Photos courtesy of Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello unless otherwise noted.
Thomas Jefferson portrait by Rembrandt Peale.
Speaking at a dinner honoring all living Nobel Prize winners in the Western Hemisphere on April 29, 1962, President John F. Kennedy quipped, “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”
The fact is, Thomas Jefferson rarely, if ever, dined alone. In a letter to Benjamin Rush, written by John Adams, Jefferson’s longtime friend and fellow founding father, Adams said, “I held levees [dinner receptions] once a week. Jefferson’s whole eight years was a levee.” Adams said he dined with a large amount of company once or twice a week, while Jefferson dined with a dozen companions every day.
Jefferson had discovered, probably when he first moved to France to assume the role of United States Minister to France, the joys of gourmet French cooking. He liked it so much, he sent one of his slaves, James Hemings, brother of Sally Hemings, to study the art of French cooking from chefs at the famed Chateau de Chantilly, the five-star kitchen of eighteenth-century France, renowned as producing culinary creations that rivaled those served to the royal family at Versailles. When James threatened to stay in France as a free man, Jefferson offered him a deal. If James would come back with him to America and teach someone else in Jefferson’s household the art of French cooking, he would give James his freedom. He also signed an oath to give James’ sister Sally Hemings and her children freedom upon his death.
“Having been at great expence [sic] in having James Hemings taught the art of cookery, desiring to befriend him, and to require from him as little in return as possible, I hereby do promise & declare, that if the said James should go with me to Monticello in the course of the ensuing winter, when I go to reside there myself, and shall there continue until he shall have taught such person as I shall place under him for that purpose to be a good cook, this previous condition being performed, he shall thereupon be made free...”
~ Thomas Jefferson
A dumbwaiter built into the side of a hearth in Monticello's dining room made it possible for Jefferson to receive food from the kitchen and serve it himself to dinner guests.
James Hemings was freed in 1796, but not before he trained his younger brother Peter, also born into slavery, to be the chef at Monticello. Having fulfilled his agreement, James finally was given his freedom. When Jefferson became president, he hired Frenchman Etienne Lemaire to be the White House maître d’ and Honore’ Julien to be White House chef. Jefferson frequently accompanied Etienne Lemaire when he shopped in the local markets. Perhaps motivated by his keen interest in gardening and growing fruits and vegetables at Monticello, Jefferson is said to have kept a list of when 37 fruits and vegetables came into season in Washington DC. Tomatoes were not very popular in this country at that time, mainly because of their relationship to the nightshade plant family. Jefferson endeavored to enlighten people by eating a tomato publicly on the front steps of the Miller-Claytor House in Lynchburg, Virginia.
For the last three years of his service at the White House, Etienne Lemaire meticulously recorded everything he purchased in a sheepskin-covered day book. We therefore have a good idea of what was served at the White House in Jefferson’s day. Wild fowl was readily available, and it was not unusual for the chef to prepare a breakfast for Jefferson of four pigeons or squabs baked in a flaky crust. One of his favorites was beef tongue. Jefferson did not particularly like pork, so very little was served. Turkey, on the other hand was one of his favorites. It was often served cold at breakfast, baked within a buttery crust.
A freestanding dumbwaiter cart helped Jefferson serve his guests at Monticello.
Jefferson had a rule that no politics were to be discussed before the meal was finished. He also did not allow toasts, which he believed brought out the brute in men. The meals were haute cuisine to say the least. Jefferson often included dishes he had discovered while touring Italy and France. He searched for new food adventures. Macaroni and cheese was one dish he particularly loved. In fact, he brought home his own pasta machine and used it for a while, then reverted to hand cutting pasta. At the White House, Jefferson had macaroni and Parmesan cheese served often as a side dish to a wide variety of fowl and meats. While in France, Jefferson developed a fondness for pommes de terre frites a cru en petites tranches, which in the USA we know as French fries. He preferred potatoes cut round rather than in strips, as is popular today. Jefferson was not a big eater, but enjoyed olives, oysters, soufflés, ices, bouilli, daubes, ragouts, gateaus (rich cream-covered cake) and fresh vegetables. He did not eat much beef, although he did enjoy a fine beef bouilli (boil). He favored partridge, canvasback ducks, venison, soft-shell crabs, green peas, Virginia ham, figs, mulberries and pineapple. In his Monticello garden, he grew squash, broccoli from Italy, white and purple eggplant and 15 different varieties of peas.
