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A new American way of food in eighteenth-century Southeastern Pennsylvania: the recipe book of Bettee Saffin and Ann Ellis

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A new American way of food in eighteenth-century Southeastern Pennsylvania: the recipe book of Bettee Saffin and Ann Ellis

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Content The University of Southern California

A New American Way of Food in Eighteenth-Century Southeastern
Pennsylvania:

The Recipe Book of Bettee Saffin and Ann Ellis

A Dissertation Submitted in

Candidacy for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of History

By

Juliette Parsons

Los Angeles, California

December 2014
! ! ! ii!

for Deke

! ! ! iii!
Contents

Acknowledgements iv

Introduction 1

Chapter 1. The Recipe Book of Bettee Saffin and Ann Ellis 11

Chapter 2. Bettee and Eighteenth-Century English Foodways 53

Chapter 3. Ann and Eighteenth-Century Anglo-American Foodways 99
in Southeastern Pennsylvania

Chapter 4. A New American Food Culture 140

Conclusion 163

Appendix 1. Sample Recipe Pages with Photographs 167

Appendix 2. Other Recipes by Ann Ellis 176

Bibliography 180

! ! ! iv!
Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my advisor, Peter Mancall, for guiding this dissertation and for
introducing me the possibilities of Atlantic History. I would also like to express gratitude to him
and the other members of my dissertation committee, Nathan Perl-Rosenthal and Rebecca
Lemon, for their enthusiastic support, encouragement and insight.
I am grateful to Paul Freedman, my undergraduate advisor at Yale University, for first
inspiring me to become a food historian and for training me in archival research. I would also
like to thank Brian Butko of the John Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh for further encouraging
my interest in food history and for exposing me to the rich food history of Pennsylvania.
I would like to express gratitude to John Pollack of the Rare Books and Manuscripts
Library at the University of Pennsylvania for first introducing me to the amazing manuscript that
is the backbone of this dissertation, “The Recipe Book Bettee Saffin and Ann Ellis.” A special
thank you to Megan McGowan at the Pennsylvania State University archives in Harrisburg for
granting me access to the unarchived manuscripts in the Women’s History Collection. I also
would like to thank all the archivists at following institutions for their help: American
Philosophical Society, Philadelphia; Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; Lancaster
County Historical Society, Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.;
National Archives, Washington, D.C.; Perry County Historical Society, Newport, Pennsylvania;
Pennsylvania State Archives, Harrisburg; Pennsylvania State University Women’s History
Collection, Harrisburg; and the Rare Books and Manuscript Library at the University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

! ! ! v!
List of Figures

1 The cover of “The Recipe Book Bettee Saffin and Ann Ellis” 18
2 The title page of “The Recipe Book Bettee Saffin and Ann Ellis” 19
3 Bettee Saffin’s recipe, “To Make Flummery Mrs. Musgraves Way” 24
4 Ann Ellis’ recipe, “Chocolate Cream” 25
5 St. Andrew’s Parish in Wiveliscombe, Somerset 38
6 St. Mary Magdalene Church in Bermondsy, Southwark, London 50
7 The cover of “The Recipe Book of Anonymous and D.R.” 77
8 Page 2 of “The Recipe Book of Anonymous and D.R.” 80
9 Armillaria 103
10 The cover of “The Clymer Family Recipe Book” 125
11 Remains of a pie house in Newport, Perry County, Pennsylvania 130
12 Title Page of 1796 edition of American Cookery by Amelia Simmons 141
13 Dairy cows in an apple orchard in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania 166
14 Page 86 of “The Recipe Book of Bettee Saffin and Ann Ellis” 170
15 Page 20 of “The Recipe Book of Bettee Saffin and Ann Ellis” 175

! ! ! 1!
Introduction

A New American Way of Food

This dissertation seeks to advance the historical study of Early American cookery through
the examination of an unpublished eighteenth-century cookbook manuscript, “The Recipe Book
of Bettee Saffin and Ann Ellis.”
1
Bettee Saffin, a wealthy woman from rural England, started the
recipe book in 1716 and gave it to her daughter, Ann Ellis, in 1762. After the family descended
into poverty, Ann married a commoner and migrated to Philadelphia with the cookbook. This
previously ignored manuscript is a treasure trove of information on the eighteenth-century eating
habits of everyday Anglo-American women in Southeastern Pennsylvania and Philadelphia. The
recipe book records how Ann adapted her mother’s English recipes to meet the challenges of the
New World—adaptations that led to a new, uniquely American food culture.
Over 200-pages long, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book” is now housed in the archives of
the University of Pennsylvania Rare Book and Manuscript Library in Philadelphia. Richard W.
Foster, an antique books dealer in Philadelphia who graduated from the University of
Pennsylvania in 1927, donated the book in 1981.
2
Foster died in 2000 and the whereabouts of the
cookbook from the early nineteenth-century to 1981 are unknown.
3

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1
!Hereafter, this text is referenced as “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book.”
2
!Norman P. Zacour and Rudlof Hirsch, Catalogue of Manuscripts in the Libraries of the
University of Pennsylvania to 1800: Supplement B, The Library Chronicle (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania, 1981), Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and
Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
3
!Zacour, Catalogue of Manuscripts.
! ! ! 2!
Historiography and Literature Review

The historiography of American food history prior to 1800 is surprisingly small when
compared to the number of academic works on the food history of other places and time periods.
Food histories are often not subjected to the same academic rigor as other fields of history.
Hobbyists have written the overwhelming number of Early American food histories.
4
In other
cases, professional historians who publish serious academic histories on other subjects then write
popular Early American food histories for a general audience. One such example is A Revolution
in Eating by the historian James McWilliams, where he argues that food and beer production was
the driving force behind the American Revolution almost exclusively through the use of
secondary sources.
5

Other historians examine Early American food history in the context of broader studies,
but their food history sections are not usually as meticulously researched—relying on secondary
sources or primary source texts written after the period was over. This includes Albion’s Seed:
Four British Folkways in America, by the historian David Hackett Fischer. Although Albion’s
Seed is a carefully examined analysis of Early American folkways that also describes regional
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
4
!Examples of popular Early American food histories include: Thomas J. Craughwell,
Thomas Jefferson’s Crème Brulèe: How a Founding Father and His Slave James Hemings
Introduced French Cuisine to America (Philadelphia: Quirk Books, 2012); Dave DeWitt, The
Founding Foodies: How Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin Revolutionized American Cuisine
(Chicago: Sourcebooks, 2010); Walter Staib, The City Tavern Cookbook: Recipes From the
Birthplace of American Cuisine (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2009); Walter Staib, Sweet Taste
of History (Guilford, Connecticut: Global Pequot Press, 2013). Although many of these histories
are well-written, the authors infrequently cite primary sources, and often refer to popular myths
of food history. Frequently, these food histories are sold in the gift shops of historical sites and as
such, are written for general audiences of tourists as opposed to professional historians.
5
James McWilliams, A Revolution in Eating (New York: Columbia University Press,
2007), 2-7, 11-18, 57, 92-95, 144.
! ! ! 3!
food cultures, Fischer gathers the majority of his evidence on Early American foodways from
sources written after 1800.
6

Early American historians typically only write seriously about food history in the context
of other fields such as environmental history, economic history, and Atlantic commodities such
as sugar, coffee, tea, and chocolate.
7
When professional historians write works dedicated to food,
Early American food history it is often lumped together with the food history of Early Modern
England, and the differences between the food cultures are not always made distinct.
8
This is
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
6
!David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America. (Oxford,
England: Oxford University Press, 1989).
7
!Examples of scholarly works on Early American environmental history which discuss
food history include William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology
of New England (New York: Hill and Wang, 1985) and Alfred Crosby, Ecological Imperialism:
The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
Examples of works on specific foods discovered in the Americas by Europeans as a result of the
Columbian Exchange include Andrew F. Smith, The Tomato in America: Early History, Culture,
and Cookery (Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1994); Betty
Fussell, Story of Corn (Santa Fe, New Mexico: University of New Mexico: 2004). Examples of
scholarly works on Early American commercial history that discuss food history include T.H.
Breen The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor. The Ties that Buy:
Women and Commerce in Revolutionary America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2011); and John J. McCusker and Russell R. Menand, The Economy of British America,
1607 to 1789 (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1991). An example of
scholarly work on food commodities in Early America or the Atlantic World in general is Sidney
M. Mintz, “The Changing Roles of Food in the Study of Consumption,” In Consumption and the
World of Goods, edited by John Brewer and Roy Porter (London: Routledge, 1994). Works on
specific food commodities include David Hancock, Oceans of Wine: Madeira and the
Emergence of American Trade and Taste (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009) on
madeira wine; Amy Butler Greenfield, A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the
Color of Desire (New York: Harper, 2011) on cochineal; Ross W. Jamieson, “The Essence of
Commodification: Caffeine Dependencies in the Early Modern World,” Journal of Social
History (Winter 2001): 40-49 on chocolate, coffee, and tea; Sidney M. Mintz, Sweetness and
Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York: Penguin, 1986) on sugar and Marcy
Norton, Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic
World (Ithaca, NY: Cornell, 2008) on chocolate and tobacco.
8
This trend is evidenced in Brian Cowan, “New Worlds, New Tastes,” In Food: A
History of Taste, edited by Paul Freedman (Berkeley, California: University of California Press,
2007); Henry Hobhouse, Seeds of Change: Five Plants that Transformed Mankind (New York:
! ! ! 4!
largely because in the United States, historians of European history write most professional food
histories, drawing upon the longer European tradition of food history as an established academic
discipline.
9
This is partially because professionally trained male chefs have historically defined
European food culture, whereas female home cooks have traditionally determined American
foodways.
10
While food history is starting to be taken seriously as an academic discipline in the
United States, it has long been a respected field in many European countries.
11
Some food
historians have theorized that because Americans associate food preparation with women, the
study of American food history has long been dismissed.
12

Even self-described professional food historians do not dedicate the same detail to Early
American food history as to other places and time periods. For example, in two of the best and
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Harper and Row, 1986); Alain Huetz de Lemps, “Colonial Beverages and the Consumption of
Sugar,” In Food: A Culinary History, edited by Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montinari
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1999); Sidney M. Mintz, “The Changing Roles of Food
in the Study of Consumption,” Consumption and the World of Goods, edited by John Brewer and
Roy Porter, (London: Routledge, 1994); and Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Tastes of Paradise: A
Social History of Spices, Stimulants and Intoxicants (New York: Random House, 1992).
9
!American food histories which discuss these issues include Joan Jenson, Loosening the
Bonds: Mid-Atlantic Farming Women (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1988);
Michael Krondl, Sweet Invention (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011); Michael
LaCombe, Political Gastronomy: Food and Authority in the English Atlantic World,
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012); Janet Theophano, Eat My Words:
Reading Women's Lives Through the Cookbooks They Wrote (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2003); and Karin Wulf, Not All Wives: The Women of Colonial Philadelphia (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005).
10
!Joan Jenson, Loosening the Bonds: Mid-Atlantic Farming Women (New Haven,
Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1988), 58, 120-124; Michael Krondl, Sweet Invention
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 185-198.
11
!Meticulously researched food histories by European scholars abound. Examples
include Piero Camporesi, The Magic Harvest: Food, Folklore, and Society (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 1998); Massimo Montanari, Food is Culture (New York: Columbia University Press,
2006); Odile Redon, Francoise Sabban, and Silvano Serventi, The Medieval Kitchen (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1998); and Jean-Francois Revel, Culture and Cuisine: A Journey
Through the History of Food, Translated by Helen R. Lane (New York: De Capo, 1982).
12
!Krondl, Sweet Invention, 185-188, 192-193; Theophano, Eat My Words, 2-3, 11-14;
Montanari, Food is Culture, 7; Wulf, Not All Wives, 13-17, 59, 78.
! ! ! 5!
most frequently referenced academic food histories, Food: A Culinary History and Food: The
History of Taste, both of which are edited world food histories with chapters written by experts
in their respective fields, Early American food history is combined with chapters on Early
Modern England, the Columbian Exchange, and Atlantic luxury goods. Food: A Culinary
History, edited by French historian Jean-Louis Flandarin and Italian historian Massimo
Montanari, is a 580-page world food history with 42 chapters. In this volume, Early American
food is only seriously examined in one eleven-page chapter entitled, “Colonial Beverages and the
Consumption of Sugar,” by Alain Huetz de Lemps, an Early Modern British historian from
England. Most of this chapter traces the history of the trade and British consumption of sugar
and “colonial beverages” (coffee, tea, and chocolate), with some paragraphs on North America’s
role in production and a few sentences on how all these items were popular in British colonies.
In contrast, the volume contains 85 pages and 5 chapters on Early Modern European food and 92
pages and 5 chapters on American food from 1800 to the present. Food: A Culinary History,
edited by American medievalist Paul Freedman, is 368 pages with 12 chapters. In this book,
Brian Cowan, an Early Modern historian, includes the food history of Early America in a chapter
on the Early Modern Atlantic World entitled, “New Worlds, New Tastes.” This chapter focuses
on the foods of the Colombian Exchange and luxury commodities produced by slave labor in the
Americas. However, Cowan only describes the Americas as a source of new foods, and never
discusses American foodways.
These two books are further examples of European dominance of the field. European
historians from countries where food history is an established academic discipline wrote and
edited Food: A Culinary History. American historians specializing in European history wrote
and edited Food: The History of Taste. Professional historians tend to describe Early America as
! ! ! 6!
a place where food comes from, whether in the context of the Columbian Exchange or as a center
of food production, but rarely study what the inhabitants of Early America actually ate.
As a result, historians know little of Anglo-American food culture prior to 1800.
However, Early American historians have researched primary sources of the period enough to
know that Anglo-American foodways were not the same as those in England.
13
In order for
historians to truly understand the role of women, the lives of the common people, and the distinct
culture of Early America, they need to research eating habits.
Since Early American records are fragmentary and no American cookbook was published
until 1796,
14
unpublished, manuscript cookbooks are vital sources. Professional historians have
started researching the personal recipe books of Anglo-American women over the last few
decades, but have mostly used these manuscripts as examples of upper class cuisine or in popular
histories to modern cooks with updated recipes. This historiography is examined in detail in
Chapter 1 of this dissertation, but examples of such texts include Katherine Harbury, Colonial
Virginia’s Cooking Dynasty by Katherine Harbury, The Receipt Book of Harriott Pinckney
Horry by Richard J. Hooker, and The Martha Washington Cookbook by Marie Goebel Kimball.

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13
!As is evidenced in Joan Jenson, Loosening the Bonds: Mid-Atlantic Farming Women
(New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1988); Janet Theophano, Eat My Words:
Reading Women's Lives Through the Cookbooks They Wrote (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2003); and Karin Wulf, Not All Wives: The Women of Colonial Philadelphia (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005).
14
!Amelia Simmons, American Cookery (Hartford, Connecticut, Hudson and Goodwin,
1796).

! ! ! 7!
Overview and Organization

I trace the development of Anglo-American foodways in eighteenth-century Philadelphia
and Southeastern Pennsylvania through the lens of an unpublished manuscript, “The Saffin-Ellis
Recipe Book.” This is one of the first times that anyone has seriously studied an unpublished
eighteenth-century recipe book written by a Northern woman from a less privileged background.
I shed light on a historically important, but little understood, food culture with recipes from this
text and other unpublished, manuscript cookbooks.
I organized the chapters to look at different stages in the development of Anglo-
American food culture from the perspective of the unpublished manuscript, “The Saffin-Ellis
Recipe Book.” To this end, numerous recipes from this manuscript and other cookbooks are
integrated into the body of the dissertation. Although “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book” provides
an outline to observe change in foodways over time and space, the information it provides about
food culture is supplemented by the other primary sources. In addition to “The Saffin-Ellis
Recipe Book”, I have identified multiple unpublished recipe books and recipes written by
eighteenth-century women in Philadelphia and southeastern Pennsylvania, most of which have
not been cited in any known publications.
15
Other sources include other unpublished manuscript
cookbooks, published cookbooks, loose recipes, business receipts, farmer’s ledgers, personal
letters, personal journals, magazines, travel books, science books, chapbooks, contemporary
literature, census records, and church records. The majority of these materials come from
eighteenth-century Southeastern Pennsylvania and England, although some cookbooks, recipes,
and science books come from other places and time periods for purposes of comparison and
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
15
!The main cookbook manuscripts cited in this dissertation are described in Chapter 1.
Examples of recipes from these books appear throughout the body text of the dissertation.
! ! ! 8!
context. The majority of these sources came from nine different archives: the Rare Books and
Manuscript Library at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia), the Historical Society of
Pennsylvania (Philadelphia), the Library of the American Philosophical Society (Philadelphia),
the Pennsylvania State University Women’s History Collection (Harrisburg), the Pennsylvania
State Archives (Harrisburg), the Lancaster County Historical Society (Lancaster, Pennsylvania),
the Perry County Historical Society (Newport, Pennsylvania), the Library of Congress
(Washington, D.C.), and the National Archives (Washington, D.C.).
Chapter 1, “The Recipe Book of Bettee Saffin and Ann Ellis,” provides background
information of the recipe book as a physical document and chronicles the life stories of these two
women. In researching the genealogy of Bettee Saffin and Ann Ellis, I discovered that their
personal histories greatly influenced their recipes. Using the available evidence, I provide loose
personal histories for each woman and describe how events in their own lives impacted their
foodways. To illustrate the importance of food to everyday individuals and to take the
manuscripts out of the abstract, I connect these recipes to the lives of the real women.
Chapter 2, “Bettee and Eighteenth-Century English Foodways,” explores eighteenth-
century English food culture through the lens of recipes by Bettee and her peers. These are the
English recipes that Ann and the other Anglo-American women had on hand when they first
arrived in Philadelphia and southeastern Pennsylvania. Using Bettee’s recipes as a framework,
this chapter analyzes the long-lasting ideas and traditions that shaped eighteenth-century English
foodways. Bettee’s recipes are surprisingly similar to medieval recipes with some differences in
language and a few New World ingredients.
Chapter 3, “Ann and Eighteenth-Century Anglo-American Foodways in Southeastern
Pennsylvania,” focuses on the conditions English migrants like Ann faced when they first
! ! ! 9!
migrated to the commonwealth. The chapter examines the early changes they made in their
recipes to adapt to the reality of which foods were actually available. They modified their recipes
and ingredients for a variety of reasons—often helpfully explaining their motives in the margins.
They had to find new local ingredients since many English ingredients, such as certain spices or
types of liquor, were either not available or were too difficult to obtain. This scarcity of
traditional English ingredients led to many women like Ann being willing to use foods suggested
by immigrants from other European countries, American Indians, and slaves which her English
mother would have never considered using. Anglo-American women also added local
ingredients for reasons such as differences in price. The most important example of this
phenomenon was the vastly increased use of sugar in local recipes because of the commodity’s
low cost in Southeastern Pennsylvania. The increased use of sugar then propelled further
changes, such as the discovery that certain fruits and vegetables like berries and pumpkins were
not too bitter to eat if they just added enough sugar.
Through the perspective of “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book” and other personal recipe
books, this chapter also explores the evolution of eighteenth-century Anglo-American food
culture in Southeastern Pennsylvania from its origins. The first section looks at the influence of
natives, slaves, and other European immigrants on the earliest recipes. The rest of the chapter
examines the beginnings of a new dessert-centric food culture in the region based on sugar, milk,
apples, and pie.
Chapter 4, “A New American Food Culture,” analyzes how and why Ann and her peers
consciously created a new and distinct foodways. I examine the development of a uniquely
American cuisine by analyzing recipes for new dishes invented in the late eighteenth-century.
Anglo-American women hybridized the food traditions of different European immigrants, slaves,
! ! ! 10!
and Indians with New World ingredients to create entirely new foods. Some of these new
hybridized foods were invented in Pennsylvania and others merely reflect the food trends in
Early America. Women living in the newly formed United States of America labeled and
described these recipes as American—including them in both published and unpublished
cookbooks. One of these cookbooks is the first published American cookbook written by an
America: American Cookery by Amelia Simmons in 1796. The new American recipes
demonstrate how and why women evolved from changing their foodways because of necessity to
self-consciously creating a distinctly American way of food.

! ! ! 11!
Chapter 1
The Recipe Book of Bettee Saffin and Ann Ellis

On October 21, 1762, Bettee Saffin Ellis gave her eldest daughter, Ann, the recipe book
she had been writing for 47 years.
16
It was a present for her 24
th
birthday. Like many other
educated eighteenth-century English mothers, Bettee handed down her cookbook in the year
before her daughter was to be married.
17
The cookbook would cross the Atlantic from Bettee’s
England to Ann’s New World of American food.
Ann Ellis wed Christopher Smith in London on February 2, 1763.
18
On September 20 of
that same year, she migrated to Philadelphia with her new husband and her new cookbook.
19
As
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16
Ann Ellis was born in Porlock, Somerset on October 21, 1738. Her birth is recorded in
the parish records for St. Dubricius Episocopal Church in Porlock, Somerset. Her parents are
listed as John Ellis and Bettee Ellis. Bettee Saffin and Ann Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe
Book”, Philadelphia, London, Somerset, ca. 1716-1790, Kislak Center for Special Collections,
Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, iii.
17
!Katherine Harbury, Colonial Virginia’s Cooking Dynasty (Columbia, South Carolina:
University of South Carolina Press, 2004), xv-xvi; Harriett Pickney Horry, The Receipt Book of
Harriott Pinckney Horry, 1770 (Colombia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press,
1984), 3-5, 7; Marie Goebel Kimball, The Martha Washington Cookbook (New York: Coward-
McCann, 2004), 3-5; Reinhard G. Lehmann. The British Housewife: Cookery Books, Cooking
and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain (London: Prospect, 1993), 36, 53, 80; Janet
Theophano, Eat My Words: Reading Women’s Lives from the Cookbooks They Wrote (Palgrave
Macmillan, New York, 2013), 4-11.
18
According to The St. Mary Magdalene Church Parish Register, Ann Ellis married
Christopher Smith on February 2, 1763. St. Mary Magdalene was an episcopal church located in
Bermondsy, Southwark, London. Ann is listed as a spinster of the parish and Christopher is listed
as a bachelor of the parish. The record is signed by the minister, Father Matthais, two witnesses,
Thomas Thwaite and L. Ward, Christopher Smith, and Ann Ellis. Less than half the women in
the register sign their own name. The parish register is now located in the London Metropolitan
Archives. The evidence points to this being the same Ann Ellis, as Bettee Ellis was buried at this
church in 1765. No other women with the name Ann Ellis match the dates or locations.
19
Christopher and Ann Smith are listed as immigrating to Pennsylvania through the port
of Philadelphia on September 20, 1763. The record is logged in Persons Naturalized in the
! ! ! 12!
Ann and her husband settled in the Northern Territories of Philadelphia, she gradually adapted
the cookbook to meet the needs of her new life.
20
Although her mother offered much advice in
the pages of the cookbook, Bettee could tell her daughter little about life in the American
colonies.

After some time, Ann gave birth to a daughter.
21
Although Ann’s daughter copied
recipes in the cookbook, she never wrote her own recipes or took ownership of the text. No one
else wrote in the cookbook after 1800.
I attempt to make Bettee and Ann’s cookbook accessible to the modern reader, and to tell
us about the beginnings of a food culture that still shapes the lives and bodies of Americans
today. In the Pulitzer Prize winning The Midwife’s Tale, based upon midwife Martha Ballard’s
diary from 1785-1812, the historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich closely read the diary and conducted
extensive supporting research. Ulrich’s methodology made approachable a source once seen as
impenetrable by historians. I try to do the same for “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book.”
Most books written about unpublished early modern cookbooks use a different approach.
The authors are typically not professional historians and they are not attempting serious
historical analysis. They are trying to update the heritage recipes for the modern cook.
22
This
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Province of Pennsylvania, 1740-1773, archived in the Pennsylvania State Archives in
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
20
In the 1790 United States Federal Census for the Northern Liberties, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, the members of the Christopher Smith household include one white male over the
age of 16 (Christopher Smith), and two free white females (Ann Ellis and her daughter). This
record is housed at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.
21
The name and exact age of Ann and Christopher Smith’s daughter is unknown. In the
1790 National Census, she is listed only as a free white female. Also, although the daughter
wrote in the cookbook, copying Ann’s recipes, she never signed her name or wrote the date.
Based on Ann’s age, the daughter was born 1763 and 1777, making her between the ages of 13
and 26 in 1790. It is extremely unlikely that Ann would have given birth to this daughter later
than her late 30’s, so the daughter was probably born sometime between 1763 and 1777.
22
Some examples of such cookbooks include Hearthside Cooking by Nancy Carter
Crump and Sandra Oliver in 2008, The Early American Cookbook: Authentic Favorites for the
Modern Kitchen by Kristie Lynn and Robert Pelton in 2002, Open Hearth Cookbook:
! ! ! 13!
popular approach is fine, but “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book” can give us much more than
antiquated recipes.
Academics have also missed much of what early modern personal cookbooks can tell us.
There are existing eighteenth-century cookbooks, but scholars have researched few of them.
When researching these books, historians have almost exclusively studied manuscripts written by
wealthy Southern women. Martha Washington’s recipe book is most frequently cited as an
example of American food culture even though most of her recipes needed ingredients
unavailable to most women and required techniques so complex that the meals needed to be
cooked by multiple slaves trained in cookery.
23
Another commonly cited recipe book was written
by the wife of South Carolina plantation owner, Harriett Pickney Horry, in 1770, who includes
multiple recipes for fruits and vegetables only available at the time in the port of Charleston such
as coconuts.
24
One of the few academic texts on the subject is Colonial Virginia’s Cooking
Dynasty by Katherine Harbury. However, her work focuses exclusively on extravagant meals for
the extremely wealthy. Harbury examines two cookbooks written by female members of
eighteenth-century Virgina’s upper class. The first belonged to Jane Bolling Randolph from
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Recapturing the Flavor of Early America by Suzanne Goldenson in 2005, Dining at Monticello
by Damon Lee Fowler in 2005.
23
Trudy Eden, The Early American Table (DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University
Press, 2010), 12-15; Jean-Louis Flandarin, “Dietary Choices and Culinary Technique, 1500-
1800,” In Food: A Culinary History, Edited by Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montinari,
(New York, Columbia University Press, 1999), 351; John L. Hess and Karen Hess, The Taste of
America (Champaign, Illinois, University of Illinois Press, 2000), 3-7; Keith Stavely, America’s
Founding Food (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 15-19;
“Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery and Booke of Sweetmeats” is the primary source text
topic of a book with the same name edited by Marie Kimball. There are multiple histories of
Martha Washington’s cookbook by hobbyists as well.
24
Flandarin, “Dietary Choices,” 353; Hess and Hess, Taste of America, 3-7; Horry, The
Receipt Book, 9, 30-32, 45-47, 49; Stavely, Founding Food, 60.
! ! ! 14!
1743, a descendant of Pocahontas and Sir John Rolfe. The second was a recipe book from 1700,
written by an anonymous Virginia plantation owner’s wife.
No one has seriously studied an unpublished recipe book from the eighteenth-century
written by a less privileged woman or a Northern woman. The closest anyone has come to
examining the manuscript cookbooks of eighteenth-century Northern women is Janet Theophano
in Eat my Words: Reading Women’s Lives through the Cookbooks They Wrote. Theophano tells
the story of American food history through American cookbooks from the eighteenth-century to
the present. However, she barely mentions eighteenth-century unpublished cookbooks and she
never mentions “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book.” Contemporary historians would never argue that
only rich Southerners formed the identity of American history, but historians have not seriously
analyzed the food culture of ordinary Northerners in America prior to the nineteenth-century. I
examine “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book” and other recipes and cookbooks written by
eighteenth-century Anglo-American women in Philadelphia and southeastern Pennsylvania, all
of which have never been examined in their entirety, and some of which have probably never
been researched at all.!These books helped recreate the food culture of the eighteenth-century,
and ultimately shed light on the formation of modern American eating habits.!
Other major cookbook and recipe sources include two different unpublished recipe books
at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The first is the 97-page “Clymer Family
Recipe Book and Account Book” from 1788 to 1852 from Berks County, Pennsylvania.
Although most of accounts in this book were written during the nineteenth-century,
approximately half of text is dedicated to recipes, all of which are dated from 1788 to 1799. The
second unpublished recipe book is of a similar length and written by two women: an anonymous
eighteenth-century English woman and a separate woman known only known as D.R. who
! ! ! 15!
started writing in Southeastern Pennsylvania in 1780. At the Penn State University Women’s
History Collection at Penn State Harrisburg Library I found a treasure trove of un-cataloged,
unsorted recipes and other food related primary sources such as letters and receipts from the
eighteenth-century. I also researched numerous early editions of eighteenth-century published
cookbooks at the University of Pennsylvania and the American Philosophical Society in
Philadelphia.
I also examine receipts, farmer’s ledgers, personal letters, personal journals, chapbooks,
published and unpublished treatises and essays relating to food, newspapers, published
cookbooks, menus, prints and engravings, ship manifests, receipts, bills, and food related
physical artifacts. The majority of these materials come from eighteenth-century Philadelphia
and southeastern Pennsylvania, although some come from other North American colonies and
England for purposes of comparison and context. One major source is an anonymous Farmer’s
Ledger from southeastern Pennsylvania dated 1774-1778 archived at the University of
Pennsylvania. Many of the other sources are unarchived and uncataloged materials from the
Penn State Women’s History Collection in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania including a set of 20
eighteenth-century chapbooks on food related topics, personal letters, receipts, and newspapers.
Other sources come from the University of Pennsylvania archives, the Library Company of
Philadelphia, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Penn State Women’s History
Collection, the Lancaster County Historical Society (Lancaster, PA) the Perry County Historical
Society (New Bloomfield, PA) and the National Archives in Washington, D.C.
Out of all of these sources though, the evolution of eighteenth-century Anglo-American
food culture from its origins in English recipes is most evident in “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe
Book.” Some of the recipes are from articles from magazines, most of which were published in
! ! ! 16!
London in venues such as Gentleman’s Magazine or Universal Magazine. Others are copied
from published cookbooks such as Eliza Smith’s The Compleat Housewife (1742) and the 1747
London edition of Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cooking Made Plain and Easy (1747).
25
The
Compleat Housewife was the first cookbook published in the American colonies in Williamsburg
in 1742. It was a reprint of an English edition of The Compleat Housewife, published in London
in 1730.
26
London editions of The Art of Cooking Made Plain and Easy were popular cookbooks
on both sides of the eighteenth-century Atlantic World.
27
While both Bettee and Ann frequently
quote doctors from London and other English experts on medicine and science, the mother cites
English women, and the daughter cites women from Pennsylvania, not all of whom are of
English descent.
However, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book” is even less accessible than Martha Ballard’s
diary without proper context. A diary is chronological and tells a story, even if crucial
information is missing. “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book”, in contrast, is not chronological (most
recipes are not even dated), has multiple authors from two continents, and was sometimes used
for other purposes by male family members.
Therefore, like Ulrich in the first chapter of The Midwife’s Tale, this first chapter
provides context and necessary background information for the reader to appreciate “The Saffin-
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
25
As a part of my research I traced the original sources of these recipes once I noticed the
similarities of Ann’s cake recipes to the cake recipes in Eliza Smith’s 1742 American edition of
The Compleat Housewife.
26
!Harbury, Cooking Dynasty ,14-15; Horry, The Receipt Book; Eliza Smith, The
Compleat Housewife, Williamsburg, 1742; Keith Stavely, America’s Founding Food (Chapel
Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 56, 78-80.
27
!An American edition of Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cooking Made Plain and Easy
was not published until 1804 in Philadelphia. Before that time, American women made personal
decisions on how to change recipes to fit their food culture and ingredient availability. Hannah
Glasse, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (London by Hannah Glasse, 1747);
Theophano, Eat My Words, 16-18.
! ! ! 17!
Ellis Recipe Book” as a unique source. This chapter explains the structure of the recipe book and
places the lives of these two women in context. The other chapters of the dissertation focus on a
more detailed analysis of the evolution of eighteenth-century Anglo-American food culture in
Philadelphia and Southeastern Pennsylvania through the lens of “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book.”

The Story of the Recipe Book

“The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book” is a 200+ page manuscript bound in an embossed brown
calfskin cover.
28
The dimensions of the tome are massive for the genre
29
at 8 inches by 13
inches, making it significantly larger than other cookbooks of its kind—personal cookbooks
usually were the size of a modern paperback.
30
The manuscript is in poor condition—the paper is
yellowing and torn. The ink is faded light brown, sometimes making the text impossible to read.
Pages 51 to 85, and 97 to 128 were ripped out long ago.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
28
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book”; Norman P. Zacour and Rudlof Hirsch,
Catalogue of Manuscripts in the Libraries of the University of Pennsylvania to 1800:
Supplement B, The Library Chronicle (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1981), Kislak
Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia.
29
!Lehmann, The British Housewife, 2-4, 88; Jane Nylander, Our Own Snug Fireside:
Images of the New England Home, 1760-1860 (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press,
1994), 141; Theophano, Eat My Words, 18.
30
!Patrice Herb-Thompson, “Pennsylvania Immigrant Farming Women of the Mid-
Eighteenth Century” (PhD diss., Pennsylvania State University, 2002), 3, 75; Theophano, Eat My
Words, 23-26.
! ! ! 18!

Figure 1. The cover of The Recipe Book Bettee Saffin and Ann Ellis. Courtesy of Rare Books
and Manuscripts Library, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Photographed by Juliette
Parsons.

! ! ! 19!

Figure 2. The title page of The Recipe Book Bettee Saffin and Ann Ellis. Courtesy of Rare
Books and Manuscripts Library, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Photographed by
Juliette Parsons.

