L2L Old Southern Cookery

Old Southern Cookery

Sue J. Hendricks and Christopher E. Hendricks

In 1824, a new cookbook was published: The Virginia Housewife. The author, Mary Randolph, was perhaps not the “typical” Southern spouse. She was a cousin of President Thomas Jefferson and a member of one of Virginia’s oldest and most well-to-do families. But in the preceding decades, Mary found herself in hard times. In 1808, the president fired her husband David from his government job, and he moved across the pond to seek business opportunities in England. Left back home, Mary — an ever-skilled hostess and cook — took a bold step for a woman of her caliber and opened a boarding house … and to great success. When David eventually returned and the couple moved to Washington, D.C., Mary published her boarding house recipes, creating perhaps the first true American cookbook. Dr. Christopher Hendricks, a professor history at Georgia Southern University, joins Leigh and P. T. this week to talk about how he and Sue James Hendricks, a writer and lifelong cook, have translated Mary’s recipes for the twenty-first century in their book, Old Southern Cookery: Mary Randolph’s Recipes from America’s First Regional Cookbook Adapted for Today’s Kitchen.