweet iced tea, whose place in the Southern psyche needs no explanation. 

The holidays, of course, are an important time for food traditions. Two holiday staples, gingerbread and fruit cake, are well represented in Housekeeping in Old Virginia. Both of these dishes were brought to the colonies by British settlers. Soft gingerbread loaves, for example, appeared in the first American cookbook in 1796. Fruit cake, the object of a heady mixture of love, loathing, and jokes, has a similar storied past. Queen Victoria cemented fruit cake’s standing when she served it at her wedding to Prince Albert in 1840. Fruit cake only fell out of favor as commercial versions glutted the market by the 1950s. You’ll notice that the nineteenth century recipe differs significantly from the commercial cakes you may know. It has no neon-colored candy fruit, but lots of rich eggs and butter, and a heavy measure of booze! Merry Christmas!

Rich Fruit Cake (from Housekeeping in Old Virginia)

1 quart of sifted flour

1 pound of fresh butter, cut up in 1 pound powdered sugar

12 eggs

3 pounds of bloom raisins

1 ½ pound of Zante currants

¾ pound of sliced citron

1 tablespoonful each of mace and cinnamon

2 nutmegs

1 large wineglassful Madeira wine

1 large wineglassful French brandy mixed with spices

Beat the butter and sugar together – eggs separately. Flour the fruit well, and add the flour and other ingredients, putting the fruit in last. Bake in a straight side mould [sic], as it turns out easier. One pound of blanched almonds will improve this recipe. Bake until thoroughly done, then ice while warm. – Mrs. L. 

Risen Gingerbread (from Housekeeping in Old Virginia)

2 pounds flour

1 pound nice brown sugar

1 pound butter

6 eggs

½ pint molasses

3 ounces ginger

Bake in a large cake [pan] – Mrs. A. T. 

More articles on baked goods and old cookbooks:

Old cookbooks are filled with history(Opens in a new browser tab)

Stack Cake(Opens in a new browser tab)