! ! ! 20!
On the title page the following is written:

Bettee Saffin
Her Book 1716
Ann Ellis
Her Book 21
st
October 1762
Ann Ellis
Her Book 21
st
October 1762
31

In the upper left corner, John Ellis (Bettee’s husband) also signed his name in small
letters.
32
In between Bettee’s and Ann’s signatures, Bettee wrote some notes for a medicinal
recipe, “For the Knee in Widney Swelling of ye Joynts.”
33
She also wrote in the lower left
margin: “151 beads in my perrel necklace, 3 Lengths & a Locket in my Gold Chayn,” a reference
to her possesions included with a list of her husband’s belongings on another page.
34
All of the
authors in “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book” frequently misspell words and use incorrect grammar.
In the eighteenth-century English speaking world, spelling and grammar were not standardized.
35

In Grammar Wars: Language as a Cultural Battlefield in 17
th
and 18
th
Century England, the
linguist Linda Mitchell analyzes hundreds of eighteenth-century English texts to demonstrate
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
31
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” iii.!
32
!John Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” iii.
33
!This refers to the title of a medicinal recipe on page 131.
34
!This list of belongings in transcribed and analyzed later in this chapter.
35
!Peter Burke, Languages and Communities in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge,
England: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 56, 64, 77-80; Laurel J. Briton and Leslie K.
Arnovik, The English Language: A Linguistic History (Oxford, England: Oxford University
Press, 2011), 41-45, 119-124; Linda C.!Mitchell, Grammar Wars: Language as Cultural
Battlefield in 17th and 18th Century England (Aldershot, New Hampshire, Ashgate, 2002), 34-
36.
! ! ! 21!
that grammatical styles of the period varied greatly and were largely based on gender, class, and
region. The grammatical styles of literate women like Bettee and Ann, who lived in remote
locations like Somerset and Pennsylvania, were particularly distinctive.
36
Although Bettee’s
handwriting grew shakier with age, she always wrote in a loose cursive with wide lines—the
same as in her signature on the title page.
37
Ann’s first recipes are written in the controlled and
elegant cursive of her 1762 signature, but shortly after moving to North America, she started to
write quick shorthand.
38
As will be explored later in the dissertation, Ann started to adopt more
American spellings the longer she lived in Pennsylvania.
Bettee and Ann also structured their recipes very differently than modern writers. Until
the nineteenth-century, all recipes were written in a rambling paragraph format.
39
There was no
list of ingredients. There were no exact quantities of each item. In their stream-of-consciousness
paragraphs, the focus of the authors frequently wandered. The recipes read like a conversation
with a cook casually explaining to dinner guests how she made a dish.
Below are some such examples from “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book.” For purposes of
comparison, there is one dessert, one meat dish and one condiment recipe from each woman.
Here are a few recipes from Bettee Saffin:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
36
!Burke, Languages and Communities, 79-81; Mitchell, Grammar Wars, 35-41.
37
!Burke, Languages and Communities, 80, 84; Mitchell, Grammar Wars, 37, 46; Saffin,
“The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” iii.
38
!Briton, The English Language 128-131; Burke, Languages and Communities, 73; Ellis,
“The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” iii.!
39
!W.K.H. Bode, European Gastronomy: The Story of Man’s Food and Eating Customs
(London, Saint Edmundsbury, 1994), 34-38; Vincent DiMarco, Egg Pies, Moss Cakes, and
Pigeons Like Puffins: 18
th
Century British Cookery from Manuscript Sources (Lincoln, NE:
iUniverse, 2007), 8-9; Lehmann, Cooking Dynasty, 2, 21; Theophano, Eat My Words, 34-36,
109.
! ! ! 22!
Condiment:

To make Catchup that will keep Good 20 Years

Take a Gallon of Strong stale beer one Pound of Ancho vies washed and cleaned from the
guts half an Ounce of mace half an Ounce of cloves a quarter of an ounce of pepper three
large pieces of ginger one Pound of shallots one quart of flap mushrooms
40
well rubed
and picked boil all thefe over a slow fire till tis wasted, then strain it thro a Flannel bag,
let it stand till tis quite cold, then bottle, and stop it very close this is thought to exceed
what is brought from India, and must be allowed, the most agreeable Relish that can be
given to Fish Sauce. One spoon ful to a pint of melted butter gives taste and Colour above
all other Ingredients.

Note That the stronger and staler the beer is, the better the Catchup will be.
41

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
40
!Flap mushrooms are large mushrooms with a white stalk that bend inward at the top.
The top varies in color from yellow to red to brown. They!come from France and were
fashionable in England in the eighteenth century. DiMarco, Egg Pies, 207-209; John Stobart,
Sugar and Spice: Grocers and Groceries in Provincial England, 1650-1830 (Oxford, England:
Oxford University Press, 2013), 149-151.
41
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 135.
! ! ! 23!

Figure 3. Bettee Saffin’s recipe, “To Make Flummery Mrs. Musgraves Way,” in The Recipe
Book of Bettee Saffin and Ann Ellis. Courtesy of Rare Books and Manuscripts Library,
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Photographed by Juliette Parsons.

Dessert:

To Make Flummery
42
Mrs. Musgraves way

Boyle cow heels or calves feet to a stiff Jelly when Colde take off ye fatt putt it in a
stewpan with a blade of mace 2 or 3 laurill leaves
43
swetten it with a pouder shuger after
it till Cold put it in Coffe dishes to whitten it ad raw Creame a Sufficent quantity to your
liking.
44

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
42
!Flummery is a white Welsh dessert made from gelatin, sugar, and various seasonings.
It also usually includes a starch such as oatmeal, although this version does not. It was very
popular in England from the seventeenth to ininteenth centuries. Bode, European Gastronomy,
151; Toussaint-Samat, History of Food, 209-211.
43
!Laurill leaves (or laurel leaves) were a colloquial term for bay leaves. Stephen
Mennell, All Manners of Food : Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages
to the Present (Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1996), 156-158; Toussaint-
Samat, History of Food, 370, 427.
44
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 22.
! ! ! 24!
Meat Dish:

To Salt a gammon
45
Mrs. Hargroves way

Beat the gammon on the Spine Side with the flat of the Cleaver. take halfe an ounce of
salt pitter a quarter pound of French Salt if you can get it pepper cloves mace mix it to
gether and strew over the gammon lay him with the spine side down ward then strew over
half a pound of brown shuger turn him once a day for 3 days then add more fat as much
as you think is a nugh to save the meat let him by 3 weeks.

Strew the salt pitter on first & let it ly ½ an hower then ye other salt n ye the shuger.
46

Ann Ellis:

Condiment:

Sauce for fryed fish

Take half a pint of gravy and a little Chives, put it in a stew pan + put some scraped a
little lemon peel 3 and then a shallot, cut all small, a bunch of your herbs then strain it up
thick with a pound and a half of sweet butter, serve it with sliced lemon.
47

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
45
Gammon is the hindquarters of a pig, salted and cured. Maquelonne Toussaint-Samat,
A History of Food (West Sussex, England, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 612, 614.
46
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 95.
47
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 89.
! ! ! 25!

Figure 4. Ann Ellis’ recipe, “Chocolate Cream,” in The Recipe Book of Bettee Saffin and Ann
Ellis. Courtesy of Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia. Photographed by Juliette Parsons.

Dessert:

Chocolate Cream

Boyle your cream and grate as much chocolate as you will over it of a good browne
colour and thicken it as thick as good cream with ye yolk of an egg well beaten. Then
with a mill
48
; Mill it up that the froth may be an inch above this cream to ferve it with the
lemon and the orange cream, put it in your glasses.
49

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
48
!In this context, a mill is the eighteenth-century equivalent of a cooking mixer. Mark
Girouard, Life in the British Country House (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press,
1978), 96-97; Lehmann, Cooking Dynasty, 112.
49
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 16.
!
! ! ! 26!
Meat Dish:

To season veal or lamb

Take A layer of veal or lamb, put it in a small pot, season it with pepper and salt. Then
fill your pye + lay some butter on your top + close + bake it. if you find it hot put in a
pint of gravy. But if you keep it long put in none but fill it up with clarified butter.
50

In just these samples, there are major differences between Bettee’s and Ann’s recipes.
Although both wrote in similar grammatical styles and paragraph formats, the contents of Ann’s
recipes are much closer to what one would find in a modern American cookbook. Bettee’s
recipes with the exception of difference in language and a few New World ingredients, were not
much different from recipes from the Early Middle Ages. Although Ann only wrote her recipes a
couple of decades later, she broke with foodways that had existed in Europe for a thousand years.
One of the most striking differences is how Bettee flavors her food when compared to her
daughter. To achieve the strong pungent and sour tastes popular in Europe since the Roman
Empire, Bettee frequently let her food ferment or added large quantities of hard liquor, beer or
wine.
51
This helped to preserve the food, but dishes were frequently fermented or spiked purely
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
50
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 48.
51
!William Buchan, Domestic Medicine, London, William Buchan, 1762 (Cambridge,
England: University of Cambridge Press, 2014), 81, 97; Jean-Louis Flandarin, “Seasoning,
Cooking and Dietetics in the Late Middle Ages”, In Food: A Culinary History, edited by Jean-
Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari (New York, Columbia University Press, 1999), 314;
Paul Freedman, Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination (New Haven, Yale
University Press, 2009).
! ! ! 27!
for the taste. For example, Bettee’s “To make Catchup that will keep Good 20 Years” describes
an emulsion almost identical to garum, the fermented fish sauce that was the most popular
condiment in the Roman Empire.
52
The only major difference between Bettee’s catchup and
Roman garum was that beer is the base ingredient of Bettee’s recipe and there was no alcohol in
garum. But her catchup bears almost no resemblance to twenty-first century ketchup—the recipe
does not even include tomatoes. In her “To Salt a gammon
53
Mrs. Hargroves way”, she let the
meat set for over 3 weeks, which is far longer that would be necessary for preservation.
Bettee also heavily seasoned her dishes with spices, another common practice in Europe
since the Roman era.
54
In her catchup recipe, she called for cloves, mace, ginger, and pepper.
Even in her dessert recipe, “To Make Flummery Mrs. Musgraves way”, Bettee included both
mace and laurill leaves (bay leaves). Conversely, her daughter only used chives in her “Sauce for
fryed fish”, salt and pepper “to season veal or lamb”, and no spices in her recipe for “Chocolate
cream.”
With a few exceptions, Ann used ingredients in ways that would be familiar to a modern
cook. In her sauce for fried fish, she calls for lemon, butter, shallots, and chives. She seasoned
veal and lamb with butter, salt, and pepper. Her chocolate cream was made with sugar,
chocolate, eggs, and milk.
Ann’s recipes are also more practical, more to the point, and less rambling. Whereas her
mother titles her recipes with names like “To Salt a gammon Mrs. Hargroves way” and “To
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
52
!Flandarin, “Seasoning,” 312; Massimo Montanari,“Romans, Barbarians, Christians:
The Dawn of European Food Culture” In Food: A Culinary History, edited by Jean-Louis
Flandrin and Massimo Montanari (New York, Columbia University Press, 1999), 167; Terence
Scully, The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, England, Boydell, 1995), 41-67.
53
Mennell, All Manners of Food, 171; Stobart, Sugar and Spice, 189-190; Toussaint-
Samat, History of Food, 285.
54
!Montanari, “Romans,” 166-169; Scully, Art of Cookery, 65-72.
!
! ! ! 28!
Make Flummery Mrs. Musgraves way”, Ann’s titles simply describe the food: “Sauce for fryed
fish” and “Chocolate cream.” When Bettee describes her catchup, she adds that her recipe “is
thought to exceed what is brought from India”, whereas Ann only describes the exact cooking
process. Bettee also uses more colorful language: in her recipe for gammon, she writes, “beat the
gammon on the Spine Side with the flat of the Cleaver” and describes her meat as a “him”. In her
recipe, “To season veal or lamb”, Ann refers to the meat as an “it” and instructs the cook to “put
it in a small pot.” As will be examined in this dissertation, Ann and other eighteenth-century
Anglo-American immigrants changed the language of their recipes to fit the realities of their new
lives in the colonies.
55

Approximately 85% of “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book” is filled with Bettee’s and Ann’s
recipes. However, other members of the family, including Bettee’s husband and son, also wrote
in the text for different purposes. Paper, especially bound books, was expensive in the
eighteenth-century so it was a common practice for personal cookbooks to also be used by the
family as a commonplace book.
56

Bettee and Ann also used the book to help them with their other responsibilities as
woman of the house. These responsibilities included cleaning, sewing, making household goods
such as soap and ink, and handling medical problems. One of Bettee’s first entries in the
cookbook was in 1726, where she wrote instructions, “For the cleaning of any Sort of Oyl
Pictures.”
57
On the same page, she later explained how “To Make a Fine Glow to Cherry or hard
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
55
Burke, Languages and Communities, 86; Mitchell, Grammar Wars, 22, 68-71.!
56
!Harbury, Cooking Dynasty, 34-37; Lehmann, Cooking Dynasty, 90-92, 144; Kay Moss,
Seeking the Historical Cook: Exploring Eighteenth-Century Southern Foodways (Columbia,
South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 2013), 6-8, 16; Theophano, Eat My Words,
89, 127.
57
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 172.
! ! ! 29!
Wood.”
58
Bettee directs how “To Make China Ink as the Chines doe it”
59
and Ann describes
how “To make japon or blak Shining Ink.”
60
On page 168, Ann writes how to make “Paste for
Whitening & Cleaning the Teeth.”
Bettee and Ann wrote dozens of medicinal recipes as well. Each woman wrote these
cures in the same style as their recipes. Bettee’s recipes were long, colorful and tangential,
whereas Ann’s are more to the point. Here is a representative example of one of her medicinal
recipes:

A method to bring the dead to life in cause of Sufication:

as Soon as it is suspected that a mans Life is in danger of death by Suffication lay damp
Sulpher or as vapors from a pitt of charcoal or any other obnoctious fluidia & the which
have happened to any Living person Lay your dead person in a proper position then Let a
Living person lay his mouth on the dead persons mouth at your same time holding his
nostrils and blow his breath strongly until he perceives his chest rise & your heart to
move & recover its motion at the same tim let his head armes then legs & feet be well
rubed with warm hands or warmed woolen cloth + until the blood is fluctuating in your
vesels & your Serculation compleated & ye person begin to stir then som little cordial
and put him in a warm bed.

It may be tried after drowning
61

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
58
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 172.
59
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 174.
60
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,”185.
! ! ! 30!
One of Ann’s prescriptions:

A mixture for Itch

Rx. Take blak soap half a pound, salav manioc
62
, one ounce finely powdered oyle of
turnpintine, and then mix all together & apply on the parts effected.”
63

Bettee designated some of these prescriptions to be used by herself and Ann for their
specific health problems. Bettee apparently had kidney stones since she describes how to make
“Doctor Hartley’s Dissolvent for the Stone in my Kidneys.”
64
She wrote a recipe for her daughter
entitled “A Emmenagogue Julep for painful Discord of your Menses.”
65

She also wrote essays on health, nutrition, and medicine in the text, although Ann did not.
Some of the commentaries appear to be original, some came from Gentleman’s Magazine or
other periodicals; and some she attributed to physicians. Here is an example of one of Bettee’s
original compositions entitled “Of the good & Bad Effects of Tobacco”
66
:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
61
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 164.
62
Salav manioc is term for cassava sometimes used by Anglo-American colonists in the
18
th
century. Eden, Early American Table, 221; Nylander, 129, 203.
63
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 166.
64
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 163.
65
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 169.!
66
!In his article, Tales Tobacco Told in Sixteenth-Century Europe,” the historian Peter
Mancall examines how the spread of tobacco as a commodity was facilitated by the printing
press. As writers published their theories concerning tobacco, others were exposed to the plant.
Bettee Saffin’s opinions on tobacco were no doubt influenced by these published works. Peter
Mancall, “Tales Tobacco Told in Sixteenth-Century Europe,” Environmental History 9, no. 4
(October 2004): 648-678.
! ! ! 31!
Tobacco Is very much used amongst us either by smoking it in a pipe by way of snuff or
chewing of it in the mouth & it is somtims put up the nose in Litell Pellets where it is
found to Produce good Effect to draw a deal of water or pitmata from the head resolve
Catarrhs and cause a free Resperation but this way of taking is said to reduce the sight
when taken in great quantiys. In the way of Snuff it reduses the smelling & greatly
diminishes the apetite that taken in the way of smoke dries and damiges the brain in so
much that we read of a person who through the Excess of smoking had so dried his Brian
to that degree that After his death thar was nothing found in his Scull but a Little Blak
Lump Consisting of Mear Membranes. indeed Smoking and Chewing Tobacco have bin
extreemed of Service whar the gland have abounded with Lymph & whare the
Constitution in general have abounded and Loaded with Serum and the same has bin said
to have relies some afthmatic patients but this can be no reason for its habitual Use
Espeically for these who have no occasion for it for to sutch as an Eminent Physician
apprehends it dos a great deal of prejudice by drawing the Saliva which Nature
Providentially prepars to delute and in Som Measuer to dissolve Thirst & tharby tempts
the person who smoks or chews to drink Mor then is sufficient for any good purpose in
the Constitution add to this that many people have bin brought into Dropsis to profuce
Discharges of the Siliva Excited Upon the Whole it must be Extremely preiudicial except
when it can be made Subservient to any good Medicinial purposes Even it shouts to be
used like Opium it Should be used when required onely when the necesity for it ceases.
! ! ! 32!
The Greatest & most Medical use of Tobacco is the smoke conveid by the body by Way
of Clyster which stimulats so strongly as to produce Stools when Every other method has
faild.
67

Women often included medical information in their personal cookbooks.
68
Until the early
nineteenth-century, wives and mothers in England and the American colonies were expected to
know how to treat most non-lethal ailments.
69
Treatments were frequently made from the same
ingredients as food, meaning not only that both meals and medicine were made in the same
kitchen, but also that it was often difficult to tell the two apart.
70
This thought is summed up by
Eliza Smith in the introduction of the first American edition of The Complete Housewife in 1742:
“Food and Physick [are] one and the same thing.”
71
Since these duties were closely connected,
the medicinal recipes in “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book” will also be examined with culinary
recipes throughout the dissertation.
Bettee and Ann both also used their cookbook to teach their children to read and write.
Educated eighteenth-century English women and their Anglo-American counterparts frequently
lent the pages of their personal cookbooks to reading and writing exercises.
72
Ann first wrote in
the cookbook to practice her reading and writing, only later using it in the kitchen. As she copied
her mother’s recipes word for word, her penmanship improved. Mothers often taught their
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
67
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 170.
68
!DiMarco, Egg Pies, 6; Kimball, Martha Washington Cookbook, 12-14, Theophano,
Eat My Words, 3, 6-12.
69
!DiMarco, Egg Pies, 8-11, Harbury, Cooking Dynasty, 6-7, Herb-Thompson,
“Immigrant Farming Women,” 28-31, Theophano, Eat My Words, 5-8.
70
!Smith, Compleat Housewife, 14-17; Theophano, Eat My Words, 5-8, 64-67.
71
!Smith, Compleat Housewife, 16.
72
!Harbury, Cooking Dynasty, 6-7, Herb-Thompson, “Immigrant Farming Women,” 27-
29, Theophano, Eat My Words, 5-8.
! ! ! 33!
daughters to read and write by copying recipes—in doing so girls became familiar with
cooking.
73
In “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book”, Ann’s daughter also copied her mother’s recipes
as a writing exercise, but never wrote any recipes of her own.
John and Bettee Ellis’ only son, also named John, learned to read and write in the
cookbook as well.
74
However, instead of copying recipes, John the younger copied battle
accounts and university speeches. Some of these battle accounts are described later in this
chapter. Here is his copy of the beginning of Provost William Smith’s commencement speech at
the College and Academy of Philadelphia (later known as the University of Pennsylvania) in
1757:

A charge Delivered May 17 1757 at the first Anniversary. Comensment in the Colleg &
academy of Philadelphia, by the Revarnd Mr Smith Provost of the Same, to the young
gentlemen.

Who, with so much honour & public applause took thar degrees on that occasion: viz to

Master of Arts. Paul Jackson. Professor of the Languages in the College & academy

Bachelors of Arts. Jacob Duche, Francis Hopkinson, Hugh Williamson, James Latta,
Samuel Morgan & John Morgan.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
73
!Harbury, Cooking Dynasty, 8-15, Kimball, Martha Washington Cookbook, 11,
Theophano, Eat My Words, 9-13.
74
!This John Ellis was born in 1729 to John and Bettee Ellis in Porlock, Somerset. He was
their eldest child and only son. St. Dubricius Birth Records 1729, Parish Records 1538-1800,
Somerset Records Office, Tauton, Somerset, England.
! ! ! 34!
Honorary Bachelors of Art. Josiah Martin & Soloman Southwik

Gentlemen you know appear as candidates for your first Honours…
75

This speech and the military accounts were also published in a 1757 edition of Gentleman’s
Magazine, a favorite newspaper of Bettee’s for recipes, so it is likely that is where the writing
exercises originated.
76

There are also loose sheets of paper placed between the pages of the cookbook, which
may or may not have any connection to the book itself. On some of these loose sheets of paper
found between pages 26 and 27 are military accounts of the French and Indian War in
Pennsylvania and New York. Here is a sample:

May 30
th
—Ar[?] my [?] of the form the Lathau Indian Captain Foote from Bombay from
where lay the French General had made an unsuccessful attempt on Taufour made a
desperate ally and put him to the flight with lots of his men and his baggage and that
Admiral Pocock had after having wasted French at Fort Pitt.

June 9
th
—the Honour Molly Keating from Waterford for New York is taken by the
French.

These accounts can also be found almost word for word in Volume 29 of Gentleman’s Magazine
from 1759, Bettee’s favorite source for recipes, so they may have also been writing exercises for
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
75
!“The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,”30.
76
!!Gentleman’s Magazine 1736-1849. Harvard University, Online.
! ! ! 35!
her son.
77
However, her son’s handwriting in these paragraphs is far less skilled than elsewhere,
so this was likely one of his earliest writing exercises. If that is the case, then this account must
have come from another source published before 1759.
On the other loose papers are recipes, some of which are addressed to and signed by other
women who are not mentioned elsewhere in the cookbook. Between pages 94 and 95 is a
medical recipe entitled “A good oyle for a Straine or bruise.” The following loose recipes are
found between pages 134 and 135: a page with 3 dessert recipes addressed to Malley Spark on
Market Street; “An excellent Purging Elexer recommended by Doctor Wilkinson” with no
signature; “Betty Cane’s Eye Water, 1717” addressed to Robert Rowe; a page with 6 recipes for
wine, one for kidney beans, and one for “Pike like anchovies” without signatures; and another
unsigned recipe for “Malligo wine.”
78

“The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book” is not structured in any logical way. Occasionally, Bettee
and Ann wrote a few recipes in a row on specific types of food. For example, Ann listed multiple
recipes for biskits
79
on page 21 and Bettee wrote three different wine recipes on page 162.
80

Typically, however, different authors frequently wrote on different topics on the same page. For
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
77
!Gentleman’s Magazine 1736-1849. Harvard University, Online.
78
!Recipes in Gentleman’s Magazine frequently mentioned Malligo wine. Since Bettee so
frequently cited that newspaper, it makes it more likely that these recipes were connected to her
in some way, even though they are not written in her handwriting.
79
!Ann writes biscuit as biskit—a common spelling for the period. In her recipes, she
refers to cookies both as cookies and biskits. Biscuit is still the English word for cookie. The
word cookie comes from Dutch immigrants. In the late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-
century, Americans slowly started to adopt the term cookie. However, during that period, both
words were used interchangeably. Michael Krondl, Sweet Invention: A History of Dessert
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 6, 9-13,187-190; Keith Stavely, America’s
Founding Food (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 240,
251-255.
80
!On page 21 of “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book”, Ann wrote the following biskit recipes:
Chocolate Biskit, Plain Biskit, Dutch Biskit, Almond Biskit and Hunney Biskit. On page 162,
Bettee included these wine recpies: To Make Raspbery Wine, To Make Balm Wine and To Make
Elder Flower Wine.
! ! ! 36!
example, on page 11, the younger John Ellis copied a 1704 account of Sir George Rooke’s naval
engagements and Ann wrote recipes for gooseberry pie, dried fruit, and boiled mushrooms.
81

While some pages are filled with these varied entries, other pages are skipped entirely. Most
entries are not signed or dated, although enough are that the authors of the other passages can be
determined through handwriting.
Fortunately, Ann did make the book a bit easier to read when she took possession of it.
She numbered all the pages—even the blank ones. This dissertation refers to page numbers using
Ann’s system. On the left side of pages 1 through 6, Ann wrote and signed an alphabetical table
of contents for recipes. In the table of contents, she included most of her recipes and about half
of Bettee’s recipes. It appears as if Ann listed recipes she intended to use. She also may have
done this to prepare the cookbook for her daughter.

The Story of Bettee and Ann

The daughter of Thomas Saffin and Mary Yandell, Bettee Saffin, was baptized in 1707 at
St. Andrew’s Parish in the market town of Wiveliscombe, Somerset, England.
82
Bettee was the
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
81
!The exact recipes that Ann wrote on page 11 are The Cookbook of Bettee Saffin and
Ann Ellis are To dry pears, To dry pippons, Pippon loaf, Gooseberry Pie, To Make Mushrooms,
and Quince Dried. Pippons are a type of apple native to England. Quinces are similar to pears.
Both fruits were very popular in England and Anglo-North America until the nineteenth century.
DiMarco, Egg Pies, 67-70, Stavely, Founding Food, 121, Stobart, Sugar and Spice, 153.
82
No birth records exist for Bettee, her siblings or her parents, so these baptism records
are the closest evidence for age available. The Church of England encouraged members to
baptize their children in infancy so their birth years can be approximated with their baptism
records, but studies on the length of time between birth and baptism among Anglicans in
seventeenth and eighteenth-century England reveal that many rural and wealthy families like this
one delayed baptisms for 5 to 8 years. Wrigley, E.A., R.S. Davies, and J.E. Oeppen. English
Population History from Family Reconstitution, 1580-1837 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge
University Press, 1997), 130-138, 173-179; Susan Farrington, Wiveliscombe: A History of a
! ! ! 37!
second eldest child and eldest girl with six siblings: Robert (bapt. 1706), John (bapt. 1709),
Rebecca (bapt. 1715), Joan (bapt. 1717), Ann (bapt. 1722), and William (bapt. 1724).
83
All of
her brothers and sisters were also baptized at the same church in the same town.
84
Bettee’s
parents were born in Wiveliscombe as well: her father, Thomas Saffin was born in 1680 and her
mother, Mary Yandrell, was born in 1687.
85
Mary Yandell’s parents, Philip Yandrell (1640) and
Joanne King (1650), were also born there.
86

Somerset was an agricultural county in southwestern England with a border on the Bristol
Channel.
87
It is the birthplace of cheddar cheese, and was also known for apples, dairy products,
and sheep—all of which feature prominently in “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book”.
88
Farmers
traded these goods in the Somerset port towns on the Bristol Channel and at the county’s many
markets and fairs.
89
Thanks to this extensive trade network, Somerset was one of the wealthiest
rural counties in England for centuries.
90
However, the economy quickly collapsed in the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Somerset Market Town (London, Colden, 2005), 5-6, 11, 13-15; St. Andrew’s Parish Records
1607-1770, Somerset Records Office, Tauton, Somerset, England.
83
!St. Andrew’s Parish Records 1607-1770.
84
!The baptism records for all of these individuals is in the St. Andrew’s Parish Records.
There is no extant record for Thomas Saffin’s parents. That record was likely destroyed when
Somerset’s archives in Tauton were bombed by German planes in 1940. Although Somerset kept
excellent records, much of its history was lost as result of the attack.
85
!St. Andrew’s Parish Records 1607-1770.!
86
!St. Andrew’s Parish Records 1607-1770.
87
!R.W. Dunning, M.C. Siraut, A.T. Thacker and Elizabeth Williamson, A History of the
County of Somerset: Volume 9 (London, University of London, 2006), 52, 64, 131; Farrington,
Wiveliscombe, 4.
88
!Dunning, County of Somerset, 11-15, 86-88, Farrington, Wiveliscombe, 4.
89
!Farrington, Wiveliscombe, 3-5; Clare Gathercole, An Archeological Assessment of
Wiveliscombe (Taunton, Somerset: Somerset County Council Extensive Archeological Survey,
2003), 7.
90
!Dunning, County of Somerset, 20; Farrington, Wiveliscombe, 3; Gathercole,
Archeological Assessment, 2-4.
! ! ! 38!

Figure 5. St. Andrew’s Parish in Wiveliscombe, Somerset. Bettee Saffin was baptized here in
1707. Photograph courtesy of Ross Burgess.
! ! ! 39!
eighteenth-century as Somerset’s small local businesses could not keep up with rapid
industrialization.
91

Wiveliscombe was an old market town located in the southwest of Somerset, nine miles
west of Taunton, the county seat.
92
The town grew steadily from the eleventh-century onward,
holding two annual fairs and two weekly markets by the end of the thirteenth-century.
93
From the
sixteenth to eighteenth-century, Wiveliscombe was one of the major wool producers in the
country.
94
It is likely that the Saffin family had some connection to the wool industry, as Bettee
included multiple instructions for dying wool in her cookbook.
95

Little is known about Bettee’s immediate family of origin beyond the information in the
cookbook and their genealogical data. However, all the evidence suggests that the Saffin family
of Wiveliscombe was affluent. In the countryside of early eighteenth-century England, only girls
from prosperous families learned to read and write.
96
Another indicator of the Saffin family’s
prosperity is Bettee’s cookbook, an expensively bound book of over 200 pages in a dyed calfskin
cover.
97

Bettee married John Ellis on April 17, 1728 at West Somerset Parish in Minehead,
Somerset, England.
98
In the marriage record, she was listed as a spinster of that parish, so it
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
91
!Dunning, County of Somerset, 21-23; Cloke, Writing the Rural, 11.
92
!Farrington, Wiveliscombe, 3-5; Gathercole, Archeological Assessment, 7
93
!Cloke, Writing the Rural, 11; Farrington, Wiveliscombe, 1, 6-7.
94
!Farrington, Wiveliscombe, 2; Gathercole, Archeological Assessment, 6-7.
95
!Cloke, Writing the Rural, 12.
96
!Cloke, Writing the Rural, 12-14; Farrington, Wiveliscombe, 3.
97
The Saffin family was one of the largest landowning families in Somerset for hundreds
of years. However, it is unknown how Bettee’s branch of the family was related. Dunning,
County of Somerset, 22, 25-27; Farrington, Wiveliscombe, 174-176, 180.
98
!Bettee Saffin married John on 17 April 1728 in West Minehead at West Somerset
Episcopal Parish. West Somerset Episcopal Parish Records 1724-1728, Somerset Records
Office, Tauton, Somerset, England.
! ! ! 40!
seems likely that her family moved to Minehead sometime between her baby brother William’s
baptism in 1724 and her marriage in 1728.
99

Larger than Wivliescombe, Minehead was a lively fishing and shipping port some twenty
miles north.
100
Ships from Minehead traded local herring and wool with Wales for cattle and
with France for salt.
101
Bettee frequently used salt and beef in her recipes. She also wrote one
herring recipe entitled “To Pickel Herrings that will Ceep good all the year”.
Bettee’s husband, John Ellis, was born in 1700 in Luccombe, Somerset.
102
He was the
youngest child of Joan and John Ellis with older brothers Ethelred (1688) and Leonard (1694),
and older sister, Susanna (1695).
103
John’s father and siblings were all also born in Luccombe,
and when he was sixteen, his father died there.
104

The village of Luccombe was one of the flattest places in England, which made it perfect
for farming.
105
The people of Luccombe were isolated from the world by Dunkery Beacon, the
largest peak in Somerset at 1,740 feet, which surrounded the town on almost all sides.
106
So even
though Minehead was only four miles southwest and Porlock was two miles north, it was
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
99
West Somerset Parish Records, 1724-1728.
100
!Dunning, County of Somerset, 20-22.
101
!Cloke, Writing the Rural, 17;!Dunning, County of Somerset, 21-23.
102
!Blessed Virgin Mary Parish Records, 1648-1715, Somerset Records Office, Tauton,
Somerset, England.
103
!The birth of John Ellis, his father, and siblings are recorded in the parish records for
Blessed Virgin Mary in Luccombe, Somerset. The father was born in 1660. There is no record of
his mother’s maiden name or date of birth. It is likely that if she was born in Somerset her birth
record was also destroyed in the German bombing that is discussed in the footnotes for this
chapter. Blessed Virgin Mary Parish Records, 1648-1715.
104
!Blessed Virgin Mary Parish Records, 1648-1715.
105
!Cloke, Writing the Rural, 18-20.
106
!Cloke, Writing the Rural, 18-20; Dunning, County of Somerset, 20.
! ! ! 41!
unusual that John Ellis married someone outside of Luccombe—the town had some of the
highest rates of intermarriage in England until the nineteenth-century.
107

Nevertheless, it is impossible to determine which John Ellis married Bettee Saffin. There
were numerous people named John Ellis in Somerset of a similar age, many of whom were
related.
108
Several of them were born or lived in Luccombe.
109

However, information in the cookbook suggests that John Ellis was a physician, a
surgeon or a scientist. In a list of his belongings, which can be found later in this chapter, John
stated that he owned the following medical instruments: “2 Silver Lancil Cups my name on it
with 6 tipped lancits, 1 Silver Lancit case without lancits…1 Speculum Lingua
110
… 1 Vula
Spoon
111
…1 procipital Quill
112
…2 Scisors & forcips with silver Handel.”
113
He also noted that
his father was the owner of the “Silver Lancit case without lancits,”
114
so it is likely that he also
belonged to the same profession.
Other evidence in the cookbook indicates that John’s father was both a gentleman and a
man of science. In a note to Ann on evaluating the quality of bread, Bettee writes: “Thar are
ways by which those that are acuftomed to your analising of mixed bodeys may mor certinly
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
107
!Cloke, Writing the Rural, 19-20; Dunning, County of Somerset, 102.
108
!Blessed Virgin Mary Parish Records, 1648-1715.
109
!Blessed Virgin Mary Parish Records, 1648-1715.
110
!A tongue depressor for medical use. William Buchan, Domestic Medicine, 62;
Dorothy Porter and Roy Porter, Patient’s Progress: Doctors and Doctoring in Eighteenth
Century England (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1989), 155.
111
!A medical instrument used to move the uvula at the roof of the mouth. Buchan,
Domestic Medicine, 74; Porter and Porter, Patient’s Progress, 142.
112
!Procipital is an 18
th
century spelling for preoccipital, which refers to various locations
in the brain. A procipital quill was used for dissection. Buchan, Domestic Medicine, 111-112;
Porter and Parter, 158-160.
113
John Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” i.
114
!John Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” i.
! ! ! 42!
discover from your Grand Sir on your fathers side…”
115
When Bettee refers to her father-in-law,
she calls him Grand Sir, an honorific name for a titled grandfather in Somerset and Southern
England.
116
Her reference to him as someone who was “…acuftomed to analising of mixed
bodeys…” also seems to indicate that he was scientist or physician, particularly since he also
owned a silver lancet case.
John Ellis came from an extended family of some renown. His most famous
contemporary relative of the same name was a naturalist. That John Ellis (1710-1776) studied
plant life in the Americas and in England.
117
Bettee and John’s son, also John Ellis, completed a
writing exercise where he copied some of the writings of another John Ellis, who was secretary
to the Secretary of State Sir Charles Hedges, during the Seven Years War.
118
These included
writings entitled “1704—An account of Sir George Rooke’s Taking & destroying fleet of Men of
War & Spanish Galloons Articles of Capitulation between Sir George Rooke at Vigo October
12
th
1702,”
119
“the prince of Denmark & the Governor of Gibralter”
120
and “1705—Sir George
Rooke’s account of the Sea Ingagment near Malingo.”
121
These writings were later published in
Gentleman’s Magazine in 1759, so this may have been another one of Bettee’s writing exercises
for her son from that periodical.
122