Jefferson often prevailed on his European friends to send him seeds of their various native produce. Stewed tomatoes were another of Jefferson’s favorites. He also liked to serve a golf-ball sized lettuce, artichoke bottoms, truffles served with a Calvados sauce, and a wide variety of fish. Oysters were purchased by the gallon and were served on the half-shell, marinated, or baked in a pie. A great quantity of bread was consumed at the White House prompting the hiring of an outside baker named Peter Miller who made dozens of loaves of fresh bread daily. Another of Jefferson’s favorites was ice cream, for which he wrote out the recipe to be sure it was done exactly the way he had enjoyed it in France. He often served ice cream baked in a flaky crust. No doubt the baking was done to perfection in a professional stove Jefferson had imported from France.
Jefferson imported vines to build his vineyard at Monticello.
Wine was an essential part of Jefferson’s lifestyle. Champagne was one of his favorite wines. When he returned home from Paris in 1789, he brought with him 680 bottles of wine, along with clippings from the vines of various vineyards in Europe. His efforts at developing his own vineyard were unsuccessful. Eventually, Jefferson arranged for an Italian viticulturist named Philip Mazzei to move in next door to Monticello to plant a large vineyard. Mazzei and Jefferson made a deal that Mazzei would plant and take care of the vineyards at Monticello, and Jefferson would have his gardeners take care of Mazzei’s property. Obviously, his gardeners and Jefferson planned to someday enjoy wine from homegrown grapes. Grapes are being grown on the same land to this day, see www.jeffersonvineyards.com.
Jefferson spent heavily on imported wines from France and Italy. His wine cellar included Champaign, Sauterne, Sherry, Bordeaux, Chambertin and Nobile from Montepulciano, Italy. Jefferson had a wine cellar dug in the ground outside the White House. For those who preferred beer, it was there at Monticello where beer was a “table liquor” served during dinner, and Jefferson’s earliest designs for his plantation included spaces for brewing and the storage of beer.
Wine decanter used to serve Madeira at Jefferson's lavish dinner parties.
Interestingly, Jefferson did not like servants listening in on conversations, so he installed dumb waiters to bring the food up from the kitchens. He built a kind of rotating shelf or lazy Susan to allow food to be brought in without a servant carrying the tray. Jefferson liked to serve the food himself. He also utilized small serving tables between guests onto which servants placed the food then were dismissed so the guests could eat in privacy. Writing in Smithsonian Magazine, October 2012, Henry Wiencek reported, “During dinner, Jefferson would open a panel in the side of the fireplace, insert an empty wine bottle and seconds later pull out a full bottle. We can imagine that he would delay explaining how this magic took place until an astonished guest put the question to him. The panel concealed a narrow dumbwaiter that descended to the basement. When Jefferson put an empty bottle in the compartment, a slave waiting in the basement pulled the dumbwaiter down, removed the empty, inserted a fresh bottle and sent it up to the master in a matter of seconds. Similarly, platters of hot food magically appeared on a revolving door pivoted in the middle and without hinges. It was fitted with shelves and worked like a lazy Susan where plates disappeared from sight on the same apparatus. Guests could not see or hear any of the activity, nor the links between the visible world and the invisible that magically produced Jefferson’s abundance.” Dessert often included ice cream and various cakes smothered in flavored creams. When the table was cleared of dessert, bowls overflowing with dried fruits and nuts and the guests’ choice of wine were served.
Thomas Jefferson had an enormous number of interests. It could be said that he was interested in everything, especially fine dining and the camaraderie of a great meal with friends over a well-laid table. Imagine what discussions took place at those dinners. It was at one of those lavish dinners on June 20, 1790, over a half-Virginia and half-French style meal, that formerly bitter enemies, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, settled on an agreement over how to finance the Revolutionary War debt. They decided just where the national capital would be located. Jefferson’s friend, Benjamin Franklin, a frequent dinner companion once remarked, “Wine is constant proof that God loves us and likes to see us happy.” A sentiment which Jefferson surely would have approved and perhaps added, “Wine from long habit has become indispensable for my health.”
It is interesting to contemplate the effect exposure to fine dining in Paris had on Jefferson. Like everything that interested him, Jefferson embraced French cooking wholeheartedly. His transition from an appetite for the relatively simple traditional plantation fare of the South, which included meats boiled, roasted, baked or stewed, catfish soup, overcooked vegetables and heavily sweetened desserts, to the highly sophisticated haute cuisine he learned to love in Paris, was remarkable. Thomas Jefferson’s experience in Europe with both fine wine and fine food made him eager to introduce the great wines and the cuisine of the Old World to the inhabitants of the New World.
Thomas Jefferson's extensive vegetable garden at Monticello.