Background
Martha was born on June 21, 1731 in New Kent County. The daughter of a landowning family in the Tidewater region, she was reared in the plantation tradition--little schooling and early marriage.
(Martha Washington's recipes: More than five hundred class...)
Martha Washington's recipes: More than five hundred classics dating from the Elizabethan and Jacobean times, are gathered in this family cookbook that captures the essence of early American folk culture. Handed down as a manuscript cookbook for generations, Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery has been annotated by Karen Hess, a noted culinary historian and cook. "Amerian cookery is a tapestry of extraordinary complex design, reflecting out rich and varied ethnic origins, our New World produce, and our frontier history," writes Hess in her introduction. For the historian, she documents early American cookery with prose and photographs of Washington's original manuscript and an appendix detailing extensive primary-source research. For the cook, she explains terms and techniques unfamiliar to the modern kitchen, showing how to make old fashioned recipes the traditional way, such as rose petal vinegar, Oxford Kate's sausages, roast capon with oysters, mince pie, fried pudding, almond butter ginger bread, and apple cider. In paperback for the first time, Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery is both a significant primary resource for historians and the perfect gift for enthusiastic cooks and fans of the culinary arts.
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Martha was born on June 21, 1731 in New Kent County. The daughter of a landowning family in the Tidewater region, she was reared in the plantation tradition--little schooling and early marriage.
When Washington was appointed commander in chief of the American army in 1775, Martha Washington became a public figure. Each winter during the Revolution, she was driven to her husband's headquarters, her coach usually ladden with provisions from the Washington's plantation at Mount Vernon. She endured Valley Forge without complaint. She spent two years with the army at Newburgh, N. Y. , while the peace treaty was pending. After a brief period at Mount Vernon with her two grandchildren--the children of John Custis whom Washington had adopted--she was for eight years the nation's First Lady, in New York and Philadelphia. Martha Washington survived her husband by about two years. During her last illness she burned all of his letters to her.
(Martha Washington's recipes: More than five hundred class...)
At her wedding on January 6, 1759 (probably at St. Peter's Church, near the Custis estate), she was described as short and slight, with brown eyes and light brown hair, a pleasing young woman who danced well and played the spinet.
At the age of seventeen she was married to Daniel Parke Custis, heir to large plantations, who was then thirty and a semi-invalid. During the following eight years she bore four children, two of whom died in infancy. The only son of the marriage, John, was born just before Custis died in 1757, leaving Martha a wealthy widow at the age of twenty-six. Martha's subsequent marriage to George Washington was apparently against her family's wishes, as he was not considered her equal socially.