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
115
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 29.
116
!Grand sir was an honorific term for a titled older gentleman, but it also means
grandfather in this context.!Farrington, Wiveliscombe, 84; Mitchell, Grammar Wars, 78.
117
!Julius Groner and Paul Cornelius, John Ellis: Merchant, Microscopist, Naturalist, and
King's Agent: A Biologist of His Times (London: Boxwood Press, 1996), 14, 36-39.
118
!Calendar of the State Papers 1704-1705, Domestic Series, of the Reign of Queen
Anne. Great Britain Public Record Office. London.
119
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 11.
120
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 14.
121
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 15.
122
!Gentleman’s Magazine 1736-1849. Harvard University, Online.
! ! ! 43!
Bettee and John Ellis settled in Porlock, Somerset where they had four children: John
(1729), Elizabeth (1736-38), Ann (1738), and Mary (1740).
123
Porlock was a market and port
town on the Bristol Channel located on the opposite side of Dunkery Beacon from Luccombe.
124

The town was a center of trade between Somerset and Wales—fifteen miles apart across the
Bristol Channel.
125
In port towns such as Minehead and Porlock, a woman with money like
Bettee could buy exotic foodstuffs for her recipes.
126
She frequently used large quantities of salt
and spices—exotic indicators of high social status.
In addition to her use of expensive spices, Bettee’s entries provide other examples of
wealth. In some of her recipes, she writes how to best assign tasks to servants or housekeepers.
In her note to Ann on judging bread quality she writes: “…If the bread be browner than it ought
to be hard and crumblry thar is bean flower…thes are obvious marks of bad bread and according
to the mistress of a family will with your hous keeper or servant maid may judge of it.”
127
On
pages 180 and 181 she describes how to clean a variety of expensive fabrics including
instructions “To clean white Silke,” “To clean Indigo Silke,” “To Cleane imbrodery on Silke,”
and “to Cleane threded Sattins.”
128

Bettee, her husband, and her children all lived comfortably for decades. However, in
1757, Bettee and John found themselves in dire financial straits. This was likely tied to the
sudden collapse of Somerset’s cottage industries in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. The
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
123
!All of these births, and Elizabeth’s death, are on record in the St. Dubricius Parish
Records.
124
!Dunning, County of Somerset, 21-23.
125
!Cloke, Writing the Rural, 21;!Dunning, County of Somerset, 24.
126
!Dunning, County of Somerset, 23-25.
127
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 29.
128
!Kate Haulman, The Politics of Fashion in Eighteenth-century America (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 113-115; Joan Jenson, Loosening the Bonds: Mid-
Atlantic Farming Women (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 74-77.
! ! ! 44!
county’s economy was closely tied to the small-scale production of cheddar cheese, spun wool,
and apple cider. As historian Joan Thirsk details in The Rural Economy of England, these local
small businesses could not produce nearly enough to compete with the sudden rise of rapid
manufacturing in factories.
129
Many of the wealthiest families in the county lost their fortunes
overnight—it is likely that Bettee’s family suffered the same fate.
130
Although Bettee and John
never specifically recorded of the cause of their economic difficulties in their cookbook, both
wrote of its effect on their lives. In 1757, Bettee started writing thrifty recipes for times of
famine. Here is one example:

Som Compound Dishes of wholsom Food in time of Scarcety Recommended in the
Northhampton Mercury November 28 1757 intended principly for that Endeavor to
conceal thar Wants

take half a pound of Beef muton or pork. Cut it into small pices. ½ a pint of peas 3
turnips sliced & 3 potatos or a few leeks cut very Small an onion or 2; put to them 3 pints
& a quart of water let it boyle let it boyle gently on a very slow fire about 2 howers then
thicken it with a a pound of rice (or ½ a pound of oatmeal & no rice) or a quarter as you
like it in thickness, boyle it for ½ of an hower, after your tickening is put ib, stirring it
akk your time. Then season it with salt or a little pepper or ginger.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
129
!Joan Thirsk, The Rural Economy of England (London: Bloomsbury, 2003), vi, 13, 18,
170-177, 179-184.
130
!Cloke, Writing the Rural, 11, Dunning, County of Somerset, 21-23.!
! ! ! 45!
Note: if turnips or potatos are not to be had carots parsnips or Jerusalem artichokes will
Serve as well boyled is far from being unpleasant, very nourishing & as only 3 pints will
be wasted in boyling it will be a meal sufficient for 3 or 4 persons without a drink and
will cost but 4 pence.
131

This penny-pinching recipe is very different that the meals Bettee used to cook. Instead
of lots of expensive spices, she calls for only “salt or a little pepper or ginger.” In her note at the
bottom, she seems concerned about money and wasting beer. Bettee writes that “only 3 pints will
be wasted in boyling” and “it will cost but 4 pence.” Prior to 1757, Bettee never mentioned how
much ingredients cost or worried about waste. She also seems distracted, because she repeats
words and phrases, which she did not do when she copied other recipes. For example, she wrote,
“let it boyle” twice in a row. Starting in 1757, all of Bettee’s recipes started to look like this one.
In that same year, John and Bettee separately listed their valuable possessions on the first
pages of the book, possibly in preparation for sale as the exact values of some of the items are
also listed:

This John’s list:

May 1757
A memorandum of Plate belonging to me, John Ellis

1 Large Tankard

1 Quart Tankard

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
131
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 26.!
! ! ! 46!
1 Quart Won by Dangerfield

1 Silver Pint

4 Silver Bakers or 4 handell inbossed Cupps

1 Silver Tea pott & Lamp

2 Tea camphors

12 Tea spoons

1 pare of Tea Tongs

1 Silver Skim Spoon

1 Cream or Milk cup

1 Large Silver

1 Small ditto

2 Silver Poringers
132

13 old fashioned spoon

1 Soup spoon large

2 Silver Salts & one butter Dish

1 Punch Ladle

1 Silver Spunge for hungary water

1 Cracker nut Cup tiped with Silver
133

1 Silver Saluatory my name on it with 4 Coat of arms

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
132
!A poringer was a small silver dish for porridge, most commonly used by children.
Louis Lemery, A Treatise of All Sorts of Foods (London: John Taylor, 1704); Ina Lipkowitz,
Words to Eat By: Five Foods and the Culinary History of the English Language (New York:
Macmillan, 2011), 209.
133
!A nutcracker. Lipkowitz, 166; Gervase Markham, Countrey Contentments, or English
Huswife, London: R. Jackson, 1623 (Quebec City, Canada: McGill-Queens University Press,
1998), 90.
! ! ! 47!
2 Silver Lancil Cups my name on it with 6 tipped lancits

1 Silver Lancit case without lancits
-Silver case without belonging to my father

1 Speculum Lingua
134

-one peny Weight in Silver. Value twenty penny weight to one ounce.

1 Spatula

1 Vula Spoon
135

-one grain of Gould in value.

1 procipital Quill
136

-2 and 50 in proportions 2 grains [gold].

1 bodkin or probe

2 Scisors & forcips with silver handel.
137

And this is what is left of Bettee’s list (part of the page has been cut out):

“151 beads in my perrel necklace

3 Lengths & a Locket in my Gold Chayn.
138

In January 1761, John Ellis died.
139
Bettee now found herself widowed and
impoverished. Like many others who lost their fortunes in Somerset, Bettee and Ann moved to
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
134
!A tongue depressor for medical use. Buchan, Domestic Medicine, 62; Porter and
Porter, Patient’s Progress, 92.
135
!A medical instrument used to move the uvula at the roof of the mouth. Buchan,
Domestic Medicine, 77; Porter and Porter, Patient’s Progress, 103.
136
!Procipital is an eighteenth-century spelling for preoccipital, which refers to various
locations in the brain. A procipital quill was used for dissection. Buchan, Domestic Medicine, 78;
Porter and Porter, Patient’s Progress, 63.
137
!John Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” i.
138
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” ii.
! ! ! 48!
London later that year.
140
A March 1762 debt notice from Gentleman’s Magazine, the newspaper
that Bettee frequently cited for recipes in the cookbook, places them in Bermondsy, Southwark,
London.
141

Located south of the River Thames, Southwark was one of the oldest regions in
London.
142
Since at least the fourteenth-century, Southwark was known as a disreputable place
full of taverns and prostitutes.
143
In the sixteenth-century, the community also became known for
bear baiting, bulls rings, bowling alleys and the Globe Theatre.
144
Southwark was also isolated
and self-contained—the only way to reach the borough from the rest of London was by crossing
the London Bridge.
145
In the eighteenth-century, the population of Southwark quickly increased
after Parliament ordered the construction of new bridges, starting with Blackfriars Bridge in
1756.
146
Southwark both gained in industrial might but lost its last vestiges of respectability, as
the rich moved out and the industrial poor moved in.
147

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
139
!The record of John Ellis’ will is available in the Somerset county archives in Tauton,
Somerset. However, the German bombing of Tauton in 1940 destroyed the Calendar of Wills in
Bundles, 1597-1799, which included the physical document. The will may have included items
on this list, but there is no way to know for sure.
140
!Cloke, Writing the Rural, 11, Dunning, County of Somerset, 21-23.
141
!Office of the Commissioners of Bankrupts and Court of Bankruptcy: Bankruptcy
Commission Files, 1753-1854. Records of the Office of the Commissioners of Bankrupts, the
successor bankruptcy courts, and the Court for the Relief of Insolvent Debtors. The National
Archives, London, England.
142
!John Noorthouck, A New History of London: Including Westminster and Southwark
(London: Centre for Metropolitan History, 1773), 201, 234; Roy Porter, London: A Social
History, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1998), 367.
143
!Thomas Allen, The History and Antiquities of London, Westminister, Southwark and
Parts Adjacent (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2009), 146-148, 177;
Noorthouck, 235-236.
144
!Allen, Antiquities of London, 153, 159; Daniel Lysons, Environs of London (London:
Centre for Metropolitan History, London, 1792), 169-171.
145
!Porter, London, 351, 389.
146
!Allen, Antiquities of London, 178; Noorthouck, New History of London, 270-278.
147
!Allen, Antiquities of London, 179-181; Lysons, Environs of London, 170-172.
! ! ! 49!
Bermondsy was the Southwark neighborhood closest to the Thames.
148
It deteriorated the
fastest.
149
Berdmondsy quickly became the center of the tanning and rope making industries, as
well as a warehouse district.
150
It was soon one of the worst slums in London.
151

Bettee and Ann must have been desperate when they left for London in 1761, particularly
since they moved to Berdmondsy in Southwark. As two impoverished, unmarried women
unaccustomed to poverty or the city, their future looked bleak. Ann was already a spinster
152
and
Bettee was not a young widow.
When Ann Ellis married Christopher Smith on February 2, 1763 at St. Mary Magdalene
in London, she likely did so out of desperation.
153
The groom could barely sign his own name on
the marriage record and since he never used the cookbook, it is unlikely he ever learned to
write.
154
Ann’s confident signature in the parish marriage record stands in contrast—less than
half the women in the St. Mary Magdalene parish register could sign their own name.
155

Christopher and Ann left for America shortly after their wedding. Since they arrived in
Philadelphia on September 21, 1763 and voyages typically took two to three months, the couple

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
148
!Allen, Antiquities of London, 190; Lysons, Environs of London, 169, 188.
149
!Allen, Antiquities of London, 184; Noorthouck, New History of London, 225, 239.
150
!Lysons, Environs of London, 169, 188; Noorthouck, New History of London, 272-272.
151
!Lysons, Environs of London,170-173.
152
!Ann is listed as a spinster on her marriage record. St. Mary Magdalene, Bermondsey,
Southwark, London Register of Marriages 1763, Church of England Parish Registers, 1754-
1921, London Metropolitan Archives, London.
153
!London Register of Marriages 1763.
154
!London Register of Marriages 1763.
155
!London Register of Marriages 1763.
! ! ! 50!

Figure 6. St. Mary Magdalene Church in Bermondsy, Southwark, London. Ann Ellis married
Christopher Smith here on February 2, 1763. Photograph courtesy of Fin Fahey.

! ! ! 51!
likely left in May or June of that year.
156
Bettee died alone in 1765.
157
She was buried in the St.
Mary Magdalene churchyard.
158

After arriving in Philadelphia in 1763, there is no record of either Ann or Christopher
until 1790, when Christopher Smith, Ann Smith, and their daughter show up in the Northern
Liberties
159
. The records of common people during this period are piecemeal because of the
political turmoil. However, the Smith family probably lived in Philadelphia or the Northern
Liberties during this time.
It is likely that Ann was a member of the middle class. Although Ann never regained the
economic status she had in Somerset, she did escape the abject poverty of Bermondsy. Her 1790
Census record indicates that she had no servants, but her recipes never indicate that she needed
to scrimp and save in the way Bettee did after she became impoverished.
160

Christopher and Ann do not appear anywhere on the United States Census in 1800.
161
It is
possible Christopher and Ann may have died by then.
162
In 1793, a yellow fever epidemic killed
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
156
!Jenson, Loosening the Bonds, 108-109.
157
!St. Mary Magdalene, Bermondsy, Southwark, London Register of Deaths, Church of
England Parish Registers, 1538-1812, London Metropolitan Archives, London, England.
158
!London Register of Deaths.
159
!Persons Naturalized in the Province of Pennsylvania, 1740-1773, Pennsylvania State
Archives, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; U.S. Census, 1790. The part of modern Philadelphia known
as the Northern Liberties only includes a small part of the original Northern Liberties Township.
This township also included all of the land in county north of the city. This land has since been
divided into multiple towns. Harry Kyriakodis, Northern Liberties: The Story of a Philadelphia
River Ward (London, The History Press, 2012), 33-37.
160
!Jack Goody, Cooking, Cuisine, and Class (Cambridge, England: University of
Cambridge Press, 1982), 108, 128-129; U.S. Census, 1790.!
161
!Since no name is given for their daughter in the 1790 census record or the cookbook,
she is incredibly difficult to trace. U.S. Census, 1790.!
162
!If only Christopher Smith died, Ann Smith would have shown up on the census record
as a widow with her full name. Women in their fifties often did not remarry unless they were
members of the upper class. Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor, The Ties that Buy: Women and
Commerce in Revolutionary America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011),
151-152; Wulf, Not All Wives, 178, 180.
! ! ! 52!
one in twenty people in the Philadelphia and the Northern Liberties.
163
Philadelphia’s 1793
epidemic records had difficulty keeping up with the pace of mortality.
164
If Ann did not die of
yellow fever or other causes, she would have been 62 in 1800. Although Christopher’s exact age
is unknown, he was likely her senior. In 1790, the average life expectancy in the United States
for a white adult was 61 for men and 60 for women.
165

The voices of Bettee and Ann can still be heard in the pages of “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe
Book.” They have much to say. With the help of Bettee and Ann, the next chapters of this
dissertation explore the distinct new food culture these two women helped to create among
Anglo-American immigrant women in eighteenth-century Southeastern Pennsylvania and
Philadelphia.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
163
!Molly Crosby, The American Plague (Berkeley, California: University of California
Press, 2007), 37, 84-87; J. H. Powell, Bring Out Your Dead: The Great Plague of Yellow Fever
in Philadelphia in 1793 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 13, 41-45, 80.
164
!Crosby, The American Plague, 85-87, 90; Powell, Bring Out Your Dead, 45-47, 81-
83; Robert Proud, A History of Pennsylvania, (Philadelphia for Zacharial Poulson, 1798), 151;
D.E. Wall and G.M. Walton, “Agricultural Productivity Change in Eighteenth Century
Pennsylvania,” Journal of Economic History 36, no. 1 (March 1976): 114.
165
!David Hacker, “Decennial Life Tables for the White Population of the United States,
1790-1900,” Historical Methods 43, no. 2 (April 2010), 45-79.
! ! ! 53!
Chapter 2

Bettee and Eighteenth-Century English Foodways

Ann Ellis Smith was the educated wife of an illiterate commoner
166
when she arrived in
Philadelphia on September 21, 1763.
167
She grew up in a wealthy family in rural Somerset, but
the Ellis family lost its money shortly before she was eligible to marry.
168
Ann’s education was a
legacy from a time when the Ellis family had been prosperous. Her economic privilege was long
gone by the time she emigrated with her husband, but her earlier education left her far more
literate than most lower and middle class Anglo-American women in eighteenth-century
Philadelphia and Southeastern Pennsylvania.
169

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
166
!While Ann Ellis was able to both able to read and write, the evidence suggests her
husband, Christopher Smith either could not (or at least had limited ability in these areas). As is
discussed in the first chapter, he was barely able to sign his own name in the marriage register
and never wrote in “The Recipe Book of Bettee Saffin and Ann Ellis” (other men in the family,
including Ann’s father and brother, used the text as a commonplace book). This was unusual for
the time—most men were better educated in reading and writing than their wives. Peter Burke,
Languages and Communities in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, England, Cambridge
University Press, 2004), 17-24, 53, 67-70; Linda C. Mitchell, Grammar Wars: Language as
Cultural Battlefield in 17th and 18th Century England (Aldershot, New Hampshire: Ashgate,
2002), 112-117, 130-138; Janet Theophano, Eat My Words: Reading Women's Lives Through the
Cookbooks They Wrote (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 23, 42-46, 113.
167
!St. Mary Magdalene, Bermondsey, Southwark, London Register of Marriages 1763,
Church of England Parish Registers, 1754-1921, London Metropolitan Archives, London;
Persons Naturalized in the Province of Pennsylvania, 1740-1773, Pennsylvania State Archives,
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. A more detailed account of this history with further supporting
evidence can be found in Chapter 1 of this dissertation.
168
Somerset Calendar of Wills 1761, Calendar of Wills in Bundles, 1597-1799, Somerset
Records Office, Tauton, Somerset, England; Bettee Saffin and Ann Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis
Recipe Book,” Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
169
!Patrice Herb-Thompson. “Pennsylvania Immigrant Farming Women.” (PhD diss.,
Pennsylvania State University, 2002), 41-43, 147; Simon P. Newman, The Lives of the Poor in
! ! ! 54!
Ann’s education provided her with a way to record her life in a way most of her peers
could not—through a personal cookbook.
170
Her cookbook was one of the few remnants from
better days. Ann’s education made her different from most of her peers struggling to survive in
Pennsylvania in the eighteenth-century. Her unusually high level of literacy makes her recipes an
excellent lens with which to interpret colonial womanhood.
Ann’s mother, Bettee Saffin Ellis, gave her personal cookbook to her daughter.
171
The
cookbook was an artifact from an Old World of prosperity in England in which her mother,
Bettee, had lived in pastoral security.
172
Bettee’s family had lived comfortably in the rural
county of Somerset for hundreds of years. Before they lost their money in 1757, Bettee’s life was
very similar to that of her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother.
173
She began the book
before her family’s economic decline—before Ann was born. The roots of the cookbook are
therefore from another time and economic climate.
The cookbook also started in another place: Bettee initially wrote recipes specifically for
use in Somerset and often made references to specific local locations. For example, she calls for
a specific type of shell in one of her recipes:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Early Philadelphia (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, 2003), 106, 110, 165-171; Saffin
and Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book”; Karin Wulf, Not All Wives: The Women of Colonial
Philadelphia (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, 2005), 65-69. This story is described in
far greater detail with thorough supporting evidence in Chapter 1 of this dissertation.
170
!Herb-Thompson, “Immigrant Farming Women,” 42-43, 144; Newman, The Lives of
the Poor, 106, 110, 165-171; Saffin and Ellis; Wulf, Not All Wives, 65-68.
171
!St. Dubricius Birth Records 1738, Parish Records 1538-1800, Somerset Records
Office, Tauton, Somerset, England; Saffin and Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book.”
172
Susan Farrington, Wiveliscombe: A History of a Somerset Market Town (London:
Colden, 2005), 12-17; R.W. Dunning, M.C. Siraut, A.T. Thacker and Elizabeth Williamson, A
History of the County of Somerset: Volume 9 (London: University of London, 2006), 52, 64, 131;
Newman, The Lives of the Poor, 32-34, 42; Saffin and Ellis; Wulf, Not All Wives, 91-93.
173
!Dunning, County of Somerset, 64, 72, 131;!Farrington,!Wiveliscombe, 13-18; Saffin
and Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book.”!
! ! ! 55!
To Make Lozinges for the hartburn

Take calcified oyster shells which are found by the Somerset Seaside let
them be so well washed by time to be as white on the outside as within let
them be well dryed and reduced to a very fine powder to halfe a pound add as much fine
loaf shugar reduced to fine powder & sifted mix them well together and with a little milk
and water make it into a stiff paste to be made into Lozinges & dryed in a sack at any
time When the disorder happens take one or two of them & let it dissolve in your mouth
& swallow it downe with your Silliva & it will certainly Relieve your patient.
174

She also cites other residents of Somerset as the source of many recipes cooking tips, and
medical knowledge. Bettee attributed multiple recipes to other people she seemed to know well
such as “To Salt a Gammon Mrs. Hargroves way” and “to Make Flummery Mrs. Musgraves
way.” Here is an example of a recipe that she ascribed to whole family:

Recipt Designd for a recepet as Family Burgott thus made.

Take a quart of oatmeal put it by Littel more 2 quarts of water. At diners times that it mix
Smoothly then boyle it for a quarter of an hower. Stirring it all the while after which add
a Littel Salt & butter to if thy can get any. This is much eyed with Scotch.
175

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
174
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 165.
175
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 27.
! ! ! 56!
She frequently mentioned other familiar local people in the body of the recipe itself, such as in
this recipe for cider with a few tips from the Herefordshire archbishop:

To Improve Syder & make it perfectly fine

When its first made put into a hogshead of six ounces of brimstone in the stone to colour
it put a gallon of good French Brandy highly tinctured with Cochinell, bout one pound of
roch allum
176
& bout three pound shuger candy fine and put it In when you Stop it up
when tis fine which Will be in six months bottld with this great secret successfully
practiced by the herifordshire archbishop.
177

The people of the neighboring agricultural counties of Herefordshire and Somerset frequently
interacted with one another. It was not uncommon for citizens of Somerset to attend weddings,
funerals, and baptisms at the large cathedral in Hereford—particularly due to the large rate of
intermarriage.
178
Their farmers also frequently traded produce with one another.
179
Both places
were famous for their dairy products and their apples, but Herefordshire was known to have the
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
176
!Roch allum was an eighteenth-century English term for alum. It was frequently used
in medicine. Nancy Cox and Karin Dannehl, Dictionary of Traded Goods and Commodities,
1550-1820 (Wolverhampton, England: University of Wolverhampton, 2007), 691.
177
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 24.
178
!Paul Cloke, Marcus Doel, David Matless, Martin Phillips and Nigel Thrift, Writing
the Rural: Five Cultural Geographies (London: Paul Chapman, 1994), 15; Dunning, County of
Somerset, 33;!Farrington,!Wiveliscombe, 15, 19; William Page, A History of the County of
Herefordshire (London: University of London, 1971), 490-501, 507.
179
!Cloke, Writing the Rural, 16; Dunning, County of Somerset, 35-36; Page,
Herefordshire, 499-502, 508-511.
! ! ! 57!
best in apple cider in England.
180
Bettee may have had some personal connection with the
archbishop of Herefordshire to learn his prized secret cider recipe.
She also frequently cited a Doctor Dover of Porlock as the source of many of her recipes
for medicines.
181
Dover was also the family doctor—Bettee regularly instructs Ann to go see
him if she is too ill to treat herself.
182
If Bettee husband John Ellis was a physician
183
, he was
possibly one of his colleagues as well. Here is an example of one of the medicinal recipes Bettee
attributed to Doctor Dover:

Doctor Dovers Purge for the Gout

Take tamarinds
184
half an ounce leaves off of a two drams rhubarb then boyl them in
water two to three ounces strain it off and add to it of manna
185
& the purging syrup of
roses of each an ounce syrup of buckthorn
186
& elixir popita of each two drams take it in
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
180
!Dunning, County of Somerset, 6, 79-80, 161, 182, 205; Page, Herefordshire, 494-497.
181
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 24, 167-169, 174-176.
182
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 168, 174-176.
183
!The evidence indicating the John Ellis may have been a physician is discussed in
Chapter 1 of this dissertation.
184
!Tamarind is a brownish orange fruit that grows in pods. Native to Asia, tamarinds are
related to dates, but much more sour and bitter. Although popular in Asia (and later Africa and
South America), the only main use of tamarind in modern English cooking is as an ingredient in
Worcester Sauce. “Affairs of the East India Company: Appendix D, Glossary of Oriental
Terms,” Journal of the House of Lords 62, (1830), 1413-1414; Dorothy Porter and Roy Porter,
Patient’s Progress: Doctors and Doctoring in Eighteenth Century England (Stanford, California:
Stanford University Press, 1989), 48.
185
!In this context, manna refers to the sap of the ash tree. Since the time of the Ancient
Greeks, Europeans used it as laxative. William Buchan, Domestic Medicine, London, William
Buchan, 1762 (Cambridge, England: University of Cambridge Press, 2014), 540, 532; Alan
Davidson, The Oxford Companion to Food (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2006),
373; Porter and Porter, Patient’s Progress, 48.
186
!The buckthorn tree is similar to a dogwood tree and grows black berries. Since
medieval times, buckthorn berries, leaves, and bark were used as laxatives. However, it is now
! ! ! 58!
the mrning and drink posset
187
between them. Taking this once or two a week will lessen
the Gouty matter & break the force of the heat.
188

After Bettee’s husband lost his fortune, her recipes became more frugal. She also looked
for ways to substitute expensive ingredients for cheaper ones. For the first time in her life, she
was forced to change her foodways. In a 1757 recipe transcribed in the first chapter of this
dissertation, Bettee noted that, “..if if turnips or potatos are not to be had carots parsnips or
Jerusalem artichokes will Serve as well…”
189
She must have had very difficult time paying for
groceries since potatoes and turnips were not very costly in eighteenth-century England,
especially when compared to many of the other expensive ingredients she used in some of her
earlier recipes.
190
Here is another example of a recipe where Bettee was forced to substitute
ingredients:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
known that all parts of the tree are poisonous. Buchan, Domestic Medicine, 478, 588; Davidson,
Oxford Companion to Food, 283, 707; John Stobart, Sugar and Spice: Grocers and Groceries in
Provincial England, 1650-1830 (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2013), 77.
187
!Posset was an English drink popular during the Middle Ages and Early Modern Era
made from mixing whole eggs, merengue, cream, or milk with hard liquor. The American
beverage, egg nog, is a type of posset, made with cream and rum. Sweeter than most English
possets, egg nog was invented in the American colonies shortly before the Revolutionary War.
Buchan, Domestic Medicine, 311-313, 412; Davidson, Oxford Companion to Food, 149, 237,
249, 627; Trudy Eden, The Early American Table (DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University
Press, 2010), 63, 114; Reinhard G. Lehmann, The British Housewife: Cookery Books, Cooking
and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain, (London: Prospect Books, 1993), 12-15.
188
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 172.
189
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 26.
190
“Declared Accounts,” Calendar of Treasury Books 30, (1716), iv-cdli; “Ordinance
concerning the First Buyer of Exciseable Commodities,” Journal of the House of Lords 17,
(1744), 581-584.
! ! ! 59!
To Drye Pears or Pipins
191
without Shuger

Take Pears or Pippins wipe them clean & thrust a botkin in at the Eye & out at the Stem
put them into a flat pott & bake them but not too much you

Muft put a quart of string new ale to half a peck of pares tie white paper
over the potts thy are baked in Let them stand till cold then drain them
Squeeze them flat the Eye to the Stalk and Lay them on sives with wide
Holes to dry Either in a stove or oven.
192

Bettee was forced to sweeten and preserve her fruit with an inexpensive alcohol, new ale, instead
of sugar. While sugar was certainly not cheap in eighteenth-century England, it was still
attainable by all but the very poorest.
193
Throughout most of the Middle Ages, only royalty and
the wealthiest members of the nobility could afford sugar, but the price dropped throughout the
centuries because of slave labor.
194
Like Bettee in this recipe, most people sweetened their food
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
191
!Pipin is also spelled pippin. Pippins are reddish orange apples native to England. They
were popular during the Middle Ages and Early Modern era. Davidson, Oxford Companion to
Food, 27-29; Maquelonne Toussaint-Samat, A History of Food (West Sussex, England: Wiley-
Blackwell, 2009), 626, 628, 636.
192
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 25.
193
!Sidney M. Mintz, “The Changing Roles of Food in the Study of Consumption,” In
Consumption and the World of Goods, edited by John Brewer and Roy Porter (London:
Routledge, 1994), 261-264; Woodruff Smith, “From Coffeehouse to Parlour: The Consumption
of Coffee, Tea and Sugar in North-Western Europe in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century
England,” In Consuming Habits: Drugs in History and Anthropology, edited by Jordan
Goodman, Paul E. Lovejoy and Andrew Sherrat (London: Routledge, 1995), 149.
194
!Sidney M. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New
York: Penguin, 1986), 115-118; Jean-Louis Flandarin, “Seasoning, Cooking, and Dietetics in the
Late Middle Ages”, In Food: A Culinary History, edited by Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo
Montinari (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 313.
! ! ! 60!
with honey or concentrated liquor or ale until the eighteenth-century.
195
Although Bettee
directed all of these recipes to her daughter, Ann never had to worry the price of sugar since
Philadelphia was one of the cheapest places in the world to buy sugar in the eighteenth-
century.
196
As will be explored in later chapters, the availability of sugar was a defining aspect in
the formation of that distinct food culture.
Once Bettee and Ann moved to London in 1761, Bettee’s tone became depressed.!They
were outsiders in London with no friends or family to turn to for help. Just as she had done in
Somerset, Bettee turned to physicians for advice. However, instead of finding a kindly family
doctor like Doctor Dover, she fell in with the very questionable Doctor Harken. Instead of
attempting to make Bettee well, Harken gave prescriptions for sedatives and narcotics. Bettee
passed the recipes for these drugs onto Ann—possibility a sign that she had given up on hope of
better life for either one of them. Here is an example of one of Doctor Harken’s recipes:

Doctor Plummers Allertive Power Recommended by Doctor Harken for a good time

Sulpher Calamol
197
Let the mercury be 6 time sublimes and well mixed then mix your
Sulpher a Litle at a time and reduce to a powder to half an ounce of which add gum of
sufficient quantity to make it into a fit Mold for pills out of every dram makes 12 pills of
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
195
!Flandarin, “Seasoning,” 313-317.
196
!Brissot de Warville, Jacques-Pierre. New Travels in the United States of America
(London by J.S. Jordan, 1794), 174, 188; George Rappaport, Stability and Change in
Revolutionary Philadelphia: Banking, Politics, and Social Structure (State College,
Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania University Press, 1996), 10, 15-17, 36, 130, 188; Eliza Smith, The
Compleat Housewife (Williamsburg, 1742), 108.
197
Calamol was an eighteenth-century spelling of calamine. Calamine is made of zinc
oxide mixed with ferric oxide. It is still used today to calm itching and prevent infection.
Buchan, Domestic Medicine, 235-236; Porter and Porter, Patient’s Progress, 37-39, 43.
! ! ! 61!
which take 3 in the morning and As many in the afternoon Drink after them a draught of
alcohol of wood and continue.
198

If Bettee or Ann ever took these pills for a good time, they could have easily been poisoned by
the mercury and wood alcohol.
In the short time before Ann received the cookbook and Bettee knew her daughter was
shortly moving to the American colonies, Bettee seemed to regain hope. Bettee feverishly wrote
recipes that she hoped Ann could use in the New World, although her advice was mostly useless.
As will be explored in later chapters, Ann was able to adapt some of her mother’s recipes and
advice, but much of it was unusable. A good example is an entry entitled “The Negro Casers
Method of Cure for Poyson from Carolina gazet in your America” with some personal notes of
advice for Ann:
199

Take the roots of plantin & wild hourshound froth or dried of each 3 ounces boyle them
together in 2 gallons of water to one quart then strain it.

Of this Seloction let ye take on 3 parts 3 mornings fasting succivly from which he finds
any relief is muft be Continued till he is perfectly recovered on ye contrary if he finds no
alteration after ye 3 days it is a sign that ye patient has not been poysened at all or it has
bin with such poison this antidote will not remedy so he may stop off the Seloction.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
198
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 173.
199
!Since this passage is extremely long—one of the longest in the cookbook—I have
only transcribed the relevant parts of this entry. Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 176.
! ! ! 62!
During the cure the patient must live on a sparce Diet & abstain from eating mutton pork
butter or any oiley food.

Note Ann: the plantin or hourshound will either of them Cure but thy plantin are more
effective to gather in summer…

…The simptoms atoning thes which are pysened are a pain of ye brest difficulty
breathing a Lump at pit of stomach an irregular pulse burning and violent pains of your
arms elbows & below ye navel very risefull retching pains over ye whol body. Ann: try to
vomit purge sweat bleed.
200

Although the article came from the American colonies, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was
quite a different place than the plantation colony of South Carolina. This cure for poison, written
for the people of South Carolina, requires plantains, a tropical fruit which did not grow in
Pennsylvania. Since Bettee advises Ann in her note to pick her plantains in the summer, she
seems to have some idea that this ingredient might not be available year round in Pennsylvania.
But Bettee knew very little about Pennsylvania if she thought tropical fruit could be grown there,
even in the summer.
In other recipes, Bettee assumed that just because some plants were plentiful in England,
they must also grow in the American colonies. Here is one such example:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
200
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 176.!
! ! ! 63!
Doctor Meads Receipt of the bit of a Mad dogg

Let the person bleed 9 or 10 ounces then the herb called ground liverwort
201
clean and
dried & powderd half an ounce balk pepper two drams. Mix these well together and divid
it into 4 doces one of which one of which must be taken every Morning in half a pint of
cow milk warm after thes 4 doces are taken the patient must go into the cold bath or if
near the sea into the sea every morning fasting for a month he must be diped all over but
not stay with his head under above ½ minute after this he must go in three times a week
for a fortnight.

