By Gayle Converse

Most of us know quite a bit of preparation goes into our annual Thanksgiving meals; however, the hours spent planning, shopping, baking and cooking for our 21st-century holiday dinners can’t hold a candle to the amount of time Alexandria’s women spent in the 18th and early 19th centuries.

Although Thanksgiving was not yet a national observance when Alexandria was founded in 1749, many early women prepared holiday meals. A typical celebratory menu of the upper social classes might have included turkey, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, turnips, cabbage, tomatoes, corn, cranberry sauce, currant jelly, pumpkin and fruit pies, stewed apples and fish muddle.

Socioeconomic boundaries meant countless women were also responsible for the daily care and feeding of their households. For the middle to lower social strata, this entailed constant work in the kitchen at the open hearth, a fireplace that served as the stove and main heat source in a home.

Without the help and expertise of enslaved or hired servants, the tasks near the stone or brick fireplace for a typical 18th century woman included more than cooking: drying out damp flour, herbs, seeds, infant swaddling and family laundry were just some of the daily tasks, all of which made for interesting daily aromas in the household. These scents often combined with suet puddings, freshly plucked fowl, medicinal potions, curdling cheese and fermenting vinegar.

While many 18th century homes and businesses – including Gadsby’s Tavern – utilized outdoor kitchens, a home’s indoor fireplace served as the family hub and a source for meal preparation, warmth and light.

The fire had to be kept hot around the clock, which meant women chopped kindling, stoked the blaze and constantly gauged the heat of the coals. Piles of live embers could easily be compared to our modern stove burners for boiling, toasting, broiling and frying.

Instead of kitchen cabinets, the open hearth held basic cooking and baking tools, among them skillets, pots, an iron hook to lift the pots, a trench to catch grease, a toasting iron, a griddle, tea kettles, ladles and a long iron fork. A Dutch oven was placed directly on the embers, where hot coals were also placed on its heavy lid. This system provided a “bake” for pies, breads, puddings and cakes.

In order to remove a hot item from the fire, a cook often used the edges of her apron to protect her hands. For local women 275 years ago, “potholders” were heavy swinging iron arms which suspended stews, fish and meats and enabled the cook to control the food’s distance from the fire.

While Alexandrians who lived in the city ate fairly well most of the year by frequenting the City Market, the end of spring was a lean time for many rural families. Mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts and wives used the byproducts of daily cooking, such as recycled stale bread and leftover fats to put meals together.

Almost 200 years before the invention of modern refrigeration, provisions were seasonal. Produce and meats were more abundant during fall harvesting and butchering. To sustain their families through the season, women dried, pickled and salted meats and fish. They also dried fruits and herbs, canned vegetables and kept root cellars.

The grocery store for Alexandria’s early rural communities consisted of fruit and vegetables from one’s garden; the pasture, pen, coop or forest; and seafood from the Potomac River.

Families who could afford cookbooks treasured them for generations. Some of the most famous include the 1750 “The Prudent Housewife,” “The Frugal Housewife” from 1796 and “The Virginia House-Wife,” published in 1824 by Virginia’s Mary Randolph. Her popular volume is considered the first regional American cookbook. Along with its 500 recipes Randolph’s book also served as a guide for making soap, starch and cologne.

Of course, the United States is no longer an agricultural society and both sexes often assume the duties of cooking. As we prepare for this Thanksgiving, we can celebrate the generations of Alexandria women who cultivated the menu of our city’s history.

Next month, we’ll discuss the dangers of cooking at the hearth for women.

The writer is a founder of Alexandria Celebrates Women, a nonprofit commemorating the centennial of women’s suffrage and highlighting influential women throughout the city’s history.