[Transcript]
Hello, and welcome to America’s First Ladies. I’m your host, Risa Weaver-Enion.
Season 1 Supplemental
Even though we wrapped up Martha Washington’s season last week, I have a little bonus treat for you. I own a book called Pie & Whiskey, which is exactly what it sounds like—recipes for pie and whiskey cocktails.
At the end of this book, the authors included a recipe for Martha Washington’s Pie, and it is insane. I’m going to read you the introduction to the recipe, and then the recipe itself, and you’ll see what I mean.
“This is a recipe from The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy: Which Far Exceeds Any Thing of the Kind Yet Published by Hannah Glasse, originally published in 1747 and likely used by first FLOTUS Martha Washington to make her famous Yorkshire Christmas Pie. Caroline Kennedy’s A Family Christmas, where we first encountered this recipe, attributes it to Martha, so we will, too. If anyone actually makes this pie, we will send them one pound of butter and one fifth of whiskey.
Makes 1 pie
First make a good standing crust, let the wall and bottom be very thick; bone a turkey, a goose, a fowl, a partridge, and a pigeon, season them all very well, take half an ounce of mace, half an ounce of nutmegs, a quarter of an ounce of cloves, and half an ounce of black pepper, all beat fine together, two large spoonfuls of salt, and then mix them together.
Open the fowls all down the back, and bone them; first the pigeon, then the partridge, cover them; then the fowl, then the goose, and then the turkey, which must be large; season them all well first, and lay them in the crust, so as it will look only like a whole turkey; then have a hare ready cased, and wiped with a clean cloth.
Cut it to pieces; that is, joint it; season it, and lay it as close as you can on one side; on the other side woodcocks, more game, and what sort of wild fowl you can get. Season them well, and lay them close; put at least four pounds of butter into the pie, then lay on your lid, which must be a very thick one, and let it be well baked. It must have a very hot oven, and will take at least four hours.”
I don’t even know where to begin with this..
First of all, because it’s less obvious when hearing it read aloud, the full title of that 1747 cookbook is The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy: Which Far Exceeds Any Thing of the Kind Yet Published, which is insane in and of itself. There’s not even anything plain and easy about the title, and if this is an example of what’s inside, well, I think it’s badly mis-titled.
Next, I take issue with the run-on sentences of this recipe. The first 70 words of this recipe are all in one sentence. The next 65 words make up the second sentence. The final 86 words are thankfully separated into three sentences, but still, they’re all way too long. The number of semi-colons in this recipe is unconscionable.
The transcript of this episode is on the website, so if you want to see for yourself, just click on the link in the show notes. I’ve also included a link to Pie & Whiskey, in case you want a copy for yourself. Now, back to the recipe!
I love that the first instruction is to make a good standing crust, without any indication of how large it needs to be. I imagine it needs to be the size of a large suitcase if you’re going to fit inside of it a large turkey, a pigeon, a partridge, a fowl (which I assume is a chicken, even though the recipe also refers to the pigeon and the partridge as fowls), a goose, a rabbit, woodcocks (how many? Beats me!), more game (more than just the one rabbit that’s been ready cased and wiped with a clean cloth?), and some other random wild fowls (again, how many?).
No one in their right mind would ever attempt to make this recipe. I can’t even imagine Martha Washington making it. I mean, the ingredients are all correct for the time period, as we know from the detailed descriptions of the dinners at Mount Vernon. But it would be physically impossible to make a pie crust large enough to hold all of those animals at once. There’s no way.
Also, bake in a very hot oven for at least four hours has to be the worst cooking instruction in the history of pie.
I hate everything about this recipe, but it sure is good for a laugh. And I felt like I needed to share it with all of you. I hope you enjoyed the insanity. I’ll see you all in two weeks when we kick off Season 2; Abigail Adams.
Thanks for listening! As always, this mini-episode was produced by me, and the music is by Matthew Dull.
