{"id":8476,"date":"2021-01-29T11:29:28","date_gmt":"2021-01-29T16:29:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/?p=8476"},"modified":"2021-01-29T11:58:44","modified_gmt":"2021-01-29T16:58:44","slug":"cooking-through-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/2021\/01\/29\/cooking-through-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Cooking Through History"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Georgia Southern History Professor and his Mother Recreate Southern Recipes from 1824<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Old Southern Cookery: Mary Randolph’s Recipes from America\u2019s First Regional Cookbook Adapted for Today\u2019s Kitchen<\/em>\u00a0is much more than an ordinary cookbook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written by Georgia Southern history professor Christopher Hendricks, Ph.D. and his mother, retired journalist Sue Hendricks, the book is a living history of food in America, and the people who prepared it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Gift<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The project began as a gift in the 1970s. The late historian and Sue Hendrick\u2019s husband, J. Edwin Hendricks, returned from a research trip to Philadelphia and brought his wife an old cookbook, The Virginia Housewife, written by Mary Randolph and originally published in 1824.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy husband brought me this cookbook and suggested that I try all the recipes, substituting modern measurements and instructions, and then we could have it printed.\u201d said Sue Hendricks. \u201cSo, that’s how it started.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat was in the \u201870s when I was a kid,\u201d said Chris Hendricks. \u201cAnd so while Mother was going through these recipes and translating them for contemporary cooks, we didn’t know at the time what was going on. It was just what we were having for dinner.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sue was able to translate the old ingredients and cooking instructions into modern terminology as she prepared the dishes for family meals and dinner parties. Some of the original instructions were things like \u201ctake butter to the size of an egg” and “when the fire be ready to go…\u201d which makes no sense to the modern cook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe only thing that flustered me was the size of an egg,\u201d she said. \u201cAlmost every recipe would have butter, lard and whatever the size of an egg. So I did some experimenting with egg sizes and came up with a quarter of a cup being the closest to the average egg. They cooked with open fires, so I went with a 350-degree oven for most baked things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Sue worked her way through and adapted the old recipes, several became family favorites. Cabbage a la cr\u00e8me was transformed into a grilled foil package for barbecues, Randolf\u2019s trifle and mincemeat pie were often seen at Christmas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Creating a Cookbook<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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The Hendricks\u2019 had lined up a publisher for the manuscript, but the company went bankrupt and the translated recipes lay dormant for more than 20 years. Then, when Chris was helping his parents move about six years ago, he found the original typed manuscript in a box in the attic. Preparing to take a semester research leave, he decided to research the background of Mary Randolph, the legacy of her cookbook and other historical details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of culinary historians will place Mary Randolph\u2019s book as being the first genuine American cookbook,\u201d said Chris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He wrote an introduction and assembled about 100 of his mother’s revised recipes and Mary Randolph\u2019s versions together with a historical explanation of each recipe, ingredients, even the kitchen utensils used in the 19th century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“So that is what I gave mother for Christmas,\u201d said Chris. \u201cAfter that we started looking around for a publisher. It was going to be a historical document, the best footnoted and peer-reviewed cookbook anyone had ever owned.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Supporting Savannah\u2019s History<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Chris had been working with the Davenport House in Savannah for almost 30 years, so he approached them about using the new cookbook as a fundraising project. They jumped at the chance and got involved in the entire publication process including hiring a book agent. After receiving interest from several academic presses, they accepted an offer from a popular press, Globe Pequot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey paid an advance,\u201d said Chris. \u201cHow many academic books get advances? It’s crazy! So that meant that we were able to hire some professional food photographers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The resulting cookbook is filled with gorgeous food photos plated on the Davenport House\u2019s china collection from the 1820s, the same era as The Virginia Housewife. The cookbook includes chapters on soups, meats, seafood, poultry, vegetables and desserts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cooking and Quarantine<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s an amazing cookbook that goes well with the current cooking frenzy of quarantining and is proving a valuable fundraiser for the Davenport House, even though the book launch events were all cancelled due to COVID-19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFood is comforting,\u201d said Sue. \u201cI think cooking soothes the world. If you start cooking, you can create something and you can see it succeed. It wipes away some of the tension of things that you can’t control. I am just really pleased that Chris pushed me on the book and that it’s selling and that people can learn fun things about history through food\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis has been essentially a series of presents,\u201d said Chris. \u201cIt started as a present from my father to my mother. Then I took it and ran with it and did the manuscript as a present to my mother. And now, Mother and I are giving the proceeds as a present to the historic community. It’s so special and different from any project I’ve ever worked on before in my career.\u201d\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Liz Walker<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Georgia Southern History Professor and his Mother Recreate Southern Recipes from 1824 Old Southern Cookery: Mary Randolph’s Recipes from America\u2019s First Regional Cookbook Adapted for Today\u2019s Kitchen\u00a0is much more than an ordinary cookbook. Written by Georgia Southern history professor Christopher Hendricks, Ph.D. and his mother, retired journalist Sue Hendricks, the book is a living history […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":8480,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[65],"class_list":["post-8476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-winter-2020"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}