“Hogs are in the highest perfection” — Recipes for the Smokehouse’s Best

· Georgetown and the Federal City ·

The Virginia Housewife cookbook and a ca. 1790-1820 Mochaware bowl — important tools in Martha Peter’s kitchen. Bowl courtesy private collection of Miss Martha Custis Peter.

“You see bacon upon a Southern table three times a day either boiled or fried,” New Englander Emily P. Burke observed in Reminiscences of Georgia, published in 1850. Given pork’s ubiquity — and popularity — as a staple of Washington area tables, it is not surprising that Mary Randolph’s 1824;Virginia Housewife cookbook included 18 different recipes for pork, both full-grown and “shote.” You can read several of them here.

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