Martha Washington's Valley Forge

Recipe and Photo

by Linda Altoonian

“Making great crab cakes is considered an art form in Maryland. I know because I grew up there. Nothing was more pleasurable than seeking out the restaurants that made the best crab cakes during our sometimes weekly trips to the Chesapeake Bay and Ocean City. “Often those restaurants were nothing more than dilapidated shacks (inspiration for the name Joe’s Crab Shack) hidden in some hamlet along the shore, but the ambiance didn’t diminish the succulent lumps of blue crab meat or the sweetness of the soft-shelled crabs, often eaten in their entirety. There are as many crab cake recipes as crabs in the Chesapeake, but I like this one for its simplicity.”

Ingredients 1 lb. crabmeat 1 cup Italian seasoned breadcrumbs 1 large egg 1/4 cup mayonnaise 1 tsp. dry mustard Oil for frying Additions 1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper to taste, chopped green pepper or green onion

Directions 1. Remove all cartilage from crabmeat 2. Mix breadcrumbs, egg, mayonnaise, and seasonings. 3. Add crabmeat and mix gently but thoroughly. If mixture is too dry, add a little more mayonnaise. 4. Shape into 6 cakes and fry in just enough oil to prevent sticking. Cook for about 5 minutes on each side.

Martha Washington's Valley Forge

by Lael Morgan

Although my first published book was a cookbook, and I’ve covered many gourmet ventures as a reporter, I was slow to become aware of the growing interest in culinary history.

From my childhood, I readily recall the cast-iron, wood-burning stoves my mother and grandmothers coaxed into producing such delicate fare as angel food cakes, crème puffs and apple pies. I remember also how thrilled we were when technology improved, and we used an oil burner in a fire box instead, and then, with great excitement, onto cooking with electricity, natural gas, and the invention of the broiler.    

I came from that long ago time when you could watch your butter churned and fetch fresh eggs from warm nests of boastful, clucking hens. Big gardens, berry picking and gathering wild fiddlehead greens made up for the fact that grocery stores were unknown in my section of rural Maine and lacked sophistication even in its larger cities.

As challenging as meal preparation may have been for us, imagine colonial America with its complicated meal preparation minus shopping and stoves of any sort! Those were things that I never considered until I delved into The Martha Washington Cookbook by Marie Kimball, as authorized by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania which owns the original. Yea gads!

Granted, Martha was one of wealthiest widows in Virginia when she wed the gentleman farmer who would become father of our county, and Martha traveled first class. Her dower included 150 slaves and the couple had 14 house servants, so the first First Lady probably didn’t peel many potatoes. She was apparently one heck of a manager, though, delegating the dirty work but keeping a stern eye on even the smallest details.

The Washingtons owned five farms which operated as semi-independent units.  George managed those operating expenses, making the rounds daily via horseback, while Martha oversaw the housekeeping, oversaw the kitchens, doled out the meals, and purchased the staples for humans.

Actually purchasing staples makes it sound too easy, because her job was also to supervise the making of wines and cordials, planting supply gardens, having grains milled into flour, canning, pickling, the preparation of hams and sausage, figuring the butchering schedules, the spinning and weaving of fabrics, directing the dressmaking and tailoring, the creation of fashionable hats, and shoe cobbling—all things we can do today with one trip to Walmart!

Most amazing, though, is the kitchen Martha had at her disposal.  It was, of course, first class for its era, but would have defeated all but the cleverest of us today.  It was in a separate building from the dining room, where all the stewing, boiling, roasting and baking was done in a big, open fireplace, with hangers and hooks for various pots and kettles, a roasting jack, plus Dutch and brick ovens.

To make them perform properly required an arsonist: someone who knew how to kindle fires of slow burning wood with properly flavored smoke, and how to handle incendiary blazes for quick searing and frying.  All, of course, without a temperature gauge.

With such quaint home appliances, one might assume Martha kept the menu simple, but nothing could be farther from the truth.  Hers was the rich plantation era where entertaining required three grand courses for dinner.  As proof, author Kimball offers a menu suitable for an evening in the month of February in 1792.  The first course included small chicken patties, soup puree with salmon, pork cutlets with sauce, stewed red cabbage, boiled chickens, shoulder of mutton, mashed potatoes, shrimp sauce, greens, Scotch collops, ham, beef temblongue (pudding), boiled turkey, fricasseed French beans, celery sauce, oyster loaves, soup with stewed carp, and butter.  

Those who survived were expected to eat their way through a second offering of two ducks, a wine sauce, prawns, asparagus, lamb’s tails, plovers, two teal, fruit in jelly, custards, roasted hare, crayfish, three partridges, sweetbreads and fricasseed carardoons, a plant similar to the artichoke.

Kimball goes on to explain that after the second course, the table cloth was removed, wine, fruit and nuts were set out, and the ladies retired so the men could discuss business.  However she also notes that, “As a rule, dinner parties were confined almost exclusively to men; occasionally the wife of the host was present, and sometimes other women, but this was rather unusual.”

Considering cooking duties, I’d guess the hostess couldn’t leave the kitchen for fear the partridges, sweetbreads or roasted hare might be underdone, or the prawns overcooked with the plovers. Yet later, as the president’s lady in the nation’s capital, Martha’s appearance at the dining table was noted by William Maclay, a senator from Pennsylvania who claimed the meal she prepared to be “the best of the kind I ever was at.”  According to Maclay’s account, soup, roasted and boiled fish, meats salmon, fowls, etc., were on the menu, and dessert included apple pies, puddings, iced creams, jellies, watermelons, musk-melons, apples, peaches and nuts. 

Although the President was known as a cold and formal politician, Martha developed a fine reputation as a hostess, even though her husband was slow to budget for a housekeeper to help her keep up with the wide political swath they cut.  However, please note that, although Martha was a year younger than her husband, she died just two years after he breathed his last. 

Their marriage appeared to be a love match, and perhaps she died of grief.  She had traveled hundreds of miles to be with George at his winter military encampments including Valley Forge, which had to have been rough sledding.  However, it is my humble guess that despite the many Revolutionary battles George weathered and the time Martha spent with him on the warfront, she fought her own Valley Forge in the primitive kitchens of Mt. Vernon and Washington, which definitely took their toll on her health. 

Between 1768 and 1775, it’s estimated the Washingtons entertained 2,000 guests at their dining table.  And George didn’t do the cooking!