Note Ann: the liverwort is a very common herb and grows in Sandy barran Soyl and in
shady banks all over England the right time to gather it is in October & November rub it
Clean rub your dirt from it but not washed & dry it in the shade.
202

In this context, liverwort is another name for common hepatica, which was a purplish blue
flower shaped like a buttercup.
203
Native to Northern Europe, common hepatica was used as a
diuretic during the Middle Ages and Early Modern Era.
204
Common hepatica did not grow in the
Americas in the eighteenth-century.
205

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!
202
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 167.
203
!R.S. Gent, The Gardeners Pocket-Book or Country Gentleman’s Recreation (London
by W. Owen, 1790), 26, 38; Edward Lee Greene, Landmarks of Botanical History (Stanford,
California: Stanford University Press, 1983), 108, 252, 264, 383.
204
!Gent, Gardeners Pocket-Book, 38; Greene, Botanical History, 108.
205
!Richard Bradley, Dictionarium Botanicum or a Botanical Dictionary of the Use of the
Curious in Husbandry and Gardening, London for T. Woodward, 1728, 313, 340; Greene,
Botanical History, 252.
! ! ! 64!
Bettee’s ignorance of life in the American colonies was not unusual. English cookbook
authors who published books specifically intended for Anglo-American women knew no more
than Bettee. Since no American published a cookbook until 1796, women in the colonies relied
on American versions of cookbooks from England. However, most of these American editions
were just direct copies of English cookbooks published in colonial cities with some recipes and
ingredients left out. They included some notes instructing to the reader to substitute whatever
ingredients are unavailable because neither the printer nor the author has any idea what food is
available in the New World. Here is an example of one of those notes from the introduction to
the 1742 Williamsburg edition of Eliza Smith’s The Compleat Housewife, the first cookbook
published in the North American colonies:

…has printed the Bills of Fare exactly as they are in the English Edition;
because the judicious and experience’d in such Affairs, may better know how to supply
Place of such Materials as are not to be had, with such suitable Things as this county
affords.
206

However, The Compleat Housewife was still popular in the American colonies because few other
published cookbooks were available. Ann was obviously a fan of Eliza Smith too since she
copied some cake and pie recipes directly from text.
207
Even Anglo-American women like Ann
who inherited personal cookbooks from English mothers, were on their own in adapting recipes.
Their mothers, like most people in England, did not know enough about the American colonies
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
206
!Smith, Compleat Housewife, 21.
207
!Smith, Compleat Housewife, 40, 42, 44; Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 4, 13,
46.
! ! ! 65!
to be of much help. They had been thrust into a strange New World where the rules of Old World
food culture no longer applied.
Bettee’s food culture was not very different from the food culture of her distant ancestors.
Her recipes were remarkably similar to medieval recipes. Her ideas about nutrition, medicine,
and tastes were based on medieval concepts. They were steeped in the rituals, traditions, and
customs of a provincial way of life that had not changed much for centuries. Until she was faced
with poverty, Bettee saw little reason to change things from the way they had always been. Far
more important than innovation was preservation, and Bettee’s recipes reflected that sentiment.
However, in order to adapt to the New World, Ann needed to change and her recipes
needed to change with her. Not only did Bettee call for ingredients uncommon or unavailable in
Pennsylvania, but also her recipes were based upon ways of thinking that no longer applied to
either the Americas or to Ann. Ann was forced to radically change the way she looked at the
world. Her decisions needed to be based on practicality, not sentimentality—Old World ideas
that did not work in the New World needed to be replaced and refined.
To explain how and why these ageless foodways so suddenly changed, I have identified
key historical trends that reveal how English food culture evolved into the new Anglo-American
food culture of Southeastern Pennsylvania and Philadelphia in the eighteenth-century. Although
these trends are most obvious in “The Recipe Book of Bettee Saffin and Ann Ellis,” I also
examine these trends in many other cookbooks and primary sources. These trends are examined
in the remaining three chapters of this dissertation.
This chapter explores eighteenth-century English food culture through the lens of recipes
by Bettee Saffin and her peers. These are the recipes that Ann Ellis and the other English
immigrants had in hand when they first arrived in Philadelphia and southeastern Pennsylvania. I
! ! ! 66!
identify and analyze key aspects of eighteenth-century English food culture that had long existed
in Old World, but did not survive contact with the New World. These trends reflect ideas that
had gone unchallenged for centuries.
I further explore the ideas and traditions that shaped eighteenth-century English
foodways. I analyze the major characteristics of this long-lived food culture through the lens of
Bettee Saffin’s recipes with analysis from other cookbooks and primary sources as well. The
main difference between Bettee’s Old World food culture and Ann’s New World food culture
was the change in the way the women thought about food. For Bettee and other English women
from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth-century, food was deeply infused with inherited
meanings. Once that meaning was lost in the New World, their food culture could not survive.

Bettee and the End of an Old World Food Culture

Bettee’s food culture belonged to a world that had already ceased to exist. Despite many
other significant cultural changes in England during the Early Modern era, foodways remained
stagnant throughout the eighteenth-century. The central aspects of eighteenth-century English
food culture were based on two concepts that belonged to an England of another era: outdated
theories of science and medicine, and Catholic dietary laws—despite the fact that England had
not been a Catholic country since 1531.
Despite major scientific advances, most people in eighteenth-century England still clung
to outdated concepts of nutrition, medicine, and science—particularly as they related to food. In
personal cookbooks, published cookbooks, popular periodicals and even many scientific
treatises, authors continually based their conclusions on humoral theory—a concept perfected by
! ! ! 67!
the Greek physician, Galen, in 176.
208
Although Early Modern biologists had completely
debunked the concept of humoral theory, these primary sources indicate that as late as the
eighteenth-century, the average person in England still believed in Galen’s ideas.
209

Galen believed that a person’s humors determined their personality and medical
profile.
210
If a patient’s humors were unbalanced, he or she would become ill.
211
He posited that
a humoral imbalance was caused by an excess or deficiency of bodily fluids. Using the names of
these bodily fluids, Galen named each of the four types of humoral imbalances accordingly:
sanguine (imbalance in blood and liver) for overly hot and wet, phlegmatic (imbalance in brain
and lungs) for overly cold and wet, choleric (imbalance in yellow bile from spleen) as overly hot
and dry, and melancholic (imbalance in black bile from gallbladder) as overly cold and dry.
212

As a treatment for imbalanced humors, a physician would prescribe a change in temperature,
physical activity, or (most frequently) diet. Since all foods were assigned one of the humoral
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
208
!Buchan, Domestic Medicine, 23, 81, 97; Galen,!Method of Medicine, Volume I: Books
1-4, translated by Ian Johnston and G.H.R. Horsley (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard
University Press, 2011), 234-238, 407, 420, 476-489; Galen, On Food and Diet, translated by
Mark Grant (London: Routledge, 2002), 6-8, 53-55, 67-99; Massimo Montanari, “Romans,
Barbarians, Christians: The Dawn of European Food Culture,” In Food: A Culinary History,
edited by Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari, (New York: Columbia University Press,
1999), 166; Porter and Porter, Patient’s Progress, 57, 82. Throughout this chapter of the
dissertation, many more primary sources are cited as promoting humoral theory including “The
Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book” and all of the cookbooks mentioned.
209
!Buchan, Domestic Medicine, 23, 81, 97; William Harvey, De Motu Cordis, 1628
(Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 76-80, 198-201; Porter and Porter,
Patient’s Progress, 19-24, 52-55.
210
!Galen,!Method of Medicine, Volume 2: Books 3-9, Translated by Ian Johnston and
G.H.R. Horsley (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2011), 415, 523; Galen,
On Diseases and Symptoms, Translated by Ian Johnston (Cambridge, England: Cambridge
University Press, 2011).
211
!Galen, “Method of Medicine 1”, 160-208; Galen, “On Diseases.”
212
!Galen, “Method of Medicine 1”, 189-208; Galen, “On Diseases”, 56-59; Galen, “On
Food and Diet”, 74-96.
! ! ! 68!
combinations as well, medical treatment frequently involved ingesting the opposing humoral
combination.
213

Like the most common people in eighteenth-century England, Bettee believed that an
illness could be cured simply through the balancing of one’s humors. An excellent example of
her faith comes in the form of a medicinal recipe entitled “an account of the Inward use of
Nightshad” which she partly adapted in 1757 from page 395 of the September 1757 issue of
Gentleman’s Magazine. In this account, she describes how to treat cancer by the balancing of
humors. Since her husband, John Ellis lost his money in 1757 and died in 1761, this passage also
indicates that cancer may have been his cause of death. It is very possible that Bettee included
these instructions in an attempt to save her husband:

An account of the Inward use of Nightshad

Mr. Thomas Galaker Surgeon of Westminister Hospitall Recomends the use of garden or
deadly Nightshade for cure of stubborn humors inclining a cancerous disposition…or
painful ulcers in Livers parts of the body & you may begin use of it in this manor take
Half a grain of the dried Leaf in an ounce of Boyling water and increase the quantity
occasionally according to the strength of the Patient the nature & state of the disease and
the effect of the potion in general…the common Effects are general heat or warmth
defused over the wholl body within a few howrs a plentiful Sweat succeed this heat…if
the patient is hot & dry in night after taking the Infusion a small diluting Liquid should be
drunk to incouridge a discharge…in som Sanguine constitutions a purge and the Lofs of
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
213
!Buchan, Domestic Medicine, 12-15,170; Porter and Porter, Patient’s Progress, 19-24,
52-54, 113.
! ! ! 69!
Som blood may be necessary…as to the sort of night Shade that should be used Gataker
observes that in some instances the garden may agree better than the deadly
214
and in
others the deadly may be preferable to you. Other he observes also though he cannot be
posative thare is any Esentiall defferance in the usuall Effects of these two plants yet he is
Inclind to think that the garden nightshads may be rather milder in its operation at least he
would recommend the trial of that first Upon the whole if a few trialls of either od them
neither increases the natural evactions he would advice a discontinuation of them as a
perservance…under such circumstances might in som Constitutions Irritate too much and
as he Emagines that little good can be expected from the medicin whare it does not
promote som of the natural discharges of the body to this account of yer medicine all
causes have bin added which seem to have bin of a Cancerous kind in which this
medicine proved salutary effects…
215

This treatment for cancer is based on Galen’s theories regarding humoral imbalances.
The first line states that this recipe is a cure for “…stubborn humors inclining a cancerous
disposition…” Galen taught that cancer was caused by an imbalance of cold and wet humors,
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
214
!Deadly nightshade is a poisonous plant native to Europe. Garden nightshade was an
English name for the tomato, which was native to South America—although this passage is
referencing the leaves of the tomato and not the fruit. Both plants come from the same family.
When the English first encountered the tomato in the sixteenth-century, many scientists believed
it was poisonous partially due to its similarity to deadly nightshade. However, the tomato plant
was used to decorate English gardens for centuries for hundreds of years before it was adopted
into the diet. This is where the name garden nightshade comes from. Andrew P. Smith, The
Tomato in America: Early History, Culture, and Cookery (Columbia, South Carolina: University
of South Carolina Press, 1994), 4-8, 12-14; Henry Home Kames, “Progress of Men with Respect
to Food”, Sketches of the History of Man (Edinburgh, Scotland by W. Crech, 1774), Yale
University, Online, 74.
215
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 167; John Thomas Mawe and John
Abercrombie, The Universal Gardener and Botanist (London for G. G. and J. Robinson; and T.
Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1778), 111-112.
! ! ! 70!
and this statement aligns with that belief.
!216
In this account, Bettee also states that purpose of
this treatment is “…a general heat or warmth over the wholl body…”The patient is supposed to
ingest nightshade, a hot and dry plant, to heat up and dry out the body. When the patient also
sweats as a result, the cold and wet humors leave the person through this bodily liquid as well.
This prescription also cautions that the treatment might cause someone’s humors to become
imbalanced in the opposite way and describes how to handle this complication: “…if the patient
is hot & dry in night after taking the Infusion a small diluting Liquid should be drunk to
incouridge a discharge...” Bettee also suggests that an alternative treatment might be required for
someone with a “sanguine constitution” (Galen’s term for a person who was overly hot and wet
due to a humoral imbalance in the blood and liver): “a purge and the Lofs of Som blood may be
necessary...” Humoralist physicians frequently forced patients to vomit or bled them—the next
step in removing imbalanced bodily liquids if sweating was not sufficient.
217
This is where the
medical practice of using leeches to remove bad blood originated.
218

The Royal Society of Medicine debunked humoral theory in sixteenth-century, but most
common people—as well as many physicians and scientists—still used it through the eighteenth-
century. Eighteenth-century English cookbooks and popular scientific texts consistently
referenced humoral theory.
219
Bettee Saffin and eighteenth-century English food culture were
both heavily influenced by Galen and the tradition of humoralism.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
216
!Galen, “On Diseases”, 98, 104.
217
Buchan, Domestic Medicine, 46, 80; Galen, “On Diseases”, 99, 105, 116; Louis
Lemery, A Treatise of All Sorts of Foods (London: John Taylor, 1704).!
218
Buchan, Domestic Medicine, 68; Porter and Porter, Patient’s Progress, 90-92.
219
Bradley, Dictionarium Botanicum, 11, 13; Buchan, Domestic Medicine, 46, 68, 80;
Harvey, De Motu Cordis, 75-78, 81-83, 99; Kames, “Progress of Men,” 2-4, 9; Lemery, All Sorts
of Foods; Mawe and Abercrombie, The Universal Gardener, 7-11, 86; Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis
Recipe Book.”
! ! ! 71!
Bettee included multiple medical recipes that encouraged purging as a treatment for
imbalanced humors in her cookbook. In “The Negro Casers Method of Cure for Posyon”,
detailed earlier in this chapter, Bettee ends with a note to Ann suggesting that she “…try to vomit
purge sweat bleed.”
220
Another medicinal recipe of Bettee’s from this chapter entitled “Doctor
Dovers Purge for the Gout”, instructs the patient to purge by vomiting in order to “…lessen the
Gouty matter & break the force of the heat.”
221
And in Bettee’s annotated transcription of
“Doctor Meads Receipt of the big of a Mad dogg”, the first words state, “Let the person bleed 9
or 10 ounces…”
222
As another method for regulating humors, this same receipt also advises the
patient the take cold baths for a month.
223

In eighteenth-century England, the purging of bad humors was a very popular practice.
One of the most cited English cookbooks of the eighteenth-century was the 1730 London edition
of The Compleat Housewife by Eliza Smith. Smith’s prescriptions, which were even less
scientifically sound than Bettee’s medicinal recipes, frequently encouraged purging. Here is an
example designed to purge bad humors from the head of the patient:

Pills to purge the Head

Take extract of salt water two Drachms, and Pill Faetida
224
one Drachm; mix these well
together, and make it into 12 Pills, take 2 or if the Constitution be strong, 3 of them at six
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
220
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 176.
221
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 172.
222
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 167.
223
Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book.”
224
!Multiple flowers used in medicine in eighteenth-century England were referred to as
faetida. Buchan, Domestic Medicine, 72; Robert Colborne, The Plain English Dispensatory:
Containing the Natural History and Medicinal Virtues of the Principle Simples Now in Use
! ! ! 72!
o’Clock in the Morning; drink warm Gruel, or thin Broth, or Posset-drink when they
work.
225

And here is another purging recipe by Eliza Smith, designed to make the patient vomit with
dosage instructions for adults and children:

A good Purge

Infuse and Ounce of Sena
226
in a Pint of Water till half be consumbed’ when ‘tis cold,
add to it Ounce of Syrup of Roses, one Ounce of Syrup of Buckthorn mix them well
together. This Quantity makes 2 strong Purges for either Man or Woman, and 4 for a
Child.
227

Although popular ideas about humoral theory changed over time, the central principles of
Galen’s model remained constant in Europe from the second century to the eighteenth-
century.
228
The basic tenets of humoral theory are as follows. The physical world is divided into
four types of elements. These elemental types are hot, cold, dry and wet. The four elements are
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(London by H. Kent for the Author, 1753), 254, 303, 315; Johann Reinhold Forester, Flora
Americæ Septentrionalis (London by B. White for T. Davies, 1771), Oxford University, Online,
26.
225
!Smith, Compleat Housewife, 131.
226
!Sena was the eighteenth-century spelling of senna, a small plant with yellow flowers.
Senna was commonly used in Medieval medicine. Colborne, Plain English Dispensatory, 304,
307.
227
!Smith, Compleat Housewife, 128.
228
!Buchan, Domestic Medicine, 62-70, 76, 85-88; Colborne, 3-6; Flandarin, “Seasoning,”
314-316; Lemery, All Sorts of Foods, 3-7, 9, 11-13; Porter and Porter, Patient’s Progress, 9, 19-
24, 53-56.
! ! ! 73!
then divided into pairs of opposites: hot and cold, and dry and wet. All physical objects contain
within them qualities of two of these elements. All objects possess one quality from each pair so
that the following four combinations are all possible: hot and dry, hot and wet, cold and dry, and
cold and wet.
229
Galen assigned humoral combinations to different types of people, food,
seasons, and places.
230

He believed that everyone had their own unique humoral balance, also referred to as their
“constitution”. As such, medicine and nutrition were customized to reflect the constitution of the
individual. Bettee’s recipe, “An account of the Inward use of Nightshad” and Eliza Smith’s
recipe “Pills to purge the Head”, examined earlier in this chapter, both instruct the reader to
change ingredients and dosage based on the constitution of the patient.
Galen also believed that certain groups of people tended toward certain humoral
combinations. For example, men tended to be hot and dry, while women tended to be cold and
wet.
231
Peoples from colder climates tended to be cold, and peoples from hotter regions tended to
be hot.
232
Galen designated Africa and Asia as hot places, and Africans and Asians as hot
races.
233
For his purposes, it did not matter that much of Asia was as cold or colder than Europe.
Although Galen does not explain his reasoning, he classified all non-Europeans as hot races and
most places as hotter than Europe. After discovering the Americas and encountering American
Indians, European humoralists followed this same logic and determined that the New World and
its peoples were hot too. If a person moved from a cold area to a hot area, then their constitution
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
229
Galen, “Method of Medicine 1,” 20-34, 120-133, 178; Galen, “On Diseases,” 12-32.
230
!Galen, “Method of Medicine 1,” 21-26, 30-33; Galen, “On Diseases,” 16-19, 29;
Galen, “On Food and Diet, “78-84, 89-92.
231
!Galen, “Method of Medicine 1,” 31-33, 436-437; Galen, “On Food and Diet,” 78-80.
232
!Galen, “On Food and Diet,” 80-82.
233
!Galen, “Method of Medicine,” 34-35, 438; Galen, “On Food and Diet,” 83, 86.
! ! ! 74!
recalibrated.
234
Therefore, when an Englishman moved to the American colonies, their
constitution supposedly became less English and more American.
235
In the introduction to both
the 1730 London edition and the 1742 Williamsburg edition of The Compleat Housewife, the
author Eliza Smith stated:

The Art of Cookery, &c. si indeed diversified according to the Diversity of Nations or
Countries…these receipts are all suitable to English Constitution…
236

As has already been referred to in this chapter, the American edition of The Compleat Housewife
was a reprint of the English edition with recipes removed and notes to reader explaining that
nothing was changed. Although the author believed that American constitutions were different
than English constitutions, she made no attempt to Americanize her recipes. So while the
cookbook was published on two continents, it was really only meant for the constitutions of
Englishmen and Englishwomen who lived in England.
Galen assigned humors to food primarily based on taste and origin. Using this logic, he
determined that foods that tasted spicy were hot and foods that tasted bland were cold. In his De
Victu Attenuate, he wrote:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
234
!Buchan, Domestic Medicine, 67-69; William Falconer, Remarks on the Influence of
Climate, Situation, Nature of Country, Nature of Food, and Way of Life, (London for C. Dilly,
1714), Yale University, Online, 12-15, 78; Jean-Louis Flandarin, “The Early Modern Period,” In
Food: A Culinary History, Edited by Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montinari (New York,
Columbia University Press, 1999), 134; Porter and Porter, Patient’s Progress, 81.
235
!Colborne, Plain English Dispensatory, 4-8;!Falconer, Influence of Climate, 15-22;!
E.C. Spary, Eating the Enlightenment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 18, 38-40.
236
!Smith, Compleat Housewife, 11-12.
! ! ! 75!
If a plant gives a spicy, pungent or hot sensation to the taste or sense of smell it is likely
to be [warm]. Following this criterion, whenever the plant has the pleasing scent of an
aromatic plant and gives the same impression when it is tasted, it is likely to have a
warming power.
237

Galen also determined that wine and sour or pungent foods like vinegar and fermented foodstuffs
smelled like “aromatic plants” and “gave the same impression when tasted”. Therefore, he
categorized wine and sour or pungent foods as hot as well.
238

Galen was not the first Roman to promote sour or pungent foods as healthy, although he
certainly helped to make such strong flavors more popular.
239
The most popular condiment in the
Roman Empire was garum—a fermented fish sauce.
240
Bettee’s tomatoless catchup recipe, “To
make Catchup that will keep good 20 years”, transcribed and analyzed in the first chapter of this
dissertation, bares a strong resemblance to garum.!An anonymous Englishwoman wrote two
other recipes similar to garum in another personal cookbook from the eighteenth-century.
Another woman, most likely the daughter of the anonymous Englishwoman, known only as D.R,
took this cookbook to southeastern Pennsylvania in 1780. Like Bettee’s catchup, the main
difference between the fish sauce described in this first recipe and garum is the addition of white
wine for extra fermentation:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
237
!Galen, “De Victu Attenuate,” 131.
238
!Galen, “De Victu Attenuate,” 131-132.
239
!Mirielle Corbier, “The Broad Mean and the Moray: Social Hierarchies and Food in
Rome,” In Food: A Culinary History, edited by Jean-Louis Flandarin and Massimo Montinari,
128-130. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999; Patrick Fass, Around the Roman Table:
Food and Feasting in Ancient Rome (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 91-93, 124,
159, 201.
240
!Garum is also described in further detail in the first chapter of this dissertation.
! ! ! 76!
Fish Sauce

Take Green Walnuts, beat them to a pulp, squeeze the juice from them + let them stand a
Day to settle, then pour it off + every pint of Juice put a half of a pound of Anchovies,
Chalots, let it stand five days till ye Anchovies are dissolved, then strain it through
Mashing. Pour best white wine Boil it altogether, when it is cold Bottle it. Two
tablespoons is enough for half a pint of butter.
241

This second recipe for cucumber catchup is halfway between garum and pickle relish
with wine added:

Cucumber catchup

Take a quantity of full grown cucumber, a third as many onions, peel + cut, pat some salt
with them, break them with your hand, let them stand a day + a night then strain them, to
every quart of liquid pour a quart Madiera wine
242
. Some Nutmeg, mace + pepper whole,
boil it well, strain it + to two quarts of it, put three quarters of a pound of Anchovy a

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
241
!Anonymous and D.R., “Recipe Book,” 1780, Kislak Center for Special Collections,
Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 23.
242
!Madeira was a sweet red table wine from the Portuguese island of Madeira. From the
15
th
to 18
th
centuries, it was an affordable commodity in England and Europe. However, due to
clever marketing, in the eighteenth-century madeira wine became a luxury good in North
America. John Hancock, Oceans of Wine: Madeira and the Emergence of American Trade and
Taste (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2009), 24-28, 317, 480, 530-532.
! ! ! 77!

Figure 7. The cover of The Recipe Book of Anonymous and D.R. Courtesy of Rare Books and
Manuscripts Library, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Photographed by Juliette
Parsons.

! ! ! 78!
large stick of horse raddish, boil them all together then strain it put in the spices when
cold just give it all a boil, put the spice into the bottles with it.
243

In both Bettee’s recipe for catchup and the anonymous Englishwoman’s recipe for “Fish sauce”,
each woman recommended adding this mixture to butter.
In the oldest surviving Roman cookbook, De Re Coquinaria (The Art of Cooking), fifth
century author Apicius instructed his readers to add either garum or vinegar to cold foods, like
butter and honey, to achieve humoral balance.
244
Monks at the monestary of Fulda preserved an
eighth century copy of De Re Coquinaria to use as a Latin training exercise.
245
Once the Vatican
Library acquired one of these transcribed copies in the fifteenth-century, scholars started to cite
Apicius as a culinary authority once again.
246

One of the other foods Apicius referenced was posca—a popular Roman beverage made
by mixing vinegar, honey, and water.
247
According to Roman government logs form the first
century AD, all soldiers received posca in their rations to insure a proper balance of hot
humors.
248
When Crusaders discovered lemons in the Middle East hundreds of years later, they
made lemonade by replacing the vinegar in the drink with lemons.
249
Many scholars believe that
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
243
!Anonymous, “Recipe Book,” 1.
244
!Apicius, De Re Coquinaria, Translated by Joseph Dommers Vehling (New York:
Martino, 2012), 130.
245
!Fass, Around the Roman Table, 93-95;!Carla!Mishiatti, La Cucina Dell'Antica Roma
(Milan, Meravigli, 2000), 5-8, 12.
246
!Mishiatti, La Cucina, 7-9.
247
!Apicius, De Re Coquinaria, 67, 90; W.K.H. Bode, European Gastronomy: The Story
of Man’s Food and Eating Customs (London: Saint Edmundsbury, 1994), 28.
248
!Bode, European Gastronomy, 28; Corbier, “Broad Mean and the Moray,”129;
Jonathan P. Roth, Roman Warfare: Cambridge Introduction to Roman Civilization (Cambridge,
England, Cambridge University Press, 2009), 37-38.
249
!Bernard Rosenberger, “Arab Cuisine and its Contribution to European Culture,” In
Food: A Culinary History, edited by Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari (New York,
! ! ! 79!
the New Testament of the Bible references posca. In both the Book of Matthew and the Book of
John, a Roman soldier is described as offering Jesus a liquid filled sponge during his
crucifixion.
250
Roman soldiers often gave injured comrades posca infused sponges to keep them
from dehydrating.
251

The anonymous eighteenth-century Englishwoman describes a recipe for a beverage
extremely similar to posca. The main ingredients for this drink are a vinegar made from beer (the
yeast and toasted bread left to sit a year), water, and sugar (which had replaced honey as the
main sweetener in England by this time):

Sugar Vinegar

Boil ten gallon of Water put to it then pounds of the common brown Sugar, let it boil
down An hour skim it all the time, then put it in a Tub, when near cold toast a piece of
bread very brown on both sides but not the last toast put a pint of Yeast on the bread and
put it into the water stir it well, let it work 9 days, then scim it clear + put it into a barrel
if not fall, fill it with cold Water To make it good put in 4 pounds of with Malaga
raisins—April is the best time to make it—it ought to stand a year before it is tap’d Let it
stand in a warm place.
252

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Columbia University Press, 1999), 219; Terence Scully, The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages
(Woodbridge, England, Boydell, 1995), 41.
250
!Corbier, “Broad Mean and the Moray,” 130; Roth, Roman Warfare, 27-38.
251
!Mishiatti, La Cucina, 9, 20; Corbier, “Broad Mean and the Moray,” 130-131; Roth,
Roman Warfare, 34-39.
252
!Anonymous, “Recipe Book,” 2.!
! ! ! 80!

Figure 8. Page 2 of The Recipe Book of Anonymous and D.R. Courtesy of Rare Books and
Manuscripts Library, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Photographed by Juliette
Parsons.
! ! ! 81!
Through the use of wine, vinegar, and fermentation, Bettee and other eighteenth-century
Englishwomen replicated these sour and pungent flavors in other ways as well. Here is a recipe
for a sauce to go with meat and fish where Bettee calls for such pungent ingredients as vinegar,
lemon peel, horseradish, anchovies, and capers:

To Make a Sauce for Fish or Flesh

Take a quart of the best viniger. Put it into a Jugg then take Jamaca Peper
253
whole som
sliced Ginger & mace a few Cloves. Som lemon peel, hors Radish, Sliced Som sweet
herbs 6 shallots peeled 8 anchovies 2 or 3 Spoonfuls of Shred Capers put all
These in a Linin bag put it into the Jugg & Stop it up. Place a Spoonfull Cold is an
addition to sauce for Fish or Flesh.
254

Like other eighteenth-century Englishwomen, Bettee added wine, beer and hard liquor to recipes
very liberally. For example, Bettee’s “To Improve Syder & make it perfectly fine” is a recipe to
improve alcohol by adding more alcohol: hard cider is mixed with French brandy. Her “Recipt
Designd for a recepet as Family Burgott thus made” is oatmeal drenched in scotch.
Medicinal recipes also called for large quantities of wine, beer, and hard liqour. Although
the stated purpose of using alcohol in medicine was to balance a patient’s humors, the effect was
often sedation. An excellent example of wine being used as medicine is in Bettee’s “an Excellent
Tincture To be Taken in your Decline for Nervos Fevers”, described later in this chapter. Here is
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
253
!A seventeenth and eighteenth-century term for allspice. Lehmann, Cooking Dynasty,
108.
254
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 86.
! ! ! 82!
another example from the 1730 London edition of Eliza Smith’s The Complaet Housewife, which
used ale as a medicine:

For a Cold

Take Rosemary and sliced Liquorish, and boil it in small Ale, and sweeten it with
Treacle, and drink it going to Bed four or five Nights together.
255

Essentially, this is a cold medicine made almost completely with alcohol—not all that different
from modern cough syrup.
Galen also thought the hottest and driest foods came from the hottest and driest places.
Therefore, he believed that most spices, which tasted spicy and came primarily from hot places,
were the hottest and driest foods of all.
256
As a result, Galen advised physicians to prescribe hot
spices as the main treatment for both cold and wet humors.
257

Although Galen classified spices, wine, sour and pungent foods, and foods from hotter
regions as humorally hot, he categorized most other foods as humorally cold.
258
He also believed
that most foods were wet with the exception of spices, foods from dry regions, nuts and seeds.
Galen considered most fish, meats, fruits, vegetables and grains to be overly cold and wet. Since
he separately determined that cooked foods were hotter and drier than uncooked foods, Galen
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
255
!Smith, Compleat Housewife, 140.
256
!Galen, “Method of Medicine 1,” 31-33; Galen, “On Diseases,” 16; Galen, “On Food
and Diet,” 78-80, 95.
257
!Galen, “Method of Medicine 1,” 31-33; Galen, “On Diseases,” 17.!!
258
!Galen, “On Food and Diet,” 12, 15-19, 56.
! ! ! 83!
advised cooks to heat overly cold or wet foods in order to achieve proper humoral balance.
259

Over time, Europeans grew accustomed to cooking most fish, meat, vegetables, fruits, and
grains.
Medieval physicians also continued and expanded upon the practice of prescribing spices
for patients with cold or wet humors.
260
In 1285, the dietician Aldobrandino da Siena wrote the
hugely influential Le Regime du Corps—a text that French and English physicians cited
frequently until the eighteenth-century.
261
In Le Regime du Corps, Aldobrandino classified
medieval spices and herbs in degrees of warmth, which also seem to coincide with their relative
prestige during the period. Pepper and mustard were classified as fourth degree spices (his
highest designation); parsley, cloves and sage as third degree; and mint, fennel and chervil as
second degree herbs. Aldobrandino even states that spices that came from Asia were naturally
warmer in humor than European herbs, even if their actual taste was bland, because the region
that they came from was much hotter than Europe.
262

Bettee and other eighteenth-century Englishwomen classified spices in a similar way.
They used the highest degree spices most frequently and in the largest quantities. One of the
most extreme examples of using a fourth degree spice (in this case, pepper) is this recipe found
in the personal the anonymous eighteenth-century Englishwoman mentioned earlier in this
chapter:
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
259
!Galen, “Method of Medicine 1,” 32-33; Galen, “On Diseases,” 15-18.
260
!Piero Camporesi, The Magic Harvest: Food, Folklore, and Society (New York,
Palgrave Macmillan, 1998) 89-94, 108-112; Flandarin, “Seasoning,”314; Fass, Around the
Roman Table, 120-127.
261
!Aldobrandino de Seina, Della Lingua Volgare in Siena Nel Secolo Xiii: Per Una
Originale Lettera Mercantile Di Vincenti D'aldobrandino Vinocenti A' 5 Di Luglio 1260 Spedita
in Francia (Charleston, South Carolina, Nabu Press, 2001); Camporesi, Magic Harvest, 110-113,
116, 160; Fass, Around the Roman Table, 125, 129-132.
262
!Aldobrandino, Della Lingua Volgare; Camporesi, Magic Harvest, 112-114, 140-143.
! ! ! 84!
Giblet Soup

One set of giblets. One large onion. 9 turnips. 40 kernels of pepper. Put in a stew pan
with water stew it slow till reduc’d. keep well skimm’d & strain it for serving up.
263

This recipe is notable for the excessive use of pepper: the soup calls for 40 kernels! That is more
than would be found in a modern peppermill.
264
Most modern dishes call for the equivalent of
anywhere between 1/8 and 1/4 a kernel of pepper.
Bettee wrote a similar recipe for “giblet pie”, but instead of using an enormous amount of
black pepper, she calls for many different types of spices. This is probably because pepper was
one of the cheapest exotic spices. All of the available evidence indicates that the anonymous
eighteenth-century Englishwoman who wrote the recipe “Gilbet Soup” was less wealthy and less
educated than Bettee, at least until Bettee lost her money in 1757. Bettee’s handwriting,
grammar, and spelling are all far more regular, indicating higher social status.
265
The anonymous
woman’s other recipes also do not use nearly as many expensive ingredients as Bettee. Bettee
calls for 5 different spice in this recipe: cloves, ginger, mace, nutmeg, and sugar. Here is the
recipe below:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
263
!Anonymous, “Recipe Book,” 24.
264
!John Stobart, Sugar and Spice: Grocers and Groceries in Provincial England, 1650-
1830. (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2013), 42-43.!
265
!Seth Lerer, Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language, (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2007), 38, 43-46; Linda C.!Mitchell, Grammar Wars: Language as
Cultural Battlefield in 17th and 18th Century England (Aldershot, New Hampshire, Ashgate,
2002), 34-36, 70.
!
! ! ! 85!
To make giblet Pie

Take one peny lofe gratted one pound of cloves ¼ pound of ginger mace and nutmeg
sweeten with suger soake ye bred in blood & milk 4 hours before ye put in the rest of
things then mix it together & put in to a puff past crust & bake it.
266

In a recipe for “Common Seed Cake”, the anonymous cookbook author calls for a greater variety

of spices in smaller quantities. The recipe contains allspice, ginger and sugar. Here it is below:

Common Seed Cake

Mix a quarter a peck of flour to sugar allspice a little Ginger melt butter with milk. When
just warm put it to yeast and work up a good Dough. Let it satnd before the fire a few
minites before it goes to the Oven. Add seeds and currants + bake an hour + a half.
267

Recipes from published eighteenth-century English cookbooks called for large quantities of
many different kinds of spices as well. This example is from the 1734 London edition of a
popular English cookbook entitled A Collection of Above Three Hundred Receipts in Cookery,
Physick, and Surgery by Mary Kettilby:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
266
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 48.
267
!Anonymous, Recipe Book, 26.!
! ! ! 86!
Beef A-la-mode, to eat hot

