I believe every woman is the sum of all the women in her family who went before her. I am my mother’s daughter – I see more of her in myself as I grow older, but I see also more in me of my grandmother and, even, her mother before her. We are each a lens through which their spirits become sharper through time.
I came face to face with the indelibility of the double-X chromosome when an aunt sent me an unexpected gift. It came in a plain, unmarked envelope. There was no note, just a thin beige paperback with a comment scribbled on the frontispiece in a spiky offhand scrawl. “Your great-great-great grandmother wrote this – it is good!”
On the cover it read, “The Virginia Housewife Or, Methodical Cook,” by Mary Randolph with a subtitle, “A Facsimile of an Authentic Early American Cookbook.” A perennial best seller from the 1820s, it has been through more than 20 reprints and half a dozen editions. Now, it has resurfaced to remind us of how our ancestors ate when they ate well.
The recipes are surprisingly sophisticated with chicken curry and crème brulee and a stunning Baskin-Robbins’ starter list with 22 flavors of ice cream from chocolate, coffee and vanilla to quince, pears and apples as well as a luscious savory oyster. Randolph made extravagant use of exotic flavorings – marjoram and mace, cinnamon and cayenne as well as a whole garden’s worth of herbs common as parsley and rare as rue.
But more than the culinary elegance, what astonished me was how closely her advice
mimicked what I learned at
my mother’s apron strings. Randolph admonished, “(S)alt should always be washed from butter” … “eggs must be fresh or they will not beat well” … “promptitude is necessary in all our actions, but never more so than in making cakes and puddings.” Her pea soup and brisket are exactly as my mother made them and even such homely dishes as creamed eggs evoke the aromas of my childhood kitchen.
In her youth, Randolph had been a wealthy wife of privilege in early Virginia society, but her sharp wit and her husband’s caustic political views bankrupted the family in a dispute with her cousin, Thomas Jefferson. Forced to abandon their home, she opened a boarding house in 1808 to feed her family – it was the only respectable occupation for a lady. Its success revived the family’s fortunes and led to publication of her cookbook and its place of honor in the kitchen of most American homes.
I never really knew her until I read her book, but I always felt a close affinity. For 20 years, I wore her locket around my neck and daydreamed about the girl whose mother had engraved, “To Mary on her eighteenth, Happy Birthday, August 9, 1780.” The locket is gone now, pilfered one night
by a party thief, but Mary Randolph’s DNA remains forever. The proof is in the pudding.
Mary Randolph’s Inspired Pumpkin Pudding
Adapted from “The Virginia Housewife…” (1824), with a nod of thanks to “The Nantucket Holiday Table” for the caramel accompaniment.
3/4 cup plus 1/2 cup sugar
2 cups pumpkin puree
6 eggs
1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup milk
3/4 tsp. ground ginger
1/ 2 tsp. ground nutmeg
4 ounces brandy
Crystallized ginger for garnish
1. Preheat oven to 350-degrees.
2. Boil 3/4 cup of sugar with 1/3 cup of water, cooking until the crystals dissolve and the sugar turns a deep gold. Immediately remove from the heat and pour into a nonmetallic mold or loaf pan, swirling the caramel up the sides to coat. Set aside.
3. Beat the eggs with the remaining sugar until fluffy. Chop the butter into pea-sized pieces and whip into the egg mixture with the spices. Whisk in the pumpkin and remaining ingredients. If the mixture seems too liquid, heat for just
a few minutes in a heavy saucepan until the mixture is smooth and heavy – too long and the eggs will cook. Cool to room temperature before proceeding.
4. Pour the pudding mixture into the prepared mold and set the mold inside a roasting pan. Pour hot water into the pan to reach an inch or two up the sides of the mold. Bake one to two hours – until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool – preferably overnight for the flavors to meld.
5. Invert onto a platter and garnish with crystallized ginger and whipped cream.
Note: The “pudding” makes a delicious pie filling. Just follow step 3 and dump it into a prepared crust to bake.