Take the Round of a Buttock of Beef from the Under-side, let it be about three inches
thick; if you like it red, let it lie a day and night rubb’d over with Salt-Petre; when that is
done, take off the Fat, and chop it with Parfly, Thyme, Sweet majoram, a little Onion, add
to this Pepper, Salt, Cloves and Mace. Work it up in the Form of Sausages; then cut some
Fat bacon into flips of the same thickness, and cover it over with the Salt and Spice; cut
the Beef into holes, about two inches distant to each other and quite thro’ the Beef, stuff
into one the fpic’d Slip of Bacon and into the other, the Forc’d meat, ‘till all are full,
throw Salt all over it; Put it into your Stew Pan with half a Pound of butter, fet it on a
quick fire, that it may be brown, anden on the Oufside, turn and flower it, that both Sides
may be alike; then put half a Pint of Water to it, and cover it clofe; put it over a flow Fire,
that it may ftew liefurely feven or eight Hours; when it grows dry, add a cup of water or
Gravy. The liquor ‘tis flew’d in, if cleared from Fat, and shook up with Claret, is the
sauce to it, ‘tis as good to slice cold as eat hot.
268

Kettilby’s recipe calls for 8 spices: parsley, thyme, majoram, salt twice, pepper, cloves, and
mace.
269

From the Middle Ages to the eighteenth-century, almost all English recipes, from desserts
to medicines to meats, included some spices.
270
Almost every English recipe included in this
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
268
!Mary Kettilby, A Collection of Above Three Hundred Receipts in Cookery, Physick,
and Surgery : For the Use of All Good Wives, Tender Mothers, and Careful Nurses (London: the
Executor for M. Kettilby, 1734), 173. !
269
!Kettilby, Collection of Above Three Hundred Receipts, 112-113.
! ! ! 87!
dissertation uses multiple spices. Some examples include Bettee’s recipe entitled, “To make a
Sauce for Fish or Flesh”, from this chapter, which called for black pepper, ginger, mace, cloves,
a variety of sweet herbs, and extra cloves.
Throughout medieval and early modern Europe, a cultural and sensual preference for
these flavors and tastes endured. Although people still used spices, wine, and sour and pungent
ingredients because they thought they were healthy, these items were also used because people
had grown accustomed to the flavors. Since spices were also a difficult to obtain, they earned a
special status as a luxurious commodity.
271

Bettee used spices and exotic ingredients as medicine, status symbols, and seasonings. In
the following example, Bettee uses both spices and exotic ingredients in all three of those ways:

Chees Cake Without Cruds very good

Take a quart of cream & Seven Eggs. Beat 3 of them & put as much flower as will make
them thick as past then put in your other flower Eggs a little beaten and Stir all well
togeather Set on your cream to boyle & put in your Eggs & flower Stirring it all your
time till tis a pretty thock Crud. When tis cold season one part with a spoonful or two of
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
270
!Flandarin, “Seasoning,” 314-318; Paul Freedman, Out of the East: Spices and the
Medieval Imagination (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2009); Stephen Mennell, All
Manners of Food : Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present
(Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1996), 77-80, 96; Scully, Art of Cookery, 40-
48, 52. In addition, in every English cookbook mentioned in this dissertation, spices are included
in at least ¾ of the recipes.
271
!Flandarin, Seasoning,” 315-317; Freedman, Out of the East; Rosenberger, 220-222;
Scully, Art of Cookery, 41-45.
! ! ! 88!
sack nutmeg shuger & curants. the other with orange flower Water ambergreac & shuger
put them in a very good crust. A Little time bakes them.
272

In this recipe, Bettee adheres to humoral theory by suggesting that during “cold season”, hot
ingredients like nutmeg be added. However, the recipe always calls for orange flower water,
sugar, and ambergris, ensuring the cake will always be strongly flavored no matter what the
weather. Orange flower water was a relatively expensive ingredient that originally came from the
Middle East.
273
Since Europeans first discovered sugar in Asia during the Middle Ages, it was a
major luxury good highly prized for the unmatched sweet taste and as a medicine. As sugar
played an even larger role in Early Anglo-American food, particularly in Pennsylvania and in
Ann’s recipes, it will be examined further in later chapters of this dissertation.
Since it was first discovered during Middle Ages, ambergris was one the most expensive
ingredients in Europe.
274
Ambergris was a foul-smelling, greyish black, waxy rock that
sometimes washed up on beaches or was found floating in the sea. For hundreds of years, no one
knew where ambergris came from—although it was widely believed that it somehow floated to
Europe from Asia.
275
When heated, ambergris tastes like sweet truffles—ambergris was used in
cooking in a similar way as truffles today.
276
The favorite dish of Charles II of England was
ambergris and eggs.
277
Ambergris was a particularly popular medicine and luxury good in
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
272
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 49.
273
!Rosenberger, 223; Scully, Art of Cookery, 90.
274
!Christopher Kemp, Floating Gold: A Natural (and Unnatural) History of Ambergris
(Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2012), 2-8, 13-15, 54, 62-68; Flandarin, “Seasoning,”
318.
275
!Kemp, 14-15; Flandarin, “Seasoning,” 318.
276
!Kemp, 63-66.
277
!Thomas Macaulay, The History of England (New York, Penguin, 1979), 178.
! ! ! 89!
England.
278
Late in the eighteenth-century, English whalers discovered that ambergris was
actually the dried bile from inside the intestines of the sperm whale.
279

Below is a recipe where Bettee used spices and wine as a seasoning, as a medicine, and
as a luxury items:

Sack posset:

Take a quart of cream boyled with a blade of mace. Then beat 20 eggs whites, beat them
well into a pint of sack, and put your eggs and sack into a basin. Sweeten it to your self
with doubled refined sugar cook it over a soft charcoal fire keep it stirring till it be
steaming hot, Then stir it into your cream with a quart of a pound of sweet butter, then
pour your cream very hot into your sack and eggs to a froth, Then lay a plate over your
posset for half an hour + when you fork it add a little orange flower water to raise your
posset up high, and you must make your foam of half a pint of Cream your whites of
Eggs and a spoonful of sack and 2 or 3 spoonfulls of cream, if your foam be thick whiske
it to a thick snow, then lay it over your posset and put in a spoonful of orange flower
water, serve it.
280

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
278
!Kemp, 4-8, 23, 63-66.
279
After the origin of ambergris was discovered, whalers killed sperm whales almost to
the point of extinction. Although people stopped eating ambergris, it was still widely used a
fixative in perfumes. Most Western countries started outlawing ambergris in the 1970s, but
expensive perfumes still contain artificial ambergris produced in laboratories. Kemp, 37, 45-46,
89, 120-134, 162, 174.
280
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 18.
! ! ! 90!
Posset was a drink popular in medieval and early modern England.
281
This hot beverage was also
frequently used as medicine because the heat from the temperature, spices, and wine could
facilitate humoral balance.
282
Bettee’s medicinal recipe “Doctor Dovers Purge for the gout”,
detailed earlier in this chapter, calls for posset. This is where the idea of drinking hot milk as a
sleeping aid first came from—although the patient probably fell asleep because of the wine and
not the milk.
283
Posset was made with wine or hard liquor, milk or cream, merengue or whole
eggs, sugar or honey, and often spices.
284
Egg nog is the American version of posset, made with
rum, although the beverage is now usually served cold.
285
Bettee’s posset uses the very
expensive and luxurious versions of these ingredients: sack (also known as madeira wine),
cream, butter, egg whites whisked into a merengue, sugar, mace, and orange water.
Eighteenth-century English cooks also continued to adhere to medieval foodways through
the continued use of ingredients first created to adhere to Catholic dietary rules. Although
England had not been a Catholic country for two centuries, many Protestants continued to eat
foods that were first developed for religious reasons.
286
These foods lost their religious
significance, but remained as part of the food culture.
287

Until the twentieth-century, the Catholic Church prohibited the consumption of meat,
dairy products, and poultry on multiple fasting days, so most main courses on those days were
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
281
!Buchan, Domestic Medicine, 311-313, 412; Davidson, Oxford Companion to Food,
149, 237, 249, 627; Eden, Early American Table, 63, 114.
282
!Buchan, Domestic Medicine, 311-313.
!
283
!Davidson, Oxford Companion to Food, 149; Eden, Early American Table, 63, 114.
284
!Vincent DiMarco, Egg Pies, Moss Cakes, and Pigeons Like Puffins: 18
th
Century
British Cookery from Manuscript Sources (Lincoln, Nebraska, iUniverse, 2007), 74-76.
285
!Eden, Early American Table, 63, 114; DiMarco, Egg Pies, 75.
286
!Camporesi, Magic Harvest, 78-83, 93-95,155; Montanari, “Romans,” 168-170.
287
!Camporesi, Magic Harvest, 95-99, 155-158; DiMarco, Egg Pies, 78.
! ! ! 91!
made of eggs or fish.
288
During the Middle Ages and Early Modern era, these fasting days
included about one third of the year—Catholics fasted on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and
during the 40 days of Lent.
289
Catholics developed specific Lenten dishes to reduce the
monotony of fasting days.
290
Catholics ate a lot of fish and eggs, but they also produced
imitation foods such as fake ham and bacon made from fish, and almond milk in place of cow
milk.
291

Since almond milk also did not spoil nearly as fast as regular milk, it quickly became a
staple food throughout Europe.
292
Before refrigeration, milk needed to be constantly cooled by
ice or it spoiled within hours. All dairy products could be made from almond milk as well—there
was almond milk butter, almond milk cheese, and even almond milk ice cream.
293
Even after the
Reformation, Protestants still used almond milk for its hardiness and versatility.
294
In eighteenth-
century England, Bettee and other Anglicans did not observe any Catholic dietary laws—but by
then, almond milk was part of English food culture.
Bettee used a lot of almond milk. Here is her recipe:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
288
!The Vivendier, Translated by Terence Scully (London: Prospect Books, 1998), 45, 93;
Rachel Fulton, “The Flavor of God in the Monastic West,” (The Journal of Religion, Volume
86:2, April 2006): 170-184, 190-193; Montanari, “Romans,” 168-169; Odile Redon, Francoise
Sabban and Silvano Serventi, The Medieval Kitchen (Chicago, University of Chicago, 1998),
129, 190, 201, 210.
289
!Fulton,!“The Flavor of God,” 180-184; Montanari, “Romans,” 168-169; Redon,
Sabban, and Serventi, The Medieval Kitchen, 129-131, 190.
290
!Fulton,!“The Flavor of God,” 181, 193; Montanari, “Romans,” 168-169.
291
!DiMarco, Egg Pies, 66, 78, 92, 113, 213; The Vivendier, 45, 67-69, 93.
292
!Bruno Laurioux, “Medieval Cooking,” In!Food: A Culinary History. Edited by Jean-
Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari (New York, Columbia University Press, 1999): 298;
Montanari,“Romans,” 168-169.
293
!The Vivenider, 45, 67-68, 112; DiMarco, Egg Pies, 66, 78; Gervase Markham,
Countrey Contentments, or English Huswife. London: R. Jackson, 1623 (Quebec City, Canada:
McGill-Queens University Press, 1998), 56, 83-85.
294
!DiMarco, Egg Pies, 66, 78; Markham, Countrey Contentments, 56, 83.
! ! ! 92!
Almond cream

Take one pound of almonds blanched with a little orange flower water to keep them from
oyling then have in waiting a quart of water and put into some of the almond strain it
often full all of the bitters be out of them, put in a little nutmeg and some mace, sweeten
it to your like with some loaf sugar, then put your cream all together and boyle it to a pop
then put into a silver or white ramthin dish and let it stand to be cold to use it.
295

Bettee’s recipe, called almond cream, was almost identical to medieval recipes for almond
milk.
296
The only major difference was that Bettee sweetened her almond cream with sugar—
during the Middle Ages, most cooks could not afford sugar and sweetened with honey instead.
297

Bettee also used her base almond cream recipe to make dairy products, such as in this
recipe below:

Almond butter

Take halfe a pound of Almonds, put them into cold water, blanth and boat them in a little
orange flower water to keep them from oyling, Then take a quart of this with the yolks of
10 eggs, mix your almonds and all together strain it and set it on the fire and stir if full to
keep from burning, and when it begins to turn that is like curds and whey put it into your
strainer put a spoonful or 2 at a time, and pour it softly and hang it to drain + when it is
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
295
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 17.
296
!The Vivendier, 45; Laurioux, “Medieval Cooking,” 298.
297
!DiMarco, Egg Pies, 66; The Vivendier, 45, 67.
! ! ! 93!
well drained, and like a tender curd put it through the fieve + sweeten it to yourself with
double refined sugar well beaten and sifted with orange flower water, and dye it with
weld as you please.
298

Keeping up the medieval tradition of using almond milk as an imitation food, Bettee did her best
to make her almond butter look like real butter. She called for the almond butter to be dyed
yellow with weld—a dye made from a yellow herb that was popular in England since at least the
eighth-century.
299

Here is another recipe that uses almond milk from the 1769 London edition of Elizabeth
Raffald’s The Experienced English Housekeeper:

To make Flummery

Put one ounce of bitter and one of sweet almonds into a basin, pour over them some
boiling water to make the skins come off Strip off the skins and throw the kernels into
cold water. Then take them out and beat them in a marble mortar with a little rosewater to
keep them from oiling. When they are beat, put them into a pint of calf’s foot stock, set it
over the fire and sweeten it to your taste with loaf sugar. As soon as it boils strain it
through a piece of muslin or gauze. When a little cold put it into a pint of thick cream and
keep stirring it often till it grows thick and cold. Wet your moulds in cold water and pour
in the flummery, let it stand five or six hours at least before you turn them out. If you
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
298
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 14.
299
!DiMarco, Egg Pies, 21; Davidson, Oxford Companion to Food, 312.
! ! ! 94!
make the flummery stiff and wet the moulds, it will turn out without putting it into warm
water, for water takes off the figures of the mould and makes the flummery look dull.
300

Flummery is a white Welsh dessert made from gelatin, sugar, and various seasonings that was
popular in England during seventeenth and eighteenth-centuries.
301
Flummery often included
milk or cream to whiten the dessert, although not always. In the first chapter of this dissertation, I
described Bettee’s flummery recipe entitled “To Make Flummery Mrs. Musgraves Way.”
302

While Bettee’s recipe called for raw cream, Raffald’s flummery uses almond milk in place of a
dairy product.”
303

When Europeans came in contact with new foods from the New World, they tried to
categorize them by comparing them to foods they already knew well.
304
They also looked for
foods that tasted like foods they already ate or flavors they liked. Grapefruits were readily
adopted as they were pleasingly sour and because they were similar to the limes, lemons, and
oranges discovered in the Middle East during the Crusades.
305
Potatoes seemed a lot like the
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
300
!Elizabeth Raffald, The Experienced English Housekeeper (London, 1796), 96.
301
!Markham, Countrey Contentments, 32; Falconer, Influence of Climate, 49; Toussaint-
Samat, History of Food, 229.
302
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 26.
303
!Raffald, Experienced English Housekeeper, 96; Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe
Book,” 26.
304
!The use of this reasoning is not limited to food. Europeans used analogous reasoning
in categorizing other New World discoveries. J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain
and Spain in America, 1492-1830 (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2007), 29-
50, 153, 184, 190.
305
!Bode,!European Gastronomy, 220;!Flandarin, “Seasoning,” 314; Mawe, The
Universal Gardener,40-45.
! ! ! 95!
cheap staple vegetable, turnips, so potatoes were first used a turnips substitute.
306
Since turkey
was similar to chicken, the two birds were used interchangeably in recipes.
307

Many familiar with humoral theory, from physicians to women like Bettee, extrapolated
what they knew about the humors of foods from the Old World in order to categorize the new
foods. Early modern humoralists decided that the New World was a humorally hot place,
meaning that its inhabitants and most of its foodstuffs were as well. The seeds of New World
peppers reminded many in England of black pepper, so they gave them the same name and
classified them as hot and dry.
308

Cochineal was another example is of a popular, edible New World commodity. Cochineal
was a brilliant red dye made from crushing red Mexican bugs of the same name.
309
Because
cochineal came directly from insects that lived in very hot and dry place, humoralists classified it
as one of the hottest foods in existence.
310
While cochineal was more expensive than European
red dyes like kermes, which was made by crushing Italian bugs, it was cheaper than Asian
equivalents such as brazel wood.
311
As a result, by the sixteenth-century, cochineal was highly
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
306
!Davidson, Oxford Companion to Food, 345; Flandarin, “Seasoning,” 314; Mawe, The
Universal Gardener, 82.
307
!Davidson, Oxford Companion to Food, 408; Mawe, The Universal Gardener, 97;
Toussaint-Samat, History of Food, 311-314.
308
!Aldobrandino, Della Lingua Volgare; Flandarin, “Seasoning,” 315.
309
!Jeremy Baskes, “Seeking Red: The Production and Trade of Cochineal Dye,” In The
Materiality of Color: The Production, Circulation, and the Application of Dyes and Pigments,
1400-1800, edited by Andrea Fesser, Maureen Daly Goggin, and Beth Fowkes Tobin (Farnham,
England: Ashgate, 2012), 101-112; DiMarco, Egg Pies, 257; Amy Butler Greenfield, A Perfect
Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire (New York: Harper, 2011), 1-4,
35.
310
!Baskes, “Seeking Red,” 101-118; DiMarco, Egg Pies, 24; Greenfield, A Perfect Red,
84.
311
!Baskes, “Seeking Red,” 101-102; Greenfield, A Perfect Red, 82-87, 109.
! ! ! 96!
desired throughout Europe as a humorally potent medicine and as a vibrant red dye for food
312

and textiles.
313
Bettee used cochineal as both as a dye and as a medicine. Here is one for her
medical recipes that call for cochineal:

an Excellent Tincture To be Taken in your Decline for Nervos Fevers

Take the yellow rind of Sivill orange one ounce & half 3 drams Saffron fower Cochinell
two spunfulls french brandy twenty ounces. Infufe your ingredients in your spirits for 10
days often shaking ye bottle then decant your tincture.

The doctor advices one dram to fower according to your age and urgency of symptoms
Every 4
th
6
th
or 8
th
hours with 10 15 or 20 drops in a draught of wine and water. This is
recommended by Doctor Hascham Intermeitant & slow fevors of a nervous kind
Especially in your decline and to many times reason has been restored with very good
effect.
314

This medicine was designed to relax anxious older women by balancing their humors. It calls for
multiple humorally hot ingredients like saffron, orange peel, and cochineal. However, these
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
312
!Cochineal is still widely used in the United States as a “natural” red food dye. Most
commercially available strawberry flavored drinks, syrups, yogurt and ice cream are colored with
cochineal. For example, Starbucks uses cochineal in all strawberry-flavored beverages, although
the chain certainly does not advertise it. Since it is made from crushed insects, cochineal is now a
hidden ingredient—only used because it is the cheapest “natural” red food coloring. Greenfield,
A Perfect Red, 84, 248-260; Cara Kelly, “Starbucks and the Great Beetle Extract Controversy,”
The Washington Post (March 30, 2012).!
313
!Baskes, “Seeking Red, 101-107, 113; Greenfield, A Perfect Red, 11-14, 84-86.
314
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 177.
! ! ! 97!
women probably calmed down because they were being administered French brandy and
draughts of wine every two hours. Bettee apparently thought the medicine was very effective,
stating that after this mixture was administered “…many times reason has been restored with
very good effect.”
315

However, Bettee used cochineal as a dye far more frequently. In her recipe entitled “To
Improve Syder & make it perfectly fine”, detailed earlier in this chapter, Bettee recommend
using cochineal to give the cider a reddish color.
316
Here is a recipe where she dyed candy red by
with cochineal:

To make paft knots

Take Codlins
317
and pare them and boyl them in half water and half clarified shuger then
pulp them thru a feive then dry your pulp over the fire till the water is dried out of it them
boyl shuger candy with then put in the pulp and boyl it till it will stand on a plate then
pour it on a plate and set in a pan to ftiffen then Cut it in long ftrips and ty it in knots then
dry it on the plats in roe Color some with Cochinele.
318

Here is another recipe where Bettee used cochineal as a dye:
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
315
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 177.
316
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 24.
317
!Codlins are a type of English apple that was popular during the Middle Ages and the
Early Modern era. As codlins are elongated and green, they look more like pears, but belong to
the apple family. Codlins are bitter with a taste similar to the American crabapple. DiMarco, Egg
Pies, 237; Ina Lipkowitz, Words to Eat By: Five Foods and the Culinary History of the English
Language (New York: Macmillan, 2011), 167-169, 213, 226; Mawe, The Universal Gardener,
45-46; Stobart, Sugar and Spice, 115.
318
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 4.
! ! ! 98!
pare & quarter them put them in a boyler covered with water and scald until tender take
them out & pulp them thru a sieve & boyle it put some cochenele in if you have it.
319

This recipe ends with Bettee instructing Ann to only use cochineal “if you have it.”
320
Bettee
seemed to believe that her daughter might not have access to cochineal, either because she was
no longer wealthy enough or because cochineal was unavailable in the North American colonies.
Although cochineal was readily available in many of the colonies, including Pennsylvania, it was
not nearly as popular as in England. Ann never called for cochineal in her own recipes, likely
because she did not worry about dying her food different colors and because she did not value
cochineal as a medicine. This was emblematic of Ann’s very different approaches to cooking and
radically different beliefs about food.
The next chapter explores how Ann and other eighteenth-century Anglo-American
women in Southeastern Pennsylvania developed their own food culture over the course of the
eighteenth century. They rejected the ways in which their mothers and other English women
thought about food. They were in a New World—the rules that had governed foodways for
centuries no longer applied. They did not adhere to humoral theory or the dietary laws of a
religion they no longer followed. There was no need to use almond milk as milk and cows were
everywhere. There was no need to ration sugar, as it was cheaply available. And there was
definitely not any time to waste with traditions that had outlived their usefulness.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
319
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 22.
320
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 22.!
! ! ! 99!
Chapter 3

Ann and Eighteenth-Century Anglo-American Foodways in Southeastern
Pennsylvania

Ann Ellis Smith did not intend to upend an established English food culture when she
migrated to Southeastern Pennsylvania in 1763. She brought with her a personal cookbook full
of advice from her mother, Bettee Saffin Ellis—only to discover that it did not apply in the New
World. In order to survive, Ann and her fellow immigrants needed to challenge everything they
thought they knew about food.
Her mother’s recipes were impractical. A celebration of custom and ritual, her cookbook
was also steeped in outdated ideas and traditions. Bettee’s recipes were long on historical details,
but short on precise measurements. She called for ingredients which were difficult to obtain or
unavailable in Pennsylvania, without taking advantage of local ingredients. When she
incorporated foods from the New World, she picked flavors she liked and foods that were similar
to what she already ate.
Ann needed to adapt to New World food conditions immediately because many foods
she knew in England were not available. Taste was not as important as nutrition: she needed to
cook and eat strange New World foods whether she liked them or not. Since she knew little of
this land and could no longer trust her mother’s advice, her only guides were the non-Anglo
peoples of North America: natives, slaves, and colonists from other European countries. Authors
! ! ! 100!
of published cookbooks offered no more help than Bettee—no cookbook by an American or with
any real knowledge of the land was published in North America until 1796.
321

Consequently, the Anglo-American food culture in Southeastern Pennsylvania grew out
of the same “range of factors”
322
that the historian James T. Lemon identified as responsible for
“the distinctive Pennsylvanian modes of life.”
323
A unique Anglo-American society in
Southeastern Pennsylvania developed as a result of the “natural qualities of the area,”
324
the
interaction of European cultural traditions, contact with non-European peoples, and an economic
system that was both self-sufficient and reliant on Atlantic trade.
325
Neither their foodways nor
their society followed established European traditions.
Anglo-American women in Southeastern Pennsylvania could not recreate eighteenth-
century English foodways. English food of the time was heavily seasoned with spices and wine.
Other popular ingredients included almond milk and citrus fruits. However, all of these foods
were more expensive and less accessible in Pennsylvania than in England. Yet there were few
places to find better or cheaper sugar, milk, or apples than Pennsylvania. They also produced
more milk than Ann’s home county of Somerset, which was one of the largest dairy producers in
England.
326
Philadelphia merchants exchanged these goods with the West Indies for sugar.
327

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
321
!The first cookbook published by an American was American Cookery by Amelia
Simmons in 1796. This book and the history of published cookbooks in America are discussed at
length in Chapter 2 and Chapter 4 of this dissertation.
322
James T. Lemon, The Best Poor Man’s Country: Early Southeastern Pennsylvania
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1792), 1.
323
!Lemon,!Best Poor Man’s Country, 1-2.!
324
!Lemon,!Best Poor Man’s Country, 2.!
325
!Lemon,!Best Poor Man’s Country, 1-3.!
!
326
!R.W. Dunning, M.C. Siraut, A.T. Thacker, Elizabeth Williamson, A History of the
County of Somerset: Volume 9 (London: University of London, 2006), 11-15, 86-88; Elinor F.
Oakes, “A Ticklish Business: Dairying in New England and Pennsylvania, 1750-1813,”
Pennsylvania History 47, no. 3 (July 1980): 195-201; D.E. Wall and G.M. Walton, “Agricultural
! ! ! 101!
Ann’s earliest recipes used whatever food was available, but she and the other English
immigrants soon started to take advantage of Pennsylvania’s unnatural bounty of sugar, milk,
and apples.
Ann’s recipes were different from her mother’s in other ways as well. Her measurements
of time and ingredient quantity were far more precise. Whereas Bettee was vague on cooking
times and ingredient amounts, her daughter was more specific in her units of hours, pounds, and
pints. She also used different spellings than her mother for some of her most commonly used
words. Instead of shuger, chocolat, and colour, Ann spelled these words like a modern
American: sugar, chocolate, and color.

Surviving Pennsylvania

The first Anglo-American recipes in Pennsylvania suggest desperation. Ann and other
English immigrants seemed willing to try anything in order to survive. They listened to the
advice of natives, slaves, and other European immigrants. They also adopted foods the English
viewed as unfit for human consumption.
One of the first recipes Ann wrote in Pennsylvania illustrated her desperation and
willingness to take the advice of other ethnic groups. Her recipe entitled, “To make potato
cakes”, called for mella potatoes—a mushroom now known as armillaria.
328
Mella potatoes are a
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Productivity Change in Eighteenth Century Pennsylvania,” Journal of Economic History 36, no.
1 (March 1976): 102-117.
327
!Thomas Doerflinger, A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise: Merchants and Economic
Development in Revolutionary Philadelphia (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North
Carolina Press, 2001), 70-82.!
328
!Nicolas Money, Mushroom (Oxford, England, University of Oxford Press, 2013), 51-
56; Jeffery Pilcher, The Oxford Handbook of Food History (Oxford, England, University of
! ! ! 102!
brownish orange fungus that grows in clusters near rotting wood.
329
In the eighteenth century,
edible varieties of mella potatoes grew in the Northeastern American colonies and in Central
Europe—but the type native to England was poisonous.
330
The only people who regularly ate
mella potatoes at that time were Germans.
331
Since potato pancakes were also popular among
eighteenth-century Germans
332
—and not the English—Ann probably learned this recipe from
German immigrants:

To make potato cakes

Ann

Take mella potatoes and potatoes and boyl them & and put the same weight of fresh
butter as you do of mella potatoes and potatoes and pound them to a pulp and mix
them.
333

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oxford Press, 2012), 57; Maquelonne Toussaint-Samat, A History of Food (West Sussex,
England, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 61, 285.
329
!Money, Mushroom, 50-53; Toussaint-Samat, History of Food, 285.
330
!Jean-Louis Flandarin, “Dietary Choices and Culinary Technique, 1500-1800”, Food:
A Culinary History, edited by Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montinari (New York,
Columbia University Press, 1999): 404; Money, Mushroom, 52-55; Toussaint-Samat, History of
Food, 285, 427, 526.
331
!Ursula Heinzelmann, Beyond Bratwurst: A History of Food in Germany (London,
Reaktion Books, 2014), 298, 302, 312; Money, Mushroom, 51, 54-57; Toussaint-Samat, History
of Food, 526.
332
!Heinzelmann, Beyond Bratwurst, 173, 234-236; Toussaint-Samat, History of Food,
526 717-722.
333
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 40.
! ! ! 103!

Figure 9. Armillaria. In the eighteenth-century, this fungus was known as mella potatoes.
Grantham, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. Photographed by Deke Parsons.

! ! ! 104!
For Ann to consume mushrooms known to be poisonous in her home country, she must
have been desperate or trusted these German immigrants completely or both. The German
immigrants probably did not realize that the North American mella potatoes were a different
species from those in Germany and were lucky not to be poisoned.
Ann also learned how to cure meat cheaply with saltpeter (gunpowder) from German
immigrants. English women like her mother used a combination of saltpeter and spices to cure
their meats, but spices were far more expensive in Pennsylvania. In Ann’s recipe entitled “To
make Westphalia Ham”, she instructed the cook to preserve their meat using only saltpeter and
sugar.
334
She probably learned this recipe from German immigrants who came from the northern
region of Westphalia
335
. In eighteenth-century Northern Germany, peasants frequently cooked
their ham in this way:
336

To make Westphalia Ham:

Cut your leg of fat large pork as like a ham as you can. Hang it up 2 days then with a
rolling pin rub in an ounce of saltpiter finely beaten in every place. Let it lay a day and a
night, then take an ounce more of beaten saltpiter with two large handfulls of common
saltpiter & a pound of coarse sugar. Mix all together & warm them through in a stew pan,
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
334
!Bettee’s recipe described in Chapter 1, “To Salt a gammon Mrs. Hargroves way”, uses
smaller quantities of sugar and saltpeter, but also uses salt, pepper, and other spices.
335
!Pilcher, Oxford Handbook of Food History, 327; Heinzelmann, Beyond Bratwurst,
333-335.
336
!Heinzelmann, Beyond Bratwurst, 333-335.
! ! ! 105!
careful not to melt it & while tis hot rub it all over your ham very well with large
handfuls more of saltpiter. Cook it slowly over fire 3 days.
337

Ann also learned another technique for preserving meat from Dutch immigrants. In
addition to curing the meat with saltpeter and sugar, her recipe entitled “Dutch Beef” directed the
cook to smoke the beef in the chimney. Eighteenth-century Dutch Quakers in both Pennsylvania
and the Netherlands often preserved beef and pork in this manner:
338

Dutch Beef

Take eight pound of buttock beef without bone, rub it all over with six ounces of coarse
saltpiter, let it lie two days. Then wipe it a little and take six ounces of saltpiter beaten,
and 2 pints coarse sugar. Rub it well in and let lie there three days rubbing and turning it
every day then sew it up in a cloth and hang it in your chimney to dry cook three days.
Turn it upside down every day. Boil it in water till very tender.
339

The “Recipe Book of D.R. and Anonymous”—the cookbook mentioned in earlier
chapters by an anonymous woman from eighteenth-century England and her daughter, D.R., who
moved to Southeastern Pennsylvania in 1780—included a similar a recipe. In her entry entitled,
“To cure Hams,” D.R. explained how to preserve meat with saltpeter, sugar, and chimney smoke.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
337
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 94.
338
!John Fiske,!The Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America (Houghton Mifflin, Boston,
2008), 13-15, 19, 31; Peter G. Rose, The Sensible Cook: Dutch Foodways in the Old and New
World (Syracuse, New York, Syracuse University Press, 1994), 85-87.
339
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 95.
! ! ! 106!
Although this recipe used pork instead of beef, many of the instructions are almost identical to
Ann’s “Dutch Beef”:

To cure Hams

Beat your Hams well with a wooden pestle. Take three ounces of salt petre, 4 pounds of
Coarse sugar, break the lumps + mix it well together + rub the Hams hard with it + cover
them with the rest, let them Lye three Days, then take off the salt petre + sugar + hang
them up a day in the chimney, put as much water to the salt petre + sugar as to cover the
Hams above an inch, set it on to boil be sure to skim it very well in boiling then strain it
well and putt the Hams in it.
340

Native Americans also influenced many of Ann’s other initial North American recipes. In
some of her early recipes, she cooked with shellfish— lobster, crawfish, and oyster—popular
among local native cultures. While native men fished for most seafood, native women gathered
the crustaceans.
341
It is possible that Ann did the same. She also frequently cooked shellfish
using traditional Native American techniques.
It is quite possible that Ann learned these native foodways directly from American
Indians. As the historian James H. Merrell demonstrates in “The Customs of Our Countrey,”
natives not only still lived in Eastern Pennsylvania in the late eighteenth century, but many knew
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
340
!D.R., “Recipe Book,” 19.
341
!Linda Murray Berzok, American Indian Food (Greenwood, Westport, Connecticut,
2005), 134-135; Juliette Giannini, “Foodways”, Encyclopedia of Native American History, edited
by Peter Mancall, (New York, Infobase Publishing, 2011), 251; Robert Hall, An Archeology of
the Soul: North American Indian Belief and Ritual (Champaign, Illinois, University of Illinois
Press, 1997), 18-19, 22.
! ! ! 107!
English and interacted with European colonists on a regular basis.
342
In Into the American
Woods, Merrell also details how many Pennsylvanian colonists learned how to identify edible
food and how to cook new foods by asking Native Americans.
343

Some of Ann’s first New World recipes were for North American lobster made using
Native American cooking methods. Although her mother never mentioned the crustacean, people
on the English coastline did sometimes cook European lobster.
344
However, there are many
differences between the two species. The European lobster is bluish with a body three times as
large as the American lobster—the American lobster is brownish with claws three times as large
as the European lobster.
345
When cooked, the shells of both types of lobsters turn red, but
European lobster meat is whiter with a milder, less fishy taste.
346
American lobsters were far
more numerous than eighteenth-century European lobsters.
347

In the eighteenth-century, only the poorest colonists ate American lobster.
348
Frequently
used as fertilizer and bait, American lobster was also fed to indentured servants, slaves, and
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
342
James H. Merrell, “The Customs of Our Countrey: Indians and Colonists in Early
America,” Strangers Within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the First British Empire, edited by
Bernard Bailyn and Philip Morgan (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina
Press, 1991), 117-123, 147-156.
343
!James H Merrell, Into the American Woods: Negotiations on the Pennsylvania
Frontier (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000), 38-39, 128-129, 133-142.
344
!Alan Davidson, The Oxford Companion to Food (Oxford, England, Oxford University
Press, 2006), 21, 24, 470-472; Toussaint-Samat, History of Food, 392-394.
345
!Davidson, Oxford Companion to Food, 470-472; Keith Stavely, America’s Founding
Food: The Story of New England Cooking (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North
Carolina Press, 2003), 77, 90, 100.
346
!Davidson, Oxford Companion to Food, 470-474; Harry Haff, The Founders of
American Cuisine (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2011), 46-48, 81; Stavely, Founding
Food, 77, 91-93.
347
!Haff, Founders of American Cuisine, 46-50; Stavely, Founding Food, 94.
348
!Trudy Eden, The Early American Table (DeKalb, Illinois, Northern Illinois University
Press, 2010), 41; Simon P. Newman, The Lives of the Poor in Early Philadelphia (Philadelphia,
University of Pennsylvania, 2003), 213, 227-229; Stavely, Founding Food, 92, 95.
! ! ! 108!
prisoners.
349
Ann’s inclusion of American lobster in early recipes suggests that her first years in
Pennsylvania were difficult.
However, many Native American tribes along the Atlantic coastline regularly ate
American lobsters.
350
Their most common cooking method was to roast the lobsters alive over
flame while basting them with boiling water.
351
Ann also used this technique:

To roaft lobsters

Ty them to a spit alive bast them with hot water and salt and when they look very red,
bast them with butter and salt. Then take butter thick as cream and the juice of a lemon in
a pool if you like it. Serve it in your greatest dish.
352

While Ann cooked her lobsters like the Indians, she also made the dish her own by adding
lemon, salt, and butter. In England, cooks often added lemon to seafood and salt to everything.
As will be explored later in this chapter, the large number of dairy farms in colonial
Pennsylvania meant that all dairy products were unusually common and cheap. Pennsylvanians
were among the first to add butter to shellfish
353
, as Ann does here. Lobster is still often cooked
and seasoned in this manner throughout the United States.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
349
!Newman, The Lives of the Poor, 227-229; Stavely, Founding Food, 92, 95.
350
!Berzok, American Indian Food, 55, 84-85, 102, 109, 117, 134-135; Davidson, Oxford
Companion to Food, 21, 183; Giannini, 251.
351
!Berzok, American Indian Food, 134-135; Davidson, Oxford Companion to Food, 21,
79, 90.
352
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 91.
353
!Davidson, Oxford Companion to Food, 79; James McWilliams, A Revolution in
Eating (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 58-60; Toussaint-Samat, History of Food,
392-394.
! ! ! 109!
She also wrote recipes for stews and soups made with American crawfish. Although other
types of crawfish lived in England, few people ate the crustacean until the nineteenth-century.
354

Multiple Native American tribes cooked crawfish.
355
She may have learned to eat from crawfish
from Indians or from other colonists who had adopted native foodways. Or if she was desperate
enough, she may have cooked crawfish simply because they were so common in the fresh waters
of Pennsylvania.
356

Although Ann used Native American cooking techniques, she made her crawfish dish her
own. Just like in her lobster recipe, she added dairy products to her recipe. She seasoned her
crawfish soup with milk, cream, and butter:

Craw Fish Soop

Take craw fish, boyl them in water with salt, when they are boyled enough, take them up,
pick the bodies and claws, and strain them with a sieve. Then put to a quart of milk and a
quart of cream. Boyl them well. Then bake halfway. Then put in half a loaf, let it boyl
still it be soft and plate it in the middle of a dish. Thicken it with the yolk of an egg and a
quarter pound of sweet butter—take care your eggs don’t curdle.
357

Ann also cooked Atlantic oysters, the species of oyster native to North America. In Early
Modern Ireland, France, and Southern Europe people regularly consumed the smaller European
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
354
!Davidson, Oxford Companion to Food, 21, 24, 124, 748; Toussaint-Samat, History of
Food, 297, 387.
355
!Davidson, Oxford Companion to Food, 124-125; Hall, Archeology of the Soul, 18-19,
22.
356
!McWilliams, Revolution in Eating, 60.
357
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 88.
! ! ! 110!
flat oyster, but only the poorest Englishmen ate oysters of any kind.
358
Bettee may have been
desperate in London, but she never included oysters in her recipes.
Many Native American groups in the Northeast ate Atlantic oysters, most commonly
fried.
359
Europeans rarely fried oysters because their species of oyster was too small to survive
the hot temperatures of a fryer.
360
As with lobster, Ann cooked her oysters like Native
Americans:

To Stew Oysters

Set on a fire a pint of oysters, a shallot, half a pint of white wine, and a pint of sweet
butter. Let them stew slowly till they are open, about a quarter of an hour. Then throw in
a pint of butter, a pint of flower, shake them up well—lay in your dish, fry them, then dip
them in yolks of eggs and flower. Melt butter for a dish. Garnish with chopped parsley.
361

Although Ann fried her oysters like the Native Americans, she seasoned them with English
ingredients like wine, butter, and parsley. Prior to European conquest, Native Americans did not
consume wine, although English cooks frequently spiked their food.
362
Parsley was another
common English seasoning. As with her recipes for lobster and crawfish, she followed the
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
358
!Davidson, Oxford Companion to Food, 24, 31, 43; Toussaint-Samat, History of Food,
392-396.
359
!Berzok, American Indian Food, 84-85, 109, 117; Giannini, “Foodways,” 251.
360
!Berzok, American Indian Food, 84-85; McWilliams, Revolution in Eating, 94.
361
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 88.
362
!Jean-Louis Flandarin, “Seasoning, Cooking, and Dietetics in the Late Middle Ages”,
Food: A Culinary History, edited by Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montinari (New York,
Columbia University Press, 1999): 313-317; Peter C. Mancall, Deadly Medicine: Indians and
Alcohol in Early America (Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 1997).
! ! ! 111!
foodways of other English immigrants in colonial Pennsylvania by drenching her shellfish in
butter.
In other early recipes, Ann adapted ingredients and cooking techniques from African
slaves. Her recipe entitled “Yellow riro cream” is a modified version of the traditional Yoruba
dish, efo riro.
363
Many of the Yoruba, an ethnic group from West Africa, were sold into slavery
during the seventeenth and eighteenth-centuries.
364
They brought many of their recipes with
them to the New World, including this one, which was made with yams.
365
For many West
Africans, including the Yoruba, yams were a staple crop.
366
Once in the Americas, they started
using the indigenous sweet potato as a substitute for yams.
367
Presumably as a bastardization of
efo riro, North American slaves started using riro as a colloquial term for sweet potatoes and
some colonists started to use the term as well.
368
Traditional efo riro is a yam stew made savory
or sweet by the addition of meat, vegetables, spices and sugar.
369
Yoruba slaves used sweet
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
363
!David Eltis, “The Diaspora of Yoruba Speakers, 1650-1865”, The Yoruba Diaspora in
the Atlantic World, edited by Toyin Falola and Matt D. Childs (Bloomington, Indiana, Indiana
University Press, 2005): 29-33; Paul E. Lovejoy, “The Yoruba Factor in the Trans-Atlantic Slave
Trade”, The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World, edited by Toyin Falola and Matt D. Childs
(Bloomington, Indiana, Indiana University Press, 2005): 40-43.
364
!Ann O’Hear, “The Enslavement of Yoruba”, The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic
World, edited by Toyin Falola and Matt D. Childs (Bloomington, Indiana, Indiana University
Press, 2005): 50-55, 60.
365
!Eltis, “The Diaspora,” 28, 30; Lovejoy, “The Yoruba Factor,” 42, 46-47; Sidney
Mintz, The Birth of African-American Culture (Boston, Beacon, 1992), 12, 27-33.
366
!Eltis, “The Diaspora,” 26-30; Mintz, Birth of African-American Culture, 27-29, 37.
367
!Mintz, Birth of African-American Culture, 27-30; Kevin Roberts, “Yoruba Family,
Gender and Kinship Roles in New World Slavery”, The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World,
edited by Toyin Falola and Matt D. Childs (Bloomington, Indiana, Indiana University Press,
2005): 249-251, 253.
368
!Augustine H. Agwuele, “‘Yorubaisms’ in African American “Speech” Patterns”, The
Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World, The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World, edited by
Toyin Falola and Matt D. Childs (Bloomington, Indiana, Indiana University Press, 2005): 325-
328, 334-337.
369
!Eltis, “The Diaspora,” 30-34.
! ! ! 112!
potatoes instead of yams and added American ingredients like tomatoes.
370
Here is Ann’s
version:

Yellow riro cream

Take a pint and half of new milk and 4 spoonfulls of riro, set it over your fire. Boyle it
slow for an hour. Then take the yolks of 4 eggs and 2 whites, put in a little salt, as much
sugar till sweet, take 4 spoonfulls of raw cream, beat this well together, and take a little
cream of your fire, and strain it into your raw cream over the fire, let it boyl together. Put
it into a dish.
371

By adding milk and sugar, Ann adapted this African dish to fit the Anglo-American food culture
of eighteenth-century Pennsylvania.

Thriving in Pennsylvania

After Ann was in Pennsylvania for about three years, she began to write recipes that took
advantage of the ingredients readily available in her new home. She started cooking with less
spices, less citrus fruits, and less European liquor. These items were all rarer and more expensive
in Pennsylvania than in England. Yet in the eighteenth-century, there were few places on Earth
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
370
!Roberts, “Yoruba Family,” 350-353.
371
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 17.
! ! ! 113!
to find better or cheaper sugar, milk, or apples.
372
While Bettee and other English cooks used all
of these foods, Ann and her peers created a dessert-centric food culture based on these
ingredients.
This food culture was made possible through the large-scale trade of Pennsylvania’s farm
goods through the port of Philadelphia and onto the West Indies.
373
Philadelphia was a major
commercial and mercantile center in the North American colonies.
374
The major trading partners
of the city included the British, Dutch, and French colonies of the West Indies where merchants
traded items such as dairy products, apples, livestock, and grain from Pennsylvania farms for
goods such sugar, rum, and molasses from Caribbean plantations.
375
In the eighteenth century,
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
372
!Eighteenth-century sugar prices are discussed in Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville,
New Travels in the United States of America (London by J.S. Jordan, 1794); Susannah Carter,
The Frugal Housewife, (Philadelphia by James Carey, 1772); Thomas Doerflinger, A Vigorous
Spirit of Enterprise: Merchants and Economic Development in Revolutionary Philadelphia
(Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).
373
!Doerflinger, Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise, 70-82.
374
Doerflinger, Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise, 68-126; Robert Findlay and Peter
O’Rourke, Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Milennium
(Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2009), 235-237.
375
Doerflinger, Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise, 70-78,179-180, 202, 217; Ezekiel Edwards
to James Pemberton, September 11, 1772, Pemberton Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Fairchild, Knight and Caddell to John Yeats, March 29, 1743, Yeats
Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Marc Egnal, “The
Changing Structure of Philadelphia’s Trade with the British West Indies, 1750-1775”, The
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 99, no. 2 (April 1796): 156-179; Pehr Kalm,
Travels into North America: Containing its Natural History, with the Civil, Ecclesiastical and
Commercial State of the Country, 1750 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press,
2011), 27; Peter Hunter to John Reynell, July 7, 1749, Reynell Papers, Historical Society of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Richard Pares, Yankees and Creoles: The Trade
Between North America and the West Indies Before the American Revolution (Boston, Harvard
University Press, 2013), 5-8, 16, 23-27, 41, 93-95, 129-131, 158, 161; Robert E. Wright, The
First Wall Street: Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, and the Birth of American Finance (Chicago,
University of Chicago Press, 2005),16, 33-35, 38, 108, 170, 177.
! ! ! 114!
the majority of the world’s sugar was produced in the British, Dutch, and French West Indies—
and Pennsylvania had rare access to all of those economies.
376

In his groundbreaking economic study of Revolutionary Philadelphia, the historian
Thomas M. Doerflinger described how Philadelphia’s sophisticated trade network linked the
economy of the Pennsylvanian countryside to global markets.
377
During the second half of the
eighteenth-century, Philadelphia’s merchants started specializing in specific markets, thereby
gaining expertise and increasing efficiency.
378
Many merchants focused on the provisions trade,
exporting foodstuffs from Pennsylvania’s farms to the West Indies and Southern Europe.
379

Merchants who specialized in the West Indian trade then imported commodities such as sugar,
molasses and rum to sell in Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania countryside.
380

Primary sources reference the importance of the sugar trade between Philadelphia and the
West Indies in detail: most specifically in trade statistics and letters by merchants and traders, but
also in contemporary travel books and histories.
381
In the context of other studies, other
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
376
Egnal, “Philadelphia’s Trade with the British West Indies,” 156-160, 179; Findlay,
Power and Plenty, 234-237; Huetz de Lemps, “Colonial Beverages and Consumption of Sugar”,
Food: A Culinary History, edited by Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montinari (New York,
Columbia University Press, 1999): 382-384, 392; Kalm, Travels into North America, 27-29;
Wright, Birth of American Finance, 16, 74, 84-88.
377
!Doerflinger, Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise, 76-134.
378
!Doerflinger, Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise, 77-120.
379
!Doerflinger, Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise, 78-92,100-102.
380
!Doerflinger, Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise, 70-82.
381
!These sources include!Pehr Kalm, Travels into North America: Containing its Natural
History, with the Civil, Ecclesiastical and Commercial State of the Country, 1750 (Cambridge,
England: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 27-30, 34-37; Pemberton Papers, Historical
Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Robert Proud, A History of Pennsylvania
(Philadelphia for Zacharial Poulson, 1798), 268; Reynell Papers, Historical Society of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Yeats Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
! ! ! 115!
historians also used these same sources to analyze different aspects of the trade.
382
For example,
by using letters written by merchants from Philadelphia, the West Indies, and England who were
involved in the eighteenth-century sugar trade at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in
Philadelphia, other historians detailed the role of Quakers in negotiating exclusive trade deals
with the Dutch West Indies.
383
One of the first histories of the commonwealth, Robert Proud’s
1789 A History of Pennsylvania, stated that the trade of Pennsylvania farm goods for West
Indian sugar was important to the local economy.
384

In the early eighteenth-century, Philadelphia imported most of its sugar from the British
colonies of Jamaica and Barbados.
385
The British West Indies also traded sugar for other staples
in Charleston, one of the other major British centers of trade in North America.
386
However,
since the Southern colonies were also planation economies that concentrated on luxury products,
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
382
Thomas Doerflinger, A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise: Merchants and Economic
Development in Revolutionary Philadelphia (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North
Carolina Press, 2001); Richard Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the
English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina
Press, 2000); Marc Egnal, “The Changing Structure of Philadelphia’s Trade with the British
West Indies, 1750-1775,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 99, no. 2 (April
1975): 156-179.
383
!Findlay, Power and Plenty, 235-237; Richard Pares, Yankees and Creoles: The Trade
Between North America and the West Indies Before the American Revolution (Boston, Harvard
University Press, 2013), 41, 93-95, 129-131, 158, 161; Karin Wulf, Not All Wives: Women of
Colonial Philadelphia (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 53-55, 11-183.
384
!Proud, History of Pennsylvania, 268.
385
Egnal, “Philadelphia’s Trade with the British West Indies,” 156-160; Findlay, Power
and Plenty, 235-237; John Hawksworth to Pemberton and Edwards, March 6, 1774, Pemberton
Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Proud, History of
Pennsylvania, 270-272.
386
William A. Greene, “Supply Versus Demand in the Barbadian Sugar Revolution.” The
Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18, no. 3 (Winter 1988): 403-418; Huetz de Lemps,
“Consumption of Sugar,” 382-384, 392; David Ramsey, The History of South-Carolina : From Its
First Settlement in 1670, to the Year 1808 , (Charleston, South Carolina by David
Longworth,1809), 211, 232, 303, 315; Wright, Birth of American Finance, 43.
! ! ! 116!
they did not produce nearly enough food to feed the British West Indies.
387
The British West
Indies turned to Philadelphia to fill that need.
388
In 1798, Richard Proud, who wrote one of the
first histories of Pennsylvania, estimated that in 1761 Philadelphia exported 26 tons of cheese
and 20 tons of butter to the British West Indies in exchange for molasses, sugar and rum.
389

Frequently, merchants in the British West Indies also owed debts on the trade goods from
Philadelphia and paid the interest in sugar and molasses.
390

As time went on, Philadelphia started importing more sugar from the Dutch and French
West Indies.
391
The British tried to enforce a monopoly on the sugar trade to their North
American colonies, but the merchants smuggled Dutch and French sugar past the authorities.
392

The large and specialized population of Quaker merchants in Philadelphia negotiated exclusive
trading contracts for sugar through a Quaker trading network in the Dutch West Indies.
393

Due to the sophistication of Philadelphia’s markets and the specialization of its
merchants, Philadelphia was largely unaffected when taxes, politics, and wars disrupted the
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
387
Selwyn Carrington, “The American Revolution and the British West Indies'
Economy,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 17, no. 4 (Spring 1987): 823-850; Egnal,
“Philadelphia’s Trade with the British West Indies,” 158, 161; Findlay, Power and Plenty, 234-
236; Greene, “Barbadian Sugar Revolution,” 411, 415-417; Huetz de Lemps, “Consumption of
Sugar,” 392.
388
Carrington, “British West Indies' Economy,” 823-836; Findlay, Power and Plenty,
235; Greene, “Barbadian Sugar Revolution,” 413-417; Wright, Birth of American Finance, 19-
22.
389
Proud, History of Pennsylvania, 268.
390
Birkett and Booth to John Reynell, January 18, 1752, Reynell Papers, Historical
Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Proud, History of Pennsylvania, 104.
391
!Doerflinger, Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise, 70-78; Findlay, Power and Plenty, 235;
Pares, Yankees and Creoles, 23-27; Proud, History of Pennsylvania, 104, 110, 133, 255-260;
Wright, Birth of American Finance, 27, 83.
392
!Findlay, Power and Plenty, 236; Pares, Yankees and Creoles, 27-31; Wright, Birth of
American Finance, 14-16, 21-24, 54, 74, 84-88.
393
!Carrington, “British West Indies' Economy,” 823-825, 835-837; Findlay, Power and
Plenty, 235-237; Kalm, Travels into North America, 32; Pares, Yankees and Creoles, 23-27;
Wright, Birth of American Finance, 74, 84-88; Karin Wulf, Not All Wives, 53-55.
! ! ! 117!
sugar trade elsewhere in eighteenth-century North America.
394
The British increased taxes on
colonial sugar with the Molasses Act of 1733 and the Sugar Act of 1764, but Philadelphia
ignored the first act and the second act was too small to make much difference.
395
Boston and
New York also boycotted British sugar to protest the Sugar Act, but Philadelphia did not.
396

However, when the Sugar Act was repealed in 1766 as result of the boycott, Philadelphia also
benefitted.
397
Even the American Revolution did little to disrupt Philadelphia’s access to sugar.
Even when British forces occupied Philadelphia during the war, the economic sophistication of
the city’s established trade network ensured sugar imports remained uninterrupted.
398

Philadelphia’s access to cheap sugar was unusual for the time. Although sugar was long
sought after in Europe, it was also very expensive because sugar cane was difficult to
cultivate.
399
!Sugar cane was a labor intensive crop: the plant resembles a bamboo stalk and its
hard, outer casing needed to be pried open in order to reach the liquid sugar cane inside.
400
This
sugary liquid then needed to be refined and dried into sugar crystals.
401
In addition, sugar cane
only grew in certain subtropical climates.
402
Through the use of slave labor from Africa, the
British, Dutch, and French West Indies were some of the first places in the world to produce
sugar cane cheaply and on a grand scale.
403

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
394
Carrington, “British West Indies' Economy,” 823-825, 835-837.
395
!Carrington, “British West Indies' Economy,” 835-838; Wulf, Not All Wives, 181-183.
396
!Wulf, Not All Wives, 181-183.
397
!Carrington, “British West Indies' Economy,” 835-839; Wulf, Not All Wives, 181-184;
Wright, Birth of American Finance, 106.
398
!Carrington, “British West Indies' Economy,” 835-838; Findlay, Power and Plenty,
235-237; Wright, Birth of American Finance, 83-88, Wulf, Not All Wives, 181-184.
399
!Mintz, Sweetness and Power, 20-23.
400
!Mintz, Sweetness and Power, 19-22.
401
!Huetz de Lemps, “Consumption of Sugar,” 384; Mintz, Sweetness and Power, 19-22.
402
!Huetz de Lemps, “Consumption of Sugar,” 384.
403
!Findlay, Power and Plenty, 234-236; Huetz de Lemps, “Consumption of Sugar,”382.
! ! ! 118!
This meant that throughout most of European history, sugar was either nonexistent or an
exotic luxury. Cane sugar was an expensive commodity from Asia and was, for the most part,
not available on any wide scale in Europe until the middle of the seventeenth-century.
404
Before
that time, only royalty and nobility could afford sugar.
405
One of the first mentions of sugar in
England was by King Henry III in 1226.
406
He wrote to the mayor of Winchester asking him to
send three pounds of sugar from the Winchester fair, but only if it was possible to find that much
sugar among the merchants.
407
Everyone else sweetened food with honey, malt, sweet wine, or
dried fruit.
408
By the eighteenth-century, most Englishmen could afford sugar in small quantities,
but it was still a luxury and a considerable household expense.
409

The colonists of Pennsylvania went without many of the niceties of England, yet through
a happy accident of economics, they also had unmatched access to one of the world’s most
prized luxury goods. On September 2, 1789 by Ruthy Wood of Newberry in York County,
Pennsylvania wrote to her mother Nanna Huse in England, summarizing these circumstances
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
404
!Huetz de Lemps, “Consumption of Sugar,” 382-384; Mintz, “The Changing Roles of
Food in the Study of Consumption,” Consumption and the World of Goods, edited by John
Brewer and Roy Porter, (London, Routledge, 1994): 261-265.
405
W.K.H. Bode, European Gastronomy (London, Saint Edmundsbury, 1994), 97; Neil
McKendrick, John Brewer and J.H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The
Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (London: Europa Publications, 1982), 92.
406
!Mintz, Sweetness and Power, 82.
407
!Huetz de Lemps, “Consumption of Sugar,” 382.
408
Bode, European Gastronomy, 99-103, 108; Mintz, Sweetness and Power, 9-11, 13-17.
409
!Woodruff Smith, “From Coffeehouse to Parlour: The Consumption of Coffee, Tea
and Sugar in North-Western Europe in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century England”,
Consuming Habits: Drugs in History and Anthropology, edited by Jordan Goodman, Paul E.
Lovejoy and Andrew Sherrat (London, Routledge, 1995): 149; McKendrick, Birth of a
Consumer Society, 92-94.
! ! ! 119!
perfectly. Shortly after migrating to Pennsylvania, Wood noted that: “...our home is in a very
lonesome place…but I have 45 pounds of sugar a waiting and this is pretty fine…”
410

The English women who immigrated to Pennsylvania in the eighteenth-century clearly
valued and enjoyed their sugar. One of the first words Ann changed from her mother’s Somerset
vernacular to a more common Pennsylvanian spelling was shuger to sugar. Although there was
no standardized language in either place, linguistic historians such as Linda Mitchell, Laurel J.
Briton, Leslie K. Arnovik, and Seth Lerer identified spellings of specific words that were more
common in these communities during the eighteenth-century.
411
Her quick adaption of a
different spelling for sugar suggests that she and the people around her used the word often. In
Ann and D.R.’s earliest recipes in Pennsylvania, the two women never rationed their sugar. As
described earlier in this chapter, both were desperately using any ingredients they could find, but
never lacked for sugar. D.R.’s “To cure hams” called for 4 pounds of sugar! Ann’s “Dutch Beef”
used one pound and her “To make Westphalia Ham” was made with two pints. In her recipe for
“Yellow Riro Cream”, Ann directed the cook to use “as much sugar till sweet”.
Anglo-Americans in Pennsylvania also used sugar and sugar byproducts as currency.
Manuscript sources provide evidence of sugar, molasses, and rum being used in lieu of money.
An anonymous farmer from the southern border of Pennsylvania and New York recorded in his
ledger that he paid almost all of his bills using sugar, molasses, and rum.
412
As reimbursement
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
410
!Ruthy Wood to Nanna Huse, September 2 1789, Women’s History Collection,
Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
411
!Laurel J. Briton and Leslie K. Arnovik, The English Language: A Linguistic History
(Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2011), 52-56,157; Seth Lerer, Inventing English: A
Portable History of the Language (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 192-207;
Linda C.!Mitchell, Grammar Wars: Language as Cultural Battlefield in 17th and 18th Century
England (Aldershot, Hampshire, England: Ashgate, 2002), 90-93, 111, 125.
412
!Farmer’s Ledger, 1774-1777, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and
Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
! ! ! 120!
for services as a caretaker, the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania on April 13, 1772 recorded that
it paid Hannah Tofs 4 quarts and 7 ¼ ounces of sugar, 2 quarts of West India rum, and 1 pint of
New England rum.
413

With this much access to sugar, eighteenth-century Pennsylvanians created some of the
sweetest food the world had ever known.
414
Ann and her eighteenth-century Anglo-American
peers called for astonishing quantities of sugar in their recipes. Not only did they use far greater
amounts of sugar than English cooks, but they also sweetened their food substantially more than
modern Americans.
Over half Ann’s recipes call for sugar. In the first few pages of the cookbook, she
described the different types of sugar, highlighting the importance of this ingredient for her.
415

She also wrote explanations on “How to Clarify Sugar” and “How to Clarify Powder Sugar.”
416

In her recipe entitled, “The Portugall Cake”, she uses almost twice as much sugar as
flour. She calls for approximately two pounds of sugar to be used four separate times:

The Portugall Cake

Take a pound of flower and a pound of loaf sugar sifted through a large siefe. Then take a
pound of butter and put it in a bowl. Add together 9 yolks and whites of eggs well beaten
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
413
!Business Receipt paid April 13, 1772 by Johnstown, Pennsylvania to Hannah Tofs,
Pennsylvania State Harrisburg, Women’s History Collection, Pennsylvania State University,
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
414
!Huetz de Lemps, “Consumption of Sugar,”382; Arthur L. Meyer, Baking Across
America (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1998), 45, 69-74; McWilliams, Revolution in
Eating, 112-114, 157.
415
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 88.
416
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 1-3.
!
! ! ! 121!
with 4 spoonfulls of sugar. Put them in into the flower and sugar and stir them well
together. Then put in another half pound of sugar and flower. Then a quarter of a pound
of orange or lemon peel with fine loaf sugar. As your oven heats, mingle your cake. Set it
up your oven lid that your heat may fall down from the top. Keep visiting the oven and if
need be hotter then finish when fresh swept. Keep in oven an hour and a half.
417

Her recipe for, “Honey Coal Cakes,” is for a candy made purely of honey and sugar:

Honey Coal Cake

Take half pound of double refined sugar dissolved in honey and let boyl the sugar again,
and when it is boyled take a fin pan and put it on a chafing dish of coals, and then uprigt
like a driping pan that your sugar may boyl up high. Then take off and when cold take off
the coals, and spoon them into little cakes. Dont spoon them on too thick, but high. Paper
and bag them up.
418

Ann’s recipe for “Chocolate Puffs” is for another candy made with only chocolate, egg
whites and sugar:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
417
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 1.
418
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 9.
! ! ! 122!
Chocolate Puffs

Take half a pound of double refined sugar stirred with as much chocolate needed to make
it brown, then when it is mixed with your sugar add the whites of an egg beaten up to a
froth, and mix with your chocolate and sugar until a thick paste. Then lay them out on
double paper pretty flat some long and some round. Bake them in the oven as long as
tarts.
419

Ann’s recipe for “Chocolate Biskits” is made with chocolate, egg whites, flour and sugar.
Biskit was a common eighteenth-century spelling for biscuit, the English word for cookie.
420

During the late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century, Americans slowly adopted the
term, cookie, from Dutch immigrants.
421
These words were used interchangeably during the
period, although Ann usually called the pastry a biskit.
422
Her cookbook includes 24 recipes for
biskits, cookies, and craknels (an English term for tea cookies)
423
. They all are made with at least
as much sugar as flour, including this one:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
419
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 22.
420
!Michael Krondl, Sweet Invention: A History of Dessert (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2011), 6, 9-13,187-190; Stavely, Founding Food, 240, 251-255.
421
$Further detail on the history of these terms is found in an earlier footnote. Krondl,
Sweet Invention, 65, 135, 188-190; Stavely, Founding Food, 253-256.
422
!Meyer, Baking Across America, 70-76.
423
Elizabeth Moxon, English Housewifry : Exemplified in Above Four Hundred and Fifty
Receipts Giving Directions in Most Parts of Cookery (Griffith Wright, London, 1764), 114.
! ! ! 123!
Chocolate Biskit

Take a quarter pound of chocolate, grate into a pound of double refined sugar white, must
be beaten and sifted, mix them together, make it a good rich brown color, then beat
whites of two eggs to white froth, then mix all together with a pound flower and put into
a pippin bag in a moderate oven so they do not lose their color.
424

Recipes in other personal, handwritten recipe books from Anglo-American women in
eighteenth-century Southeastern Pennsylvania and Philadelphia indicate that Ann was not alone
in her copious use of sugar. A receipt book used by multiple generations of the Clymer Family in
eighteenth-century Berks County, Pennsylvania also includes many such recipes.
425
Although
this book is far shorter than “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book”, with only 97 pages, 15 different
authors contributed to it. It starts with the recipes of Mrs. Clymer, the wife of a lawyer named
Daniel Clymer. One of Mrs. Clymer’s first recipes is for the aptly named “Sugar Cake”:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
424
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book”, 20.
425
!Clymer Family Receipt Book,!Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and
Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
! ! ! 124!
Sugar Cake

Mrs. Clymer

3 pounds of sugar, 1 pound of butter, 1 quart of thick milk, 2 pounds flower, put the sugar
in the milk, let it stand, melt the butter, mix the whole together with flower, make the
dough ready for baking.
426

Another recipe in the Clymer Family Receipt Book entitled, “Dutch Pound Cake,” by a
Mrs. J. Eckhart uses the same amount of sugar and flour. The title of this recipe suggests the
influence of the Dutch settlers in Pennsylvania, whose eighteenth-century cakes strongly
resemble this one.
427
This is yet another example of Dutch immigrants influencing Anglo-
American food culture. Here is the recipe for the cake:

Dutch Pound Cake

2 cups flower, 1 of butter, 2 cups sugar, 1 teaspoon salt, and put in a handful of rasons,
mix to stiffness of pancake dough, add two eggs beaten light. Put in pan, bake them until
rise. Mrs. J. Eckart
428

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
426
!Clymer, “Family Receipt Book”, 80.
427
Although Anglo-American colonists sometimes mixed up the terms “Dutch” and
“Duetsch” (German), this recipe most closely resembles Dutch, and not German, cakes.
Lipkowitz, Words to Eat By, 157-159; Rose, The Sensible Cook, 32-33, 74.
428
Eckart, “Family Receipt Book,”52.
! ! ! 125!

Figure 10. The cover of The Clymer Family Recipe Book. Courtesy of Rare Books and
Manuscripts Library, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Photographed by Juliette
Parsons.

! ! ! 126!
Women in Pennsylvania also used sugar as a medicine, much in the way Bettee and other
English women had done for centuries. An anonymous woman from eighteenth-century
Philadelphia wrote this loose medical receipt on how to increase lactation using sugar and wax:

Plasters for the Breast

Take a wax candle and scrape the half off it small and fine Suger. Beat fine and doon
through a sive, mex them well together over a gentel fire, then spread it upon thick lining,
and lay it to the breast, all the trouble of your milk will be over.
429

Ann also added comments to several of her mother’s recipes for medicines that included sugar—
indicating that she used these recipes as well. In this example, she added a short comment at the
end and signed it with her initial:

A remedy for the hiccough

Take a single drop of cinamon and let it drop on a Lump of double refined shuger, then
let it dissolve in your mouth leisurely.

A
and swallow it downe.
430

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
429
!Plasters for the Breast, Women’s History Collection, Pennsylvania State University,
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
!
! ! ! 127!
Although Ann and her peers used sugar in medicine like their mothers, the way they used sugar
in recipes for food was very different. Bettee and other eighteenth-century women in England
assumed that sugar would be just as expensive in the New World as in England. Bettee included
much advice for her daughter on how to ration sugar and on how to find sugar substitutes. One
example is her recipe entitled, “To Drye Pears or Pipins without Shuger,” which is included in
the second chapter of this dissertation. In this recipe, Bettee used concentrated wine as a
substitute for sugar.
Even though Bettee used sugar frequently, she rarely called for large quantities. When
money was tight, she sweetened food with other ingredients like honey and hard liquor instead.
Her daughter always used sugar as her main sweetener, although she sometimes added other
sweeteners as well. For example, as is described earlier in this chapter, Ann’s “Honey Coal
Cakes” included both sugar and honey.
Ann saw little value in her mother’s recipes that used other sweeteners instead of sugar.
She included none of these recipes in her table of contents. She even crossed some of these
recipes out—for example, she put lines through her mother’s recipe “To Make thick Ginger
Bread” made with sweet wine instead of sugar.
431
In others, she replaced honey with sugar.
Ann also repurposed some of her mother’s recipes that contained sugar. For example, she
added the following to Bettee’s “To Clarify Powder Shuger”: “The quantity of sugar for
preserving fruits or jellys is a pound & a quarter to a pound of fruit but for past or jam a pound to
a pound is enough.”
432
At the end of her mother’s “To Make Rafberry Jam”, she wrote in large,
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
430
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 40.
431
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 49.
432
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 1.
! ! ! 128!
bold letters that this was to be used “for Pye.”
433
She repurposed many of her mother’s jams,
jellys, and preserves for use as pie fillings. As her comments indicate, her pies were incredibly
sweet as she used a 1:1 ratio of sugar to fruit.
In eighteenth-century Southeastern Pennsylvania, the most important dessert—and
perhaps the most important meal—was pie. The average eighteenth-century Anglo-American
family from the region ate dessert pies every day.
434
Dinner was usually light and simple—the
calories came from the pie.
435

Fruit pies became the representative food of eighteenth-century Pennsylvania’s dessert-
centric food culture.
436
Many fruits that had once been too bitter or sour to eat were made
palatable by adding lots of sugar and placing them in piecrusts.
437
This led to the creation of
many new pies, including blueberry pie, blackberry pie, cranberry pie, raisin pie, cherry pie,
pumpkin pie, peach pie, and strawberry pie.
438
Instead of using spices or fermentation to keep
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
433
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 2.
434
John Hector St. John Crevcoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of
Eighteenth-Century America (London, Davis and Davis, 1782), 280-284; William T. Parsons,
“Representation of Ethnicity Among Colonial Pennsylvania Germans”, A Mixed Race: Ethnicity
in Early America, edited by Frank Shuffleton (Oxford, England, Oxford University Press, 1993),
132-134; Stavely, Founding Food, 216-222.
435
!Crevcoeur, Letters from an American Farmer, 280-284; Stavely, Founding Food,
212-220.
436
Crevcoeur, Letters from an American Farmer, 280-284; Kalm, Travels into North
America, 79-81 122-123; Parsons, “Representation of Ethnicity,” 133-135; Isaac Weld, Travels
through North America and the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada During 1795, 1796, and
1797 (London, J. Stackdale, 1800), 110-114, 250.
437
!Brissot de Warville, Travels through North America,!423, 433; Kalm, Travels into
North America, 79-81 122-123; McWilliams, Revolution in Eating,172-175; Louis Lemery, A
Treatise of All Sorts of Foods (London for John Taylor, 1704), 37-38, 47, 61, 79-81; Weld,
Travels through North America,!112-114.
438
Kalm, Travels into North America, 79-81, Parsons, “Representation of Ethnicity,”
132-134; Weld,!Travels through North America,!111-114.!!
! ! ! 129!
their pies fresh, Northern colonists preserved them with sugar and kept pies throughout the
winter in pie houses.
439
Pie houses looked like sheds and functioned as freezers.
440

The pies of Pennsylvania fascinated European travellers. After his trip in 1795, Irish
travel writer Isaac Weld wrote that the peach and apple pies of Pennsylvania were so sweet that
they had “…fcarcely any of the flavour of the original fruit.”
441
During his 1749 visit to
Philadelphia, Swedish naturalist Pehr Kalm wrote this about the berry pies sold at market every
Sunday and Wednesday in the city:
442

…berries…made use of during winter, and part of summer, in tarts and other kinds of
pastry. But as the [berries] are very sour, they require a great deal of sugar, but that is not
very dear in a country where the sugar-planations are not far off.
443

The French botanist, Louis Lemery, was impressed by how even pumpkins were made edible
with sugar and a pie crust: “They preserve pumpkins with Sugar in order to make them more
pleasing to the Taste…in short, they rarify their grofs Substance…
444

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
439
!Brissot de Warville, Travels through North America,!433; David Hackett Fischer,
Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in North America (Oxford, England, Oxford University
Press, 1989), 138-140; Kalm, Travels into North America, 79-81 122-123, Lemery, All Sorts of
Foods, 37-38, 47, 61; Stavely, Founding Food, 198-210, 214-220; Weld,!Travels through North
America,!253.
440
Fischer, Albion’s Seed, 138-140; Stavely, Founding Food, 68, 216-218; Weld,!Travels
through North America,!253.
441
!Weld,!Travels through North America,!112.
442
!Kalm, Travels into North America, 79-80.
443
!Kalm, Travels into North America, 80.
444
!Lemery, All Sorts of Foods, 53.
!
! ! ! 130!

Figure 11. Remains of a pie house located on the ruins of a farm from the 1790s in Newport,
Perry County, Pennsylvania. The Perry County Historical Society was constructed on the
remaining foundation of the farmhouse. Photographed by Juliette Parsons.

! ! ! 131!
One of the most popular pies in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania was apple pie.
445

Although the English had eaten apple pies for centuries, their pies were usually unsweetened—
although sometimes honey or a sprinkle of sugar was added.
446
Ann’s recipe for apple pie
filling
447
is representative of these sugar rich fruit pies. Her recipe calls for far more sugar than
apples—she adds sugar nine times to the pie filling alone:

To preserfe apples

Make your water boyl in a braf skillet, then take it off and put into your same water a pint
of fine sugar, warm very lightly. Then take a dozen apples, a pound of double refined
sugar, put them in the water. Let them boil 2 hours and with a spoon make a little hole in
the head, dont pull off the stalk, let them ly 5 to 6 days, adding sugar syrup every day.
Boyl and put them in a jelly of apples, add the Juice of 3 large lemons, a pound of double
refined sugar. You may serve them in a past.
448

Pennsylvanians also used apples in many other ways as well. Common foods made with
apples included apple cider, apple butter (also known as apple jelly), dried apples, and apple
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
445
!Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer, 280-284; Krondl, Sweet Invention,
317; Parsons, “Representation of Ethnicity,” 132-135; Weld,!Travels through North America,!
110-114.
446
!Krondl, Sweet Invention, 317; McWilliams, Revolution in Eating, 174-176.
447
!Instead of writing separate recipes for pies, Ann Ellis wrote multiple recipes for
fillings to be used in pies, tarts or other pastries. At the end of these recipes, she wrote which
desserts the filling was best used for. She also included separate recipes for different kinds of
piecrust and pastry that could be interchanged with different fruit fillings.
448
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 50.
! ! ! 132!
dumplings. All of these items were also made with large amounts of sugar, as can be seen in this
recipe for apple butter by D.R.:

Apple Jelly

Take the finest Apples, put them in as much sugar water as will cover them, set them
over a quick fire & boyl them to a mash.
449

D.R.’s recipe for dried apples also used a great deal of sugar:

Dryed Apples

Soak the apples a night or two in sweet water with moist Sugar. Let them stand in an
oven till they are dry; when soft enough keep flattening with sugar in your Hand.
450

Not only were apples central to Pennsylvanian cuisine, but also they were important to
the economy. Farmers grew apples in numerous orchards throughout the commonwealth.
451

Pennsylvania farmers began growing apple trees with seeds imported from England in the
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
449
!D.R., “Recipe Book,” 27.
450
!D.R., “Recipe Book,” 21.
451
!Crevcoeur, Letters from an American Farmer, 280-284; Parsons, “Representation of
Ethnicity,” 132-134,!110-114.
! ! ! 133!
eighteenth-century and in the eighteenth-century started importing the seeds and fruits to Great
Britain for manufactured goods and to the West Indies for sugar.
452

A run of one cent chapbooks entitled, Black Giles the Poacher with the History of Widow
Brown’s Apple Tree, Parts I and II, published first in London but adapted to local tastes in
Philadelphia, illustrates the importance of apples, sugar, and pie in eighteenth-century
Pennsylvania.
453
These stories were part of a larger series of small paperback books 20 to 30
pages long called, “Cheap Repository Tracts,” with short stories based on the Anglican sermon
of the week as well as original morality tales.
454
In Part II, Black Giles steals apples from Widow
Brown’s tree every Sunday while she is at church before meeting a bad end.
455
In the
Philadelphia version, every time Black Giles steals an apple, the narrator comments on how the
widow could have sold that apple for money or used it to make some delicious apple dessert.
456

One Sunday, Black Giles takes his horrified young son, Dick, with him to steal the apples from
the widow’s best tree.
457
In the English version, the son reacts in this way: “The youngest boy
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
452
!Findlay, Power and Plenty, 235; Pares, Yankees and Creoles, 133; Wall and Walton,
“Agricultural Productivity,” 102-117; Wright, Birth of American Finance, 16, 74, 84-88.
453
Hannah More, Black Giles the Poacher with the History of Widow Brown’s Apple
Tree, Parts I and II (London, Marshall, 1796), Women’s History Collection, Pennsylvania State
University, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Hannah More, Black Giles the Poacher with the History of
Widow Brown’s Apple Tree, Parts I and II (Philadelphia, B and J Johnson, 1796), Women’s
History Collection, Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The versions of the
stories referenced here are among the uncataloged sources from that collection.
454
!Anne Stott, Hannah More: The First Victorian (Oxford, England, Oxford University
Press, 2004), vi-xii, 115-120, 145, 158-160. English writer Hannah More published numerous
“Cheap Repository Tracts” throughout the 1790s. Intended for the literate lower classes in
England and the United States, these pamphlets sold for either half a cent or one cent. The stories
were conservative, moralistic and anti-slavery—and often related to food.
455
!More, London, 1-8; More, Philadelphia, 1-8.
456
!More, Philadelphia, 1-9.
457
!More, London, 5-6; More, Philadelphia, 5-6.
! ! ! 134!
Dick begged his father that he would leave the poor old woman enough for cyder.”
458
In
Pennsylvania version, “cyder” is substituted with “a few pies.”
459

In his 1782 Letters from an American Farmer, John Hector St. John Crevcoeur, French
migrant and celebrated observer of American life, recorded that apple pies were central to the
diet in Pennsylvania.
460
Crevcoeur wrote his work from the perspective of a fictional narrator—a
Pennsylvanian farmer named Farmer James—who described rural American life as a triumph of
enlightened individualism.
461
Farmer James also regarded the close connection between a farmer
and his food as emblematic of the new American character.
462

Crevcoeur first came to North America during the French and Indian War as a surveyor
in the French militia.
463
After the French defeat in 1759, he moved to New York where he
bought a large farm, married an Anglo-American woman, and Anglicized his name.
464
British
forces occupying New York during the American Revolution suspected him of being an
American spy and he was imprisoned without a trial.
465
In 1782, he published Letters from an
American Farmer, which became popular throughout England and France for his idealized
description of the American way of life.
466

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
458
!More, London, 1796, 5-6.
459
More, Philadelphia, 5-6.
460
!Percy G. Adams, Crevecoeur's Eighteenth-Century Travels in Pennsylvania and New
York (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2014), 18-20, 25-32; Crevecoeur,
Letters from an American Farmer, 282-285.
461
!Adams, Crevecoeur's Eighteenth-Century Travels, 6-9, 18; Crevcoeur, Letters from
an American Farmer, 14-20, 78-90.
462
!Crevcoeur, Letters from an American Farmer, 22-29, 47, 133-139.
463
!Adams, Crevecoeur's Eighteenth-Century Travels, 18-20, 25-32.
464
!Adams, Crevecoeur's Eighteenth-Century Travels, 17-21, 29-31, 50, 64.
465
!Adams, Crevecoeur's Eighteenth-Century Travels, 31, 38-40.
466
!Adams, Crevecoeur's Eighteenth-Century Travels, 30-32, 77, 102; Crevecoeur,
Letters from an American Farmer, 134-137.
! ! ! 135!
In this work, Farmer Bartram describes the eating habits of another local farmer named
Mr. F.B.: “My wife’s and my supper half the year consists of apple pie and milk.”
467
Crevcoeur’s
narrator Farmer James celebrated this simple meal because the farmer and his wife prepared it
with ingredients from their own farm.
468
A common pairing, apple pie and milk was the ultimate
Pennsylvanian food; its reliance on local ingredients also made it symbolic of a new American
identity.
Milk and other dairy products were fresh, cheap, and common in eighteenth-century
southeastern Pennsylvania and Philadelphia.
469
The vast and fertile farmland of the countryside
meant that dairy farming was one of the most widespread and profitable industries.
470
Women
stored diary products such as butter and cheese in ice houses and pie houses.
471
This rudimentary
method of refrigeration reduced their labor in kitchen—they did not need to prepare these
common ingredients as frequently.
472

As a result, Ann did not include any of her mother’s almond milk recipes in her table of
contents. As mentioned above, almond milk was widely used in England as a substitute for
cow’s milk partly because it did not spoil.
473
In eighteenth-century Pennsylvania and in most of
the other British North American colonies, almonds were more expensive than milk.
474

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
467
Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer, 283.
468
!Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer, 283-284.
469
!Lemon, “Household Consumption,” 59-70; Oakes, “Dairying in New England and
Pennsylvania,” 195-212.
470
!Lemon, “Household Consumption,” 60-68; Oakes, “Dairying in New England and
Pennsylvania,” 195-202; Proud, History of Pennsylvania, 258-265.
471
!Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer, 281-284; Lemon, “Household
Consumption,” 60-68; Oakes, “Dairying in New England and Pennsylvania,” 195; Weld, Travels
through North America,!111-113.
472
!Lemon, “Household Consumption,” 64-67; Oakes, “Dairying in New England and
Pennsylvania,” 193-195.
473
!Vincent DiMarco, Egg Pies, Moss Cakes, and Pigeons Like Puffins: 18
th
Century
British Cookery from Manuscript Sources (Lincoln, Nebraska, iUniverse, 2007), 66, 78, 92, 113,
! ! ! 136!
Ann and her peers frequently used large quantities of milk, cream, and butter in their
cooking. Their pastries were buttery, particularly the piecrusts. Ann’s recipe entitled, “To make
a Good past for tarts,”
475
found in the appendix for this dissertation, instructed the cook to add
one quarter pound of butter, two to three cups of cream, and some extra butter at the end. Ann’s
recipe entitled, “To make a Light past for Dish Pye,”
476
also transcribed in the appendix, uses
only a quarter pound of butter, but one pound of sugar! Here is one of her other recipes for
piecrust:

To make Past Royal

Take two pound of flower and one pound of butter to two eggs 10 ounces of sugar. Rub
in the butter as fine as you can and wet it with water pretty well. This is fit for tarts and
pye.
477

While this recipe uses one pound of butter, Bettee’s similar “To Make a Good Past Royal”, only
used one quarter of a pound of butter.
478
Other pastry recipes mentioned earlier in this chapter
include enormous amounts of butter as well. Ann’s “Portugall Cake” used equal amounts of
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
213; Gervase Markham, Countrey Contentments, or English Huswife, London, R. Jackson, 1623.
(McGill-Queens University Press, Quebec City, Canada, 1998), 56, 83.
474
!Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer, 282-285; Katharine Harbury, Colonial
Virginia’s Cooking Dynasty (Columbia, South Carolina, University of South Carolina Press,
2004), 34-36, 75; Weld, Travels through North America,!109-112.
475
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 40.!
476
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 40.
477
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 41.
478
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 40.
! ! ! 137!
butter and flour—one pound each. Mrs. Clymer’s “Sugar Cake” called for one pound of butter
and one quart of thick milk.
These women also wrote multiple recipes for creams sweetened with sugar. This is Ann’s
eighteenth-century version of whipped cream:

Tower Cream

Boyl sweet cream and when it grows to be pretty thick, foam it up with a spoon and set it
in the middle of a dish one upon the other until like a tower or in what fashion you
please. Then sweeten with sugar and serve.
479

Although whipped cream is usually used a condiment or topping today, Ann indicated that her
“Tower Cream” should be eaten alone. She also made the dessert extra sweet by sprinkling sugar
on top.
Ann included 30 different dessert cream recipes in her cookbook. Her recipe for “yellow
Riro Cream”, described earlier in this chapter, called for a pint and a half of new milk, and 4
spoonfuls of raw cream. Her “Chocolate Cream”, found in the first chapter of this dissertation,
instructed the cook to use as much milk and cream as was needed.
In her recipe book, the wealthy Mrs. Clymer included a receipt for “Ice Cream”. Her
recipe needed an enormous amount of sugar—at least 2 pounds of sugar for every quart of
cream, with a note that “…a little more will make it better.”
480
This is her recipe:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
479
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 17.
480
!“Family Receipt Book,” 52.
! ! ! 138!
Ice Cream

To one quart of cream add the whites of six eggs, beat them to a stiff froth, have your
cream flavored sweetened and fixed on ice ready to churn then put in the egg froth, them
commence churning and stiring it frequently from the sides of the churn. Sweeten to your
tast. 2 lb of sugar will do and a little more will make it better. Ice. A little lemmon or
cinammon to taste.

Mrs. Clymer

March 25
481

Ann did not write an ice cream recipe, probably because she could not afford to make it. In the
eighteenth-century, ice cream was expensive because it took a long time to prepare and needed to
be eaten quickly.
482
Before the invention of modern stabilizers, the ingredients in ice cream
separated after a few hours.
483
In eighteenth-century British North America, women usually only
made ice cream if they were wealthy enough to have ample leisure time or if they owned
multiple kitchen slaves.
484

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
481
!Clymer, “Family Receipt Book,” 52.
482
!Krondl, Sweet Invention, 158-160, 182; McWilliams, Revolution in Eating, 75-79,
122; Raymond Sokolov, Fading Feast: A Compendium of Disappearing American Regional
Foods (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1981), 48-51.
483
!Meyer, Baking Across America, 124-130; McWilliams, Revolution in Eating, 75-79.
484
!Krondl, Sweet Invention, 182, 325; Jack Goody, Cooking, Cuisine, and Class
(Cambridge, England: University of Cambridge Press, 1982), 113-115, 118; Harbury, Cooking
Dynasty, 100-103.
! ! ! 139!
The Anglo-American women of eighteenth-century Pennsylvania used large quantities
milk, cream, and butter in savory dishes as well. Many of Ann’s recipes for main courses found
in this chapter include these ingredients. Her recipe entitled, “To roaft lobsters”, instructed the
cook to first baste the lobsters with butter and then to serve them in pool of “…butter thick as
cream…”
485
Her “To make potato cakes” used equal amounts of butter and potatoes. Her “Craw
Fish Soop” called for a quart of cream, a quart of milk, and a quarter pound of butter. And her
“To Stew Oysters” required a pint of sweet butter, a pint of unsweetened butter, and a dish of
melted butter.
As the North American colonies declared independence from Great Britain,
Pennsylvanians began to view their new ways of cooking as central to their identity as
Americans. While Anglo-Americans first adopted the foodways of natives, slaves, and other
Europeans to survive, they eventually saw these changes as symbolic of national cuisine. New
Americans started to view popular and convenient foods such as sugar, milk, apples, and pie as
representative of a new land. Seeking to break with English foodways and establish their own
cultural individuality, they also invented new American foods.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
485
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 91.!
! ! ! 140!
Chapter 4
A New American Food Culture

As eighteenth-century Anglo-American women adapted to life in Southeastern
Pennsylvania, they developed the basis of a dessert-centric food culture that endures in the
United States to this day. With their recipes, they elevated the importance of dessert, made sugar
a defining taste in American cuisine, and contributed new foods of their own invention.
Eventually, the food tradition that Ann Ellis Smith represented spread out and shaped foodways
throughout the country.
American Cookery by Amelia Simmons demonstrates the far-reaching influence of this
eighteenth-century Southeastern Pennsylvanian food culture on national foodways. Published in
1796, American Cookery was the first American cookbook written by an American citizen.
486

The book included multiple dessert recipes from the Anglo-American food culture in
Southeastern Pennsylvania that Ann Ellis Smith represented.
In her cookbook, Amelia Simmons assembled recipes from all over the new country in an
effort to describe this new American food culture.
487
Simmons sought to write a nationalist
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
486
!John L. Hess and Karen Hess, The Taste of America (Champaign, Illinois, University
of Illinois Press, 2000), 12-14, 19, 82-87; Amelia Simmons, American Cookery (Hartford,
Connecticut, Hudson and Goodwin, 1796), Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Mary
Tolford Wilson, “Amelia Simmons Fills a Need: American Cookery, 1796”, William and Mary
Quarterly 13, no. 1 (January 1957) 16-30. The first edition of American Cookery was published
in Hartford, Connecticut. By 1800, the cookbook was published in all major cities in the United
States, including New York City, Boston, Charleston, and Philadelphia. !
487
!Harry Haff, The Founders of American Cuisine (Jefferson, North Carolina:
McFarland, 2011), 22-34; Wilson, “Amelia Simmons,” 16-30; Janet Theophano, Eat My Words:
Reading Women’s Lives from the Cookbooks They Wrote (Palgrave Macmillan, New York,
2013), 228, 233-237.
! ! ! 141!

Figure 12. Title Page of 1796 edition of American Cookery by Amelia Simmons. Photograph
courtesy of Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
! ! ! 142!
cookbook. The subtitle of American Cookery described the book as “adapted to this country and
to all grades of life.”
488
She signed her name, “Amelia Simmons, an American orphan,” while
most English authoresses wrote, “A Lady”, after their name.
489
This is in contrast to English
cookbook writers who spoke from a position of unquestioned authority. For example, in the
preface to her 1734 edition of A Collection of Above Three Hundred Receipts in Cookery, the
English authoress Mary Kettilby stated: “And I am proud to own, that most of the following
Prescriptions came from the most Eminent hands in that Profession. The rest are all…Approv’d
(not from Single instances of Success, but) from a long and repeated experience.”
490
Yet
Simmons democratically sought the advice of her readers.
491
She wrote the following in her
Preface:

This treatise is calculated of the improvement of the rising generation of Females in
America, the Lady of fashion and fortune will not be displeased, if many hints are
suggested for the more general and universal knowledge of those females in this
country…[She] will find it essentially necessary to have an opinion and determination of
her own…The candor of the American Ladies is solicitously intreated by the Authoress,
as she is circumscribed in her knowledge, this being an original work in this country.
492

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
488
!Simmons, American Cookery.
489
!Hess and Hess, Taste of America, 12-14; Simmons, American Cookery; Theophano,
Eat My Words, 228, 233-237.
490
!Mary Kettilby, A Collection of Above Three Hundred Receipts in Cookery, Physick,
and Surgery : For the Use of All Good Wives, Tender Mothers, and Careful Nurses (London: the
Executor for M. Kettilby, 1734), vi. !
491
!Hess and Hess, Taste of America, 12-14; Simmons, American Cookery, 2-3;
Theophano, Eat My Words, 233-237; Wilson, “Amelia Simmons,” 20-24, 26.
492
!Simmons, American Cookery, 2-3.
! ! ! 143!
Simmons’ book was influenced by multiple regional American foodways including those
of Pennsylvania, New England, and Virginia.
493
Her dessert recipes most strongly reflected food
culture of Southeastern Pennsylvania.
494
Her desserts all used large quantities of sugar, and many
included milk and apples as well.
495
She included more pie recipes than recipes for any other
type of food. She seasoned her pies with large quantities of sugar and little else, noting that when
making fruit pies: “Every species of fruit such as peas, plums, rasberries, black berries may be
only sweetened, without spices.”
496

Simmons’ and other American cookbook authors also incorporated recipes for desserts
first invented in eighteenth-century Southeastern Pennsylvania. This chapter traces the history of
those new foods from Ann’s recipes to some of their first mentions in published American
cookbooks. The chapter also explores the lasting influence of the foodways reflected in “The
“The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book” on American food culture.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
493
!David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press,
1989), 216-220, 349, 354, 470-478, 727; Haff, Founders of American Cuisine, 23-31, 160-173;
Kay Moss, Seeking the Historical Cook: Exploring Eighteenth-Century Southern Foodways
(Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 2013), 105, 224; Keith Stavely,
America’s Founding Food: The Story of New England Cooking (Chapel Hill, North Carolina:
University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 24, 55-59, 120.
494
!Fischer, Albion’s Seed, 136-138, 463-464, 470-504, 542-543, 550-572, 600-602; Haff,
Founders of American Cuisine, 27-30, 156, 159-161.
495
!Hess and Hess, Taste of America, 13-15, 86; “Amelia Simmons,” 16-30.
496
!Simmons, American Cookery, 25.
! ! ! 144!
Pennsylvania’s Dessert-Centric Food Culture

In the middle of the eighteenth-century, Quakers created apple dumplings as one of the
first new foods invented in Southeastern Pennsylvania.
497
Like apple pie—another Pennsylvania
favorite—apple dumplings were made with large quantities of sugar and apples, but were simpler
and more filling. The first apple dumplings were made with few ingredients and were boiled,
although variations soon appeared.
498
Quakers expanded upon the dessert-centric food culture of
Pennsylvania with a dessert that also reflected their religious values.
499
Made for hardworking
farmers, this uncomplicated yet satisfying dessert kept for a long time and took advantage of
local ingredients.
500
Quakers viewed strong tasting foods as overly extravagant, so apple
dumplings were intentionally bland.
501
They also purposely did not include some common
dessert ingredients thought by many Quakers to be indulgent: alcohol, chocolate, and coffee.
502

By contrast, when the English started eating apple dumplings decades later, they made the dish
with shortbread crusts and added hard liquor.
503

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
497
!J. Williams Frost, “From Plainness to Simplicity: Changing Quaker Ideals for
Material Culture”, In Quaker Aesthetics: Reflections on a Quaker Ethic in American Design and
Consumption, edited by Emma Jones Lapsansky and Anne A. Verplanck (Philadelphia,
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 18-22; William Woys Weaver, A Quaker Woman’s
Cookbook: The Domestic Cookery of Elizabeth Ellicott Lea (Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania,
Stackpole Books, 2004), xi-xlii.
498
!Frost, “Plainness to Simplicity,” 21-23; Weaver, Quaker Woman’s Cookbook, 36.
499
!Frost, “Plainness to Simplicity,” 20-24;!James McWilliams, A Revolution in Eating
(New York, Columbia University Press, 2005), 173-175.
500
!McWilliams, Revolution in Eating, 170-177; Weaver, Quaker Woman’s Cookbook,
xi-xl.
501
!Frost, “Plainness to Simplicity,” 18-20, 23;!Susan E. Klepp,!“Seasoning and Society:
Racial Differences in Mortality in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia”, The William and Mary
Quarterly 51, no. 3 (July 1994): 473-506; McWilliams, Revolution in Eating, 171-176.
502
!Frost, “Plainness to Simplicity,” 20-24; Klepp, Seasoning and Society,” 473-506.
503
!W.K.H. Bode, European Gastronomy: The Story of Man’s Food and Eating Customs
(London, Saint Edmundsbury, 1994), 162-164.
! ! ! 145!
Although Quakers invented apple dumplings, other Pennsylvanians quickly incorporated
the dessert into their diet.
504
After visiting in 1750, Swedish naturalist Pehr Kalm wrote that
many people in the Delaware River Valley ate apple dumplings every day.
505
Kalm also noted
that Quaker baked goods were very popular throughout Pennsylvania.
506

In 1796, Simmons included a recipe for apple dumplings in her cookbook. Simmons was
from Connecticut, but at the time, this dish was mostly frequently associated with the cuisine of
Pennsylvania Quakers.
507
This was her recipe:

An Apple Pudding Dumplin

Put into paste, quartered apples, lye in a cloth and boil two hours, serve
with sweet sauce.
508

Just like the first apple dumpling recipes by the Quakers, Amelia Simmons’ version was boiled
and contained few ingredients. It was also simple and easy to make. It is important to note that
Simmons’ recipe does not mention sugar. Her “sweet sauce” likely used sugar, but the lack of
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
504
!John Beale Bordley, Essays and Notes on Husbandry and Rural Affairs (Philadelphia,
Bard and Bartram, 1799), 503-507; McWilliams, Revolution in Eating, 170-177; Weaver,
Quaker Woman’s Cookbook, xii-xli.
505
!Pehr Kalm, Travels into North America: Containing its Natural History, with the
Civil, Ecclesiastical and Commercial State of the Country, 1750 (Cambridge, England:
Cambridge University Press, 2011), 66.
506
!Kalm, Travels into North America, 23-26.
507
Haff, Founders of American Cuisine, 163-167; Frost, “Plainness to Simplicity,” 20-
22; Weaver, Quaker Woman’s Cookbook, xii-xli.
508
!Simmons, American Cookery, 28.
!
! ! ! 146!
direct reference to the ingredient suggests that sugar was less important in this Connecticut
recipe than Ann’s recipe from Pennsylvania.
Ann’s apple dumplings included an enormous amount of sugar and were far more caloric.
Like Ann’s recipes for pies
509
, this receipt describes how to make the fruit filling with
instructions to then place it in a pastry:

To preserve apples whole

Take golden apples, scoop out the core with a very little scoop that the whole may not be
too large, then peel them and take double their weight of refined sugar. Take as much
water as will cover it then boyle it till all the water is out. Then take apple jelly and put in
the juice of 2 lemons and put them in your past with the apples and you may fry them in a
syrup of butter and sugar and they are very pretty and good.
510

Ann’s apple dumplings used even more sugar than her previous recipes
511
, calling for it three
separate times. First, she cooked the apples in twice as much sugar as fruit. Then, she coated
them in apple jelly (also known as apple butter), which was made by cooking apples and sugar
down until they were consistency of butter.
512
Lastly, she fried them in syrup made from butter
and sugar—also known as caramel.
513

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
509
!For pie recipes, see Chapter 3 and the appendices.
510
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 8.
511
!For these recipes, see Chapter 3 and the appendices.
512
!Keith Stavely, America’s Founding Food (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of
North Carolina Press, 2003), 126-128.
513
!Alan Davidson, The Oxford Companion to Food (Oxford, England, Oxford University
Press, 2006), 112, 140-141, 230.
! ! ! 147!
Ann and other eighteenth-century Anglo-Americans, particularly in Pennsylvania, fried
more and more of their foods over time. While English cooks rarely used this cooking technique
prior the nineteenth-century, frying was very popular among multiple different ethnic groups in
North America.
514
Dutch immigrants, German immigrants, many American Indian tribes, and
slaves all fried their food on a regular basis.
515
The Dutch and German immigrants usually fried
in butter or oil, while American Indians and slaves usually fried foods in animal fat.
516
Anglo-
Americans in Pennsylvania, including Ann, adopted all of these frying methods. At first, Ann
and her peers learned to fry specific foods from other local ethnic groups, essentially copying
other recipes with slight variations. An example of this is Ann’s fried oyster recipe from Chapter
3, “To stew oysters,” where she followed the example of American Indians in frying her
shellfish.
517
Over time, however, Anglo-American cooks started creating their own fried dishes.
Many of the new American foods invented in the late eighteenth-century called for frying.
518

One of the first new fried foods that Ann included in her cookbook was for crullers—a
curled doughnut:
519

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
514
!Bode, European Gastronomy, 98-103, 164-167; Susannah Carter, The Frugal
Housewife (Philadelphia by James Carey, 1772), 54-57.
515
Linda Murray Berzok, American Indian Food (Greenwood, Westport, Connecticut,
2005), 134-140; John Fiske,!The Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America (Houghton Mifflin,
Boston, 2008), 31-34; Sidney Mintz, The Birth of African-American Culture (Boston, Beacon,
1992), 25-33; Peter G. Rose, The Sensible Cook: Dutch Foodways in the Old and New World
(Syracuse, New York, Syracuse University Press, 1994), 86, 91-93.!
516
!Berzok, American Indian Food, 135-137, 184; Fiske, Dutch and Quaker Colonies, 32;
Haff, Founders of American Cuisine, 23-27, 80-82.
517
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 88. This recipe is also described in detail in
Chapter 3.
518
!Trudy Eden, The Early American Table (DeKalb, Illinois, Northern Illinois University
Press, 2010), 40-48; Fiske, Dutch and Quaker Colonies, 40-44, 75; Rose, 89-92, 101-102.
519
!Paul Mullins, Glazed America: A History of the Doughnut (University Press of
Florida, Gainesville, Florida, 2008), 40-41.
! ! ! 148!
To Make Curllers

Take a quart of grain, 8 eggs, beat 4 whites, beat your eggs well then put in pound sugar
and beat both together then mix the grain and put to shape curllers with a little hole in it.
Fry in fat and strain it thru a fieve to keep back the threads then fill your dishes.
520

In the eighteenth-century, Dutch immigrants in New York and Pennsylvania invented doughnuts
and crullers as a variation on a traditional fried Dutch cake called olekok.
521
While the Dutch
cooked olekok by frying sweet dough in oil, the Dutch immigrants created doughnuts and
crullers by cooking the same sweet dough in pork fat.
522

By the end of the eighteenth-century, recipes for crullers and doughnuts started showing
up in personal and published cookbooks throughout the United States—although at first they
seemed to be most popular in New York and Pennsylvania.
523
In his History of New York from
1809, Washington Irving described doughnuts as a popular dish for New York parties:

…the table…was always sure to boast an enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough,
fried in hog’s fat, and called dough nuts…a delicious kind of cake…
524

Irving also included doughnuts, crullers, and olekok in his well-known short story, “The
Legend of Sleepy Hollow”. According to the legend, Ichabod Crane, the new schoolmaster,
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
520
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 41.
521
!Mullins, Glazed America, 37-42;!Rose, The Sensible Cook, 58-63.
522
!Fiske,!Dutch and Quaker Colonies, 43-47; Mullins, Glazed America, 40, 64-65.
523
!Mullins, Glazed America, 38-43; Rose, The Sensible Cook, 61-64.
524
!Washington Irving, History of New York (New York, Inskeep and Bradford, 1809),
149.
! ! ! 149!
sought to marry Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter of a wealthy farmer. Hoping to secure
Katrina’s hand, Crane attends a harvest festival at the Van Tassel mansion. Upon arriving, he is
distracted by all of the delicious food:

Fain would I pause to dwell upon the world of charms that burst upon the enraptured gaze
of my hero, as he entered the state parlor of Van Tassel's mansion. Not those of the bevy
of buxom lasses, with their luxurious display of red and white; but the ample charms of a
genuine Dutch country tea-table, in the sumptuous time of autumn. Such heaped up
platters of cakes of various and almost indescribable kinds, known only to experienced
Dutch housewives! There was the doughty doughnut, the tender olykoek, and the crisp
and crumbling cruller…Happily, Ichabod Crane...did ample justice to every dainty.
525

Mary Randolph, a member of one of Virginia’s oldest and wealthiest families, included a
recipe for doughnuts in her The Virginia Housewife.
526
Published in 1830, this cookbook
included over one hundred years of recipes from her female ancestors.
527
Associating the dessert
with Northern foodways, Randolph called her recipe, “Dough Nuts—A Yankee Cake”,
describing it as “fried…brown in boiling lard.”
528

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
525
Washington Irving, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, The Sketchbook of Geoffrey
Crayon (New York, Putnam, 1820), 49.
526
!Mary Randolph, The Virginia Housewife (Baltimore, Pliskett, Fife, and Company,
1830), 90.
527
Katherine Harbury, Colonial Virginia’s Cooking Dynasty (Columbia, South
Carolina, University of South Carolina Press, 2004), 2-6, 55-58; Randolph, Virginia Housewife,
90.
528
!Randolph, Virginia Housewife, 90.
! ! ! 150!
While Simmons did not include a recipe for doughnuts or crullers in her American
Cookery, she wrote multiple recipes for foods fried in lard. Her recipe for an “Indian Slapjack” is
one such example:

Indian Slapjack

One quart of milk, 1 pint of indian meal, 4 eggs, 4 spoons of flour, little salt, beat
together, baked on gridles, or fry in a dry pan which has been rub'd with lard.
529

As frying with lard became increasingly popular, eighteenth-century Pennsylvanians
started trading pork fat as a form of currency. An anonymous farmer from the southern border of
Pennsylvania and New York noted in his ledger that he was frequently paid in hog’s fat.
530
For
example, on November 23, 1774 and May 14, 1776, he wrote that he was paid with hog’s fat
“…in the amount of 1 hog” by Albert Swine
531
—a name which was either a humorous
coincidence or the farmer’s pet name for the provider of hog’s fat. In the “Clymer Family
Receipt Book” from eighteenth-century Berks County, Pennsylvania, lawyer Daniel Clymer
recorded in his ledger that clients often reimbursed him with hog’s fat.
532

In eighteenth-century Pennsylvania, pearlash was another ingredient traded as currency
that later revolutionized American foodways. Both Berks County lawyer Daniel Clymer and the
anonymous Pennsylvania farmer received potash and pearlash (refined potash) as payment for
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
529
!Simmons, American Cookery, 35.
530
!Farmer’s Ledger, 1774-1777. Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and
Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
531
!Farmer’s Ledger, 705, 716.
532
!Clymer Family Receipt Book,!Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and
Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
! ! ! 151!
goods and services.
533
Potash was the evaporated ash of wood or plants, commonly left in iron
pots after cooking over a fire.
534
It had been used by Europeans for centuries to bleach cloth,
form soap, and make glass, but Anglo-Americans were the first to use it as food.
535

Philadelphia’s bakers substituted pearlash for yeast as a leavening agent, with the practice
spreading throughout the United States by the 1790s.
536
In 1790, the very first United States
patent was issued to Philadelphia Quaker Samuel Hopkins, a professional potash maker and
manufacturer who invented a process to more effectively refine potash into pearlash.
537
In the
early nineteenth-century, pearlash for consumption was re-named baking soda.
538
The use of
baking soda and its derivative, baking powder, made new recipes possible as it also transformed
the preparation and taste of American food.
English cooks traditionally used yeast, malt, and hartshorn as leavening agents in baking.
Yeast is a type of fungus, malt is fermented barley, and hartshorn is the fermented and ground
horns of a male deer.
539
English bakers used yeast most frequently, to ensure that bread rose
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
533
!Farmer’s Ledger, 710, 713; “Family Receipt Book.”
534
Peter Ciuolio, Saleratus: The Curious History & Complete Uses of Baking Soda
(Maradia Press, Naugatuck, CT, 1994), 13-19; Hess and Hess, Taste of America, 61-65; Arthur
L. Meyer, Baking Across America (University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas, 1998), 43-49.
535
!Sandra Oliver, Food in Colonial and Federal America (Houghton Mifflin, New York,
2005), 1-2, 27, 54; Meyer, Baking Across America, 45-51.
536
!Ciulio, Saleratus, 17-20; Hess and Hess, Taste of America, 63-66.
537
!Ciulio, Saleratus, 17-22; Kenneth Dobbins, The Patent Office Pony: A History of the
Early Patent Office (Sargeant Kirkland’s Press, Newville, Pennsylvania, 1997), 72-89.
538
!Ciulio, Saleratus, 31-36; Oliver, Food in Colonial and Federal America, 54; Meyer,
Baking Across America, 50.
539
!Nancy Cox and Karin Dannehl, Dictionary of Traded Goods and Commodities, 1550-
1820 (Wolverhampton, England, University of Wolverhampton, 2007), 432; Markham, Gervase.
Countrey Contentments, or English Huswife. London: R. Jackson, 1623. (Quebec City, Canada,
McGill-Queens University Press, 1998), 97, 102; Stephen Mennell, All Manners of Food : Eating
and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present (Champaign, Illinois,
University of Illinois Press, 1996), 56, 100, 350.
! ! ! 152!
evenly in the oven.
540
For desserts, they often used malt because it was sweet.
541
Hartshorn was
usually only used when neither yeast nor malt was available.
542
Yeast was also used to make beer
and malt was also used to sweeten and preserve milk.
543

Bettee considered yeast and malt so crucial to baking that she wrote multiple recipes on
how to extend their use.
544
She also included a recipe entitled, “A Receipt to Make your own
Yeast”
545
, which was one of the longest and most complicated in her cookbook. However, yeast
and other common leavening agents did not transport well and were therefore difficult to come
by in North America.
546

Pearlash transformed American baking and not just because it was readily available.
547

When a baker added yeast or other traditional leavening agents to dough, they needed to let the
dough set for hours in order for it to rise properly when baked.
548
However, a baker did not need
to wait for pearlash to set—as soon as it was mixed with the dough it caused an instant chemical
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
540
!Bode, European Gastronomy, 41, 74-77; Jean-Louis Flandarin, “Seasoning, Cooking,
and Dietetics in the Late Middle Ages”, Food: A Culinary History, edited by Jean-Louis Flandrin
and Massimo Montinari (New York, Columbia University Press, 1999): 313-317; Kettilby,
Collection of Above Three Hundred Receipts, 67-73, 89-92. !
541
!Vincent DiMarco, Egg Pies, Moss Cakes, and Pigeons Like Puffins: 18
th
Century
British Cookery from Manuscript Sources (Lincoln, Nebraska, iUniverse, 2007), 67, 79, 85, 108;
Mennell, All Manners of Food, 56, 100, 350.
542
!Cox and Dannehl, 432; Maquelonne Toussaint-Samat, A History of Food (West
Sussex, England, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 163, 214.
543
!Jean-Louis Flandarin, “Dietary Choices and Culinary Technique, 1500-1800”, Food:
A Culinary History, edited by Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montinari, (New York,
Columbia University Press, 1999), 404-407; Mennell, All Manners of Food, 56, 87, 100, 131,
350; Toussaint-Samat, History of Food, 214-219.
544
!Saffin, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book.”
545
!Saffin,!“The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 39.
546
!Ciulio, Saleratus, 20-22; Eden, Early American Table, 32-34.
547
!Ciulio, Saleratus, 14-17; Meyer, Baking Across America, 46, 51-53; Stavely,
Founding Food, 242-248; 256-257.
548
!Mennell, All Manners of Food, 56-57; Hess and Hess, Taste of America, 66;
Toussaint-Samat, History of Food, 214.
! ! ! 153!
reaction that produced bubbles of carbon dioxide.
549
American bakers were therefore able to
work much faster and more efficiently.
550
Their finished product tasted different as well—baked
goods produced with pearlash were fluffier and tasted milder than those made with yeast.
551

Eventually, Americans started to view this difference as desirable and emblematic of American
foodways.
552
The efficiency and unique taste of baking with pearlash made sweet baked goods
even more popular among the American public.
553

Ann used pearlash in most of her recipes for baked goods. Her recipe for cracknels, a
type of cookie, is one such example:

Craknels

Take 3 pounds of flower, 2 and 3 quarters of a pound of fine sugar finely beaten, then
take three eggs, leave out one yolk and beat them with a spoonful of pearlash and 3
ounces of sweet butter, a spoonful of corrinader and roll them into past cakes. Butter and
paper and heat as hot as for a biskit, you may Ice them if you please.
554

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
549
!Ciulio, Saleratus, 17-20; Stavely, Founding Food, 242-246, 257-258.
550
!Eden, Early American Table, 50-54; Meyer, Baking Across America, 43-46, 52;
Stavely, Founding Food, 243-249.
551
!Ciulio, Saleratus, 21, 33-35; Meyer, Baking Across America, 53-56, 70; Stavely,
Founding Food, 248, 256-257.
552
!Eden, Early American Table, 51-54; Stavely, Founding Food, 256-257.
553
!Hess and Hess, Taste of America, 66-68; Meyer, Baking Across America, 56, 70.
554
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 42.
! ! ! 154!
This recipe was one of the few that Ann’s daughter also transcribed into the cookbook. Her
daughter copied most of the recipe identically, although at the end she wrote, “and turn them into
what shape you please.”
555

In American Cookery, Simmons used pearlash as a leaving agent in cookies, cakes, and
breads. One of her recipes for cookies is similar to Ann’s recipe for cracknels:

Cookies
One pound sugar boiled slowly in half pint water, scum well and cool, add two tea spoons
pearl ash dissolved in milk, then two and half pounds flour, rub in 4 ounces butter, and
two large spoons of finely powdered coriander seed, wet with above; make roles half an
inch thick and cut to the shape you please; bake fifteen or twenty minutes in a slack oven-
-good three weeks.
556

Some Southerners did not adopt these new Pennsylvanian recipes without comment. In
The Virginia Housewife, Randolph included a recipe for gingerbread made with baking soda that
was very similar to Amelia Simmons’ receipt for “Gingerbread Cakes”
557
. However, just as she
called her doughnut recipe, “A Yankee Cake”,
558
she derisively called her recipe for gingerbread
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
555
!Smith, Compleat Housewife, 41.
556
!Simmons, American Cookery 36-37.
557
!Simmons, American Cookery 36.
558
!Randolph, Virginia Housewife, 90.
! ! ! 155!
made with baking soda, “Plebian Ginger Bread”.
559
Despite this distaste, upper-class Southern
women did adopt many Northern foods—they simply did it under protest.
560

Philadelphia Quakers also invented two other foods that became emblematic of American
cuisine but were not adopted on a national level until the nineteenth-century: Philadelphia cream
cheese and cheesecake.
561
They made cream cheese by boiling salted cream in cheesecloths over
low heat for weeks until it dehydrated into a solid.
562
Although Philadelphia cream cheese was
not preserved by mold like most cheeses, it kept for a long time because its lack of moisture
meant that it did not spoil quickly.
563
Philadelphia cream cheese was sometimes also called “slip
coat cheese” because it resembled “slip coats” or “slip curds”—cheese that stayed soft due to
inadequate fermentation.
564
Ann’s recipe entitled, “Slip Coat Cheese”, carefully followed the
Quaker’s detailed and time consuming process:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
559
!Randolph, Virginia Housewife, 91.
560
!Harbury, Cooking Dynasty, 1-7, 43; Harriott Pickney Horry, The Receipt Book of
Harriott Pinckney Horry, 1770 (Colombia, South Carolina, University of South Carolina Press,
1984), 2-6, 35, 54; Randolph, Virginia Housewife, 5, 79.
561
!J. Williams Frost, “From Plainness to Simplicity: Changing Quaker Ideals for
Material Culture”, Quaker Aesthetics: Reflections on a Quaker Ethic in American Design and
Consumption, edited by Emma Jones Lapsansky and Anne A. Verplanck, (Philadelphia,
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 18-22; William Woys Weaver, A Quaker Woman’s
Cookbook: The Domestic Cookery of Elizabeth Ellicott Lea (Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania,
Stackpole Books, 2004), xi-xlii.
562
!Bordley, Husbandry and Rural Affairs, 506-508; David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s
Seed: Four British Folkways in America (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1989), 540-
544; McWilliams, Revolution in Eating,172-176; Weaver, Quaker Woman’s Cookbook, xvii,
xviii.
563
!Bordley, Husbandry and Rural Affairs, 505-508; Fischer, Albion’s Seed, 541-544;
McWilliams, Revolution in Eating, 173-176; Weaver, Quaker Woman’s Cookbook, xviii.
564
!Bordley, Husbandry and Rural Affairs, 507-509; Paul Kindstedt, Cheese and Culture:
A History of Cheese and Its Place in Western Civilization (White River Junction, VT, Chelsea
Green Publishing, 2012), 215-218.
! ! ! 156!
Slip Coat Cheese

Take a gallon of milk + 2 quarts cream, when it is boiled up take it off and put to it a
handfull of salt, stir it into your milk, dip a cheese cloth in water, wring it hard and lay it
in a cheese vat, and when it is all in lay a dry cheese cloth on top of it and a following
one over that, and let it stand to settle a little. Then with a dry cloth soak up whey on the
top, gently pressing your hands. Then lay on a dry cloth. They following day lay a 3
pound weight unless the day be cold then you may lay on 6 pound and let it stand till 3 o
clock only change the cloth for dry ones, turn it into another vat in a wet cloth and let it
stand as your former till you coat with salt and turn it and let it stand till next morning
without any weight, but the following day turn it with dry cloths on a cheese board and
bind it about and when it be not wet the cloth lay it in and you may venture to eat it.
565

Judge John Beale Bordley, founder of the Philadelphia Society for Promoting
Agriculture, wrote the first published recipe for Philadelphia cream cheese in his 1799 Essays
and Notes on Husbandry and Rural Affairs.
566
He also noted that while this cheese was invented
in Philadelphia, it was popular in the Northeast and throughout the Mid-Atlantic states.
567
His
recipe is very similar to Ann’s recipe for “Slip Coat Cheese”:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
565
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 18.
566
!Bordley, Husbandry and Rural Affairs, 508-512, 516; Olive Moore Gambrill, “John
Beale Bordley and the Early Years of the Philadelphia Agricultural Society,” The Pennsylvania
Magazine of History and Biography 66, no. 4 (October 1942): 410-439.
567
!Bordley, Husbandry and Rural Affairs, 508-510; Gambrill, “John Beale Bordley,”
410-439.
! ! ! 157!
Philadelphia Cream Cheese

To six quarts milk hot from the cow, put two spoonfulls of salt, to stand three quarters of
an hour, or until the milk forms a sufficient slip curd. With a spoon lay on a vat, without
breaking it, and place a trencher with a flat board on it. Press it with a four pound weight,
turning it with a dry cloth once an hour; and when stiff shift it daily into fresh grass or
rushes. It may be cut in ten to fourteen days. Its best condition is to have it run or dissolve
into a creamy consistence. Nothing but weak half formed curd called slip curd will
produce it.
568

Cream cheese is not considered a dessert today, however, eighteenth-century
Pennsylvanians usually ate it with sugar or molasses, either with a spoon or on bread.
569
This led
to the invention of American style cheesecake.
570
They made the dessert like modern
cheesecakes by placing it in a piecrust with a mixture of sugar and eggs.
571
While other types of
cheesecakes had existed in Europe since the Roman Empire, these were either cake with cheese
or cream added to the batter, or pies made with cheeses similar in consistency to cottage
cheese.
572
For example, Bettee’s traditional cheesecake recipe described in Chapter 2, “Chees
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
568
!Bordley, Husbandry and Rural Affairs, 509.
569
!Kindstedt, Cheese and Culture, 99-101; Weaver, Quaker Woman’s Cookbook, 78, 81.
570
!Bordley, Husbandry and Rural Affairs, 508-511; Toussaint-Samat, History of Food,
115-116; A.F.M. Willich, The Domestic Encyclopaedia (Philadelphia, William Young Birch,
1803), 203.
571
!David Pallett, “Dairy Farming in Chester County, Pennsylvania, 1770-1780” (PhD
diss., Pennsylvania State University, 1974), 120-122; Toussaint-Samat, History of Food, 115-
116;!Willich, Domestic Encyclopaedia, 203.
572
!Kindstedt, Cheese and Culture, 97-98; Michael Krondl, Sweet Invention: A History of
Dessert (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2011), 165, 175.
! ! ! 158!
Cake Without Cruds very good”
573
, instructs the cook to mix together cream, eggs, and flour.
Her daughter Ann made a modern cheesecake like the Pennsylvania Quakers:

A good Cheese Cake

Take a pound of slip coat cheese in a mortar till it looks like butter, then add a pound of
sugar and eight eggs with your whites left out a little beaten. Make into a cream beat all
together. For an hour, bake in a pye crust in an oven.
574

The popularity of cheesecake grew over the course of the nineteenth-century. Many cookbooks
included multiple cheesecake recipes with variations for apple cheesecake, lemon cheesecake,
orange cheesecake, and almond cheesecake.
575
This example is from the first alphabetized
American cookbook, the 1832 edition of The Cook’s Own Book by N.K.M. Lee of Boston:
576

Cheesecakes

Put the slip curd into a colander to drain; when quite dry, put it in a mortar, and pound it
quite smooth; then add four ounces of sugar, pounded and sifted, and three ounces of
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
573
!Saffin,!“The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 49.
574
Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 51.
575
!N.K.M. Lee, The Cook’s Own Book (Boston, Monroe and Francis, 1832), 2-3, 45-47;
Pallett, 121-127; Weaver, Quaker Woman’s Cookbook, 84-87; Karin Wulf, Not All Wives: The
Women of Colonial Philadelphia, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 93,
167.
576
Joseph Carlin, “Pleasures of the Table: Eating and Drinking in the Early Republic”,
Nutrition Today 33, no. 2 (March 1998), 47-83; Joan Jenson, Loosening the Bonds: Mid-Atlantic
Farming Women (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1988), 63, 117-119; Lee,
Cook’s Own Book ,45.
! ! ! 159!
fresh butter; beat the yolks of four eggs in a basin, add this to the curd; stir it all well
together; have your tins ready lined with puff paste about a quarter of an inch thick, notch
them all round the edge, and fill each with the curd. Bake them twenty minutes.
577

The women of Philadelphia and Southeastern Pennsylvania were unprecedentedly
influential in the development of this new dessert-centric American food culture. In Europe,
trained male chefs invented and perfected new foods.
578
No such gastronomic community existed
in the newly formed United States, so this responsibility fell to the home cooks. Women made
the decisions about American food.
Influenced by the cultural diversity of the commonwealth, eighteenth-century
Pennsylvanian women created a remarkably innovative food culture. Described by historian
Sally Schwartz as “America’s first self-consciously plural society”
579
, Pennsylvania was
unusually heterogeneous for a provincial community.
580
Unlike most states in the 1790 census,
where over half the white population was of English descent, only one third of Pennsylvanians
came from England—with almost as many claiming German ancestry.
581
The rest of the
population was made up of European migrants from eight other countries, Native Americans,
and peoples of African origin.
582
Combined with an abundance of native ingredients and access
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
577
!Lee, Cook’s Own Book, 45.
578
!Phyllis Pray Bober, Art, Culture, and Cuisine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1999), 158, 170, 224-228; Krondl, Sweet Invention, 305-317; Jean-Francois Revel, Culture and
Cuisine: A Journey Through the History of Food, Translated by Helen R. Lane (New York: De
Capo, 1982), 190-194, 202, 209; Michael Symons, A History of Cooks and Cooking
(Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 43, 58, 65-67.
579
!Sally Schwartz, A Mixed Multitude: The Struggle for Toleration in Colonial
Pennsylvania (New York: New York University Press, 1989): 1.
580
!Schwartz, Mixed Multitude, 1-3, 12-22, 292.
581
!Schwartz, Mixed Multitude, 1-3.
582
!Schwartz, Mixed Multitude, 1-3.!
! ! ! 160!
to global sugar markets, the interaction of multiple food cultures in Pennsylvania led to the
development of the region’s unique foodways.
Modern American cookbooks, and particularly those from Southeastern Pennsylvania,
include many recipes for homemade desserts inspired by these eighteenth-century foodways. A
good example is the 2003 Lancaster County Cookbook, a collection of over 550 family recipes
from women in Southeastern Pennsylvania.
583
Almost half of those recipes are for dessert and
there are more recipes for pie than anything else. Although these recipes are unusually rich by
modern standards, they typically use half as much sugar in recipes as their eighteenth-century
counterparts. An apple dumpling recipe from the cookbook helps to illustrate though how little
else has changed. The recipe is simple and calls for only a handful of ingredients including sugar,
butter, milk, apples, and baking powder:

Apple Dumplings

Makes 12 servings

4 cups flour
4 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
4 Tbsp. sugar
1 1/3 cups butter
1 1/3 cups milk
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
583
!Louise Stoltzfus and Jan Mast, The Lancaster County Cookbook (Lancaster,
Pennsylvania, Good Books, 2003). !
! ! ! 161!
12 apples

1. Combine flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. Cut in butter. Gradually add milk and
work until dough holds together.

2. Divide dough in half and roll for a pie. Cut each half of dough into 6 wedges.

3. Peel and core apples, leaving them whole. Wrap each apple in a wedge of dough.
Arrange on lightly greased cookie sheet.

4. Bake at 375 for 1 hour or until apples are soft.

5. Serve hot with cold milk.
584

The early efforts of Southeastern Pennsylvanian women like Ann were later appropriated
to create foods that typify modern American food culture. Sugary desserts from Southeastern
Pennsylvania served as a foundation in the development of the American way of food. The
modern American diet—rich in sugar and fat—started in forgotten food cultures of the
eighteenth-century. Much like Bettee Saffin, who remained attached to food traditions like
almond milk long after their cultural basis was forgotten, many twenty-first century Americans
continue to eat like eighteenth-century Pennsylvanians. Although Ann Ellis Smith actually used
more sugar in her recipes than modern Americans, the amount of sugary food she could produce
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
584
Stoltzfus, Lancaster County Cookbook, 185.
! ! ! 162!
was limited by the time it took to prepare her recipes. In the modern industrialized and
commercialized United States, vast quantities of sugar and fat are readily available without
anyone having to laboriously produce desserts by hand. If the Americans of the twenty-first
century are to change their foodways, perhaps they need to understand the origins of their food
culture and how little it has changed.

! ! ! 163!
Conclusion

“The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book” provides unique insight into the evolution of an
eighteenth-century Anglo-American food culture in Southeastern Pennsylvania. Ann Ellis and
other English migrants to the region created new foods by incorporating local ingredients and the
foodways of other Europeans, slaves, and natives into recipes they learned from their mothers. In
doing so, they broke with a food culture that had existed in England for hundreds years—
creating a food culture that was new, unique, and distinctly American.
One of the most striking differences between eighteenth-century English and Anglo-
American foodways in Southeastern Pennsylvania is in the strong dissimilarity of flavors. To
achieve the strong pungent and sour tastes popular in Europe since the Roman Empire, Bettee
frequently let her food ferment or added large quantities of wine, hard liquor, and beer. She also
heavily seasoned her dishes with spices, another European practice popular throughout the
Middle Ages.
With a few exceptions, Ann used ingredients in ways that would be familiar to a modern
cook. She flavored her dishes simply with many of the most popular seasonings used in the
United States today: sugar, salt, and pepper. She also cooked richer meals with lots of butter or
other dairy products, and fried foods in oil or fat.
Some of the major differences between eighteenth-century English and Anglo-American
food culture in Southeastern Pennsylvania came from their use of different staple ingredients.
One of the staples of eighteenth-century English cuisine was almond milk. Almond milk was
first developed during the Middle Ages to adhere with Catholic dietary laws which at the time
prohibited meat, poultry, and dairy products for about one third of the year. Even after England
! ! ! 164!
stopped being a Catholic country in the sixteenth-century, almond milk was still widely used for
the taste and because it didn’t spoil. Bettee wrote multiple recipes for foods with almond milk
like almond cream, almond butter, almond milk cheese, and even almond milk flummery—
which is very similar to jello. Since almonds were more expensive in the British North American
colonies than milk, Anglo-Americans stopped using almond milk. In Southeastern Pennsylvania,
milk was one of the cheapest foods available simply because there were so many cows and dairy
farms. This lead to the development of some of the first truly American foods: cream cheese and
cheesecake.
It is hard to over-emphasize sugar in the Southeastern Pennsylvanian development of
American foodways. Although sugar was very popular in England, one of the cheapest places to
find sugar in the eighteenth-century was Southeastern Pennsylvania. Sugar was particularly
plentiful there because Philadelphia traded dairy products for sugar from the plantations of the
West Indies. With this much access to sugar, eighteenth-century Pennsylvanians created some
the sweetest desserts the world had ever known. Many fruits that had once been too bitter or sour
to eat were made palatable by adding lots of sugar and placing them in piecrusts. Easy access to
milk also meant that the piecrusts were incredibly buttery. A variation on pie led to the creation
of the first apple dumplings as well. Instead of using spices or fermentation to keep their pies
fresh, Southeastern Pennsylvanians preserved them with sugar and kept pies throughout the
winter in pie houses. Pie houses looked like sheds and functioned as freezers. The average
eighteenth-century Anglo-American family from Southeastern Pennsylvania ate dessert pies
every day. The food culture of the region was dessert-centric, with the majority of calories
provided by a daily intake of pies and other baked goods.
! ! ! 165!
We tend to think of our sugar-rich, fattening American diet as a modern phenomenon, but
it is not. Eighteenth-century Anglo-Americans in Southeastern Pennsylvanians consumed far
more sugar than modern Americans. The foodways they adopted from other cultures tended to be
the most caloric: they learned to make cookies and fry in oil from the Dutch, and to fry in animal
fat from American Indians. Anglo-American women like Ann Ellis developed the basis of the
dessert-centric food culture that endures in the United States to this day.

!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
! ! ! 166!
!
!
Figure 13. Dairy cows lounging in an apple orchard outside Strausburg in Lancaster County,
Pennsylvania. Photographed by Juliette Parsons.
! ! ! 167!
Appendix I

Sample Recipe Pages with Photographs

Page 86, A Page of Bettee Saffin’s Recipes:

how to Jug a Hare

Take a young hare. Cut it in pieces as you doe for Stewing and beat it well, Season It
with Salt peper & nutmeg. put it into a Pitcher or any other cloce pott with half a pound
of buter Set the pitcher of which ye hare was putt in In a pott of bylimg water Stop up ye
Pitcher cloce with a cloth and Lay upon ye top of ye Jugg to keep it Steady it will take
two howers but if it is an old hare it will take 3 or 4 howers reme mber your pot be full of
water & kept continulay boyling untill it is enough power of ye gravey & scim of ye fatt
and putt ye Gravey into a stew pan with a spoonful or 2 of white win and litell Juce of
Lemon & Shred Lemon peel & mace you must add the yolk of 2 Eggs a litell cream &
som melted butter mix it well with ye gravey & Stir it very well & mix it with ye hare
and Stirr it very well togeather & Garnish your dish with Sipetts of Lemon.

! ! ! 168!
how to Stew a Hare

Take a young hare cut ye Legs in 2 or 3 pipes & all other parts of ye same tignefs beat ye
flatt to a past pin Season it with nutmeg & Salt then flower it ovr & fry it in butter. Over a
quick fier when you have fried it put it into a Stew pan with a pint of gravey or 2 or 3
spoonfuls of Clarret to Shake it up with butter & flower. (you must not let it boyl in the
Stewpan for it will make it Eat hard) then serve it up garnifh your dish with Crisp
parcley.

To make a Fryed toast
585

Take a Manchet
586
pare of all ye out Side and Cut it round Wise in toast then take
cream & 8 Eggs. (or as many as you think will be enough for your toast) Seasoned with
Sacck shuger & nutmeg and Let ye Toast Steep in it about an hower the fry them in
Sweet butter & Serve ye up with melted buter or buter sack & Shuger as ye pleas.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
585
!Fried toast is known in the United States today as French toast. Colin Spencer, British
Food: A Extraordinary Thousand Years of History (New York: Columbia University Press,
2002), 78, 102-103.
586
!!A small loaf of bread made with fine white flour. Spencer, British Food, 112; John
Stobart, Sugar and Spice: Grocers and Groceries in Provincial England, 1650-1830. (Oxford,
England: Oxford University Press, 2013), 93-94.
! ! ! 169!
`To Make a Sauce for Fish or Flesh

Take a quart of the best viniger. Put it into a Jugg then take Jamaca Peper
587
whole som
sliced Ginger & mace a few Cloves. Som lemon peel, hors Radish, Sliced Som sweet
herbs 6 shallots peeled 8 anchovies 2 or 3 Spoonfuls of Shred Capers put all These in a
Linin bag put it into the Jugg & Stop it up. Place a Spoonfull Cold is an addition to sauce
for Fish or Flesh.
588

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
587
!A seventeenth and eighteenth-century term for allspice. Reinhard G. Lehmann, The
British Housewife: Cookery Books, Cooking and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain.
(London: Prospect, 1993),108.
!
! ! ! 170!

Figure 14. Page 86 of The Recipe Book of Bettee Saffin and Ann Ellis. Courtesy of Rare Books
and Manuscripts Library, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Photographed by Juliette
Parsons.
! ! ! 171!
Page 20, A Sample Page of Ann Ellis’ Recipes:

in the bafon as before cover it clofe, and set it on a Chafing dish of Coales to [?] But let it
not boyle, for let it stand 3 hours, Then boyle the yolks of 2 or 3 eggs with halfe a pint of
cream with mace and sugar then pour it on ye top of the bafon, and let it by a little to
harden, serve it in ye bafon it was made in & throw upon it grated mufk plums cinnamon
and sugar.
589

A Trifle

Take a quart of cream put to it 3 or 4 spoonfuls of orange flower water + some fine
powered sugar, then boyle it with a little water, when it is boyled put it in a sifon, stir it
till it is almost cold, put a little rennet into the sifon you in hand to serve it, set it cold
with cream sweetened with powder sugar.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
589
!The beginning of this recipe is missing.
! ! ! 172!
White puff

Take a quart of cream, boyle it with large mace and a manrout
590
, set it by to cold and
butter your dish very well, and put in your cream with a little orange flower water or rose
water, Then stir a penny loafe thin + put it with 6 eggs leave out 3 whites, shir in 6 dates
and put in some raysons of ye Junce with ye marrow of 2 bones, Then put it in a difh and
bake it but not too much.

Goofeberry Bisket

Put your goofeberries into a stone pot, Then set them into a pot of boyling water To
infufe then take To infufe then take 4 ounces of the pulp and 6 ounces of double refined
Sugar well beaten and stirred, Then take them both scalding hot and mix them well
together and beat them well together with ye froth of 2 eggs which you muft take up with
Spoone, Then let them in a warm oven or Stove to dry paper and box them up.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
590
!An alternate spelling of manroot. In this context, it is a sweet potato. Kay Moss,
Seeking the Historical Cook: Exploring Eighteenth-Century Southern Foodways (Columbia,
South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 2013), 114-115; Raymond Sokolov, Fading
Feast: A Compendium of Disappearing American Regional Foods (New York: Farrar, Straus,
and Giroux, 1981), 158.!
! ! ! 173!
Quince Biskit

Take 2 ounces of ye pulup of Quinces or any other pulp and strain it through a fieve fet it
on ye fire make it Scalding hot for a quarter of an hour + dry it a while then take 3 ounces
of double refined sugar well beaten and stirred with a little orange flower or rofewater,
Just to keep them from burning, melt it and keep it on the fire till it be boyling hot, then
put the pulp into the Sugar, and mix it well together with the froth 2 hours them drop it on
tin plates and bake them in an oven as hot as for biskits, paper them.

Biskets or Gumballs

Take 8 eggs, leave out half the whites, then take a pound of double refined sugar loaf in
and sifted and put in your eggs in a flat pan beat it with a wooden mantell till you cant for
any yellow strain then put in 2 spoonfulls of orange flower water or sack, and 14 ounces
of ye finest flower you can get dryed very well and sifted, Thin throw it in by degrees,
take care you don’t beat after it is in, Then cut paper ye breadth of your hand and butter
them, and when ye oven is ready, spread it on not too thick nor too thin and as you put
them in ye oven Dry them with halfe sugar and halfe of flower Through a dredger throw
them in ye oven and when you see them Rife cut them off the paper and hang them on
your hangers, which must be long smooth Stir about ye bignefs of your waft To bend
your biskets, and when they are done set them on papers ye oven to harden.”

! ! ! 174!
Lemon Biskit

Peel the rinds of 3 lemons clean from ye whites very thin + put them small and pound
them in a marble or stone mortar very fine put to them a pound of double refined sugar
finely beaten and sifted, then beat ye whites of 2 eggs to a paste and make it up in a paste,
lay it by a little then make it up in a round ball, a little bigger than a nutmeg, and with
your finger make a dent in the middle and put them on paper bake in a moderate oven
that they lofs not their Colour.

! ! ! 175!

Figure 15. Page 20 of The Recipe Book of Bettee Saffin and Ann Ellis. Courtesy of Rare Books
and Manuscripts Library, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Photographed by Juliette
Parsons.

! ! ! 176!
Appendix II

Other Recipes by Ann Ellis

!

Fresh Cheese

Set a pint of cream on a fire, beat 9 eggs, when cream is boyled put in the eggs, and stir it
about till be browned, then take it off the fire, and put it into a cloth, and drain the whey
from it, then put the curd in a stone mortar with a little water and sugar, put it into a
colander, let it stand till you use it.
591

To make a Good past for tarts

Take a pound of flower and rub a quarter of a pound of butter into it beat two
cups of double refined sugar with two 2 or 3 cups of cream to make it into a
past. Work it as little as you can roll it out thin butter your tins dust on some flower. Then
lay in you past do not fill them to full.
592

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
591
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 17.
592
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 40.
!
! ! ! 177!
To make a Light past for Dish Pye

Take a quarter pound of flower and break into it a pound of butter in large pieces kneed it
very stiff and handle it as light as you can and Roll it out once or twice then it is filled for
pye.
593

Potatoe Pye

Boyl and peel them, lay them in ye pye with good flower and butter—salt over it
when out of the oven.
594

Chicken Pye

Take young chicken, put them in half milk + half water, butter your dish well, lay in your
puff past, then lay a layer of butter, then a layer of ale if you wish + dry up your chicken
with their heads on, season them with cloves, mace, nutmeg, salt, a little good sugar and
lay them in the pye with some butter and twist thrugh over it, then lay on your lid, an
hour will bake it, take care you don’t let it in too hot an oven.
595

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
593
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 40.
594
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 45.
595
Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 45.

! ! ! 178!
To Season veal or lamb

“Take A layer of veal or lamb, but it in a small pot, season it with pepper and salt. Then
fill your pye + lay some butter on your top + close + bake it.
596

Beef Alamode

Take a fleshy piece of beef, take out all the skinn, beat it very well flat with a rolling pin,
then lard it with fat on quite through as long as your meat is deep and as big as your
finger, then season it well with salt and pepper and put them in a pot of broth where
nothing but beef has been boyled and put in a handfull of sweet herbs, a bay leaf or two,
let it boyl till tender. Then put in butter and flower and let it stew till the gravy thickens.
Then take it up and take out bay leaves and you may serve it hot.
597

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
596
Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 48. ! !
597
!Ellis, “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 92.
!
! ! ! 179!
Frigafee White

Boyle your chicken, skin and cut them in pieces. Fry them in a strong broth with a little
salt + pepper, a shallot or two, let them fry till they are brown then take out the shallot,
put in half a pint of cream, a pint of butter rolled up with flower, stir till thick as cream,
and wring in the juice of a lemon. Take care you don’t curdle it, then throw in some
mushrooms, serve it with potatoes.
598

!
!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
598
!Ellis,!“The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book,” 92.!
! ! ! 180!
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Abstract (if available)

Abstract This dissertation seeks to advance the historical study of Early American cookery through the examination of an unpublished eighteenth-century cookbook manuscript, “The Recipe Book of Bettee Saffin and Ann Ellis.” Bettee Saffin, a wealthy woman from rural Somerset, England, started the recipe book in 1716 and gave it to her daughter, Ann Ellis, in 1762. After the family descended into poverty, Ann married a commoner and migrated to Philadelphia with the cookbook. This previously ignored manuscript provides unique insight into the eighteenth-century eating habits of everyday Anglo-American women in Southeastern Pennsylvania and Philadelphia. The recipe book records how Ann adapted her mother’s English recipes to meet the challenges of the New World—adaptations that led to a new, uniquely American food culture. ❧ Through the analysis of “The Saffin-Ellis Recipe Book"" and other unpublished cookbooks, this dissertation traces the development of a distinct food culture in eighteenth-century Southeastern Pennsylvania. At first, Anglo-American women like Ann Ellis clung to English foodways, but they quickly added indigenous ingredients and adapted recipes from other colonial women, natives and slaves. They elevated the importance of dessert, made sugar a defining taste in American cuisine, and contributed new foods of their own invention. Their recipes became more than just practical adaptations to local conditions—they became American food. Their cookbooks help recreate the food culture of the eighteenth-century, and ultimately shed light on the formation of modern American eating habits.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Parsons, Juliette (author)

Core Title A new American way of food in eighteenth-century Southeastern Pennsylvania: the recipe book of Bettee Saffin and Ann Ellis

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program History

Publication Date 11/14/2014

Defense Date 10/07/2014

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag American history,cookbook,Early American food culture,Early Modern Atlantic,eighteenth-century,food history,OAI-PMH Harvest,Pennsylvania,Philadelphia

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Mancall, Peter C. (committee chair), Lemon, Rebecca (committee member), Perl-Rosenthal, Nathan (committee member)

Creator Email juliettenparsons@yahoo.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-517487

Unique identifier UC11298580

Identifier etd-ParsonsJul-3087.pdf (filename),usctheses-c3-517487 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-ParsonsJul-3087.pdf

Dmrecord 517487

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Parsons, Juliette

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA