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.By 1670, iced desserts were soldin Paris with great success.When the early settlers came to the NewWorld, they brought their desire for this frozen dessert with them.Bythe early nationalist period, frozen desserts (ice cream and fruit ices)were extremely popular, but very expensive to make.The cost and availability of cream and sugar were lesser concerns forwealthy ice cream devotees.The ability to acquire and store ice was thechief worry.Ice was not readily available, particularly in the summermonths.New York, Pennsylvania, and New England were the primarysources of ice.During the winter, enterprising northerners would cutlarge blocks of ice from frozen streams and ponds for shipment to out-lying states.The holds of the ships were insulated and hermeticallysealed.Well-to-do southerners had icehouses built to store their ship-ments of ice.Usually built under a shade tree, the brick (or sometimeswooden) icehouse was double-walled (the space between stuffed withmoss) with a foundation laid six feet deep (Woodward, 130).Many of118 Popular Culture of the New Nationthese icehouses were so solidly constructed that the ice would last forthree months even in the middle of summer, assuring that the populardessert would be on hand for important dinner parties.Transporting ice to those who lived away from the coast presented aproblem.At this time, there was no practical means of shipping ice in-land (Woodward, 130).Instead, country residents stored what ice theyhad acquired in the winter months in springhouses.Springhouses wereconstructed much like icehouses except that water diverted from a springflowed through them, which created a pool of cool water in the spring-house (ibid., 130).Containers were then placed in the water in an effortto keep their contents cool.Obviously, springhouses were not as effectiveas icehouses in maintaining the necessary frigid temperatures.Thus, cit-izens living near ports had more access to ice and to ice cream andother perishables.EUROPEAN CUISINEAfter the French alliance of 1778, fashionable citizens took up Frenchcuisine.The influx of French émigrés in the 1790s (and with them theirknowledge and talent for cooking) altered American food sensibilities.Soups, salads, ices, bonbons, and fricassees became the order of the day.At least two American presidents, Washington and Jefferson, indulgedin the new cuisine.(Patrick Henry used Jefferson s propensity for Frenchcooking to attack him politically.Jefferson, Henry told a political rally,had  abjured his native victuals. )Jefferson almost single-handedly established French cooking as a partof American culture.Even though he never lost his taste for the southerncooking of his youth (Virginia dishes and French cuisine were bothserved at the White House on a regular basis), the third president wasthe first to employ a French chef in the White House.But he was notcontent to turn over the responsibility of selecting the type of food andpreparation of menus to the staff, no matter how impressive their qual-ifications.When it came to food, Jefferson took a hands-on approach.Historical accounts reveal that as president, Jefferson, along with hissteward, would drive out in a wagon early in the morning to the George-town market.There Jefferson would select only the finest meats andproduce.Edmund Bacon, his overseer, recorded that Jefferson s market-ing bills were often in the $50 range for that day s purchases (Jones, 38).By post-Revolutionary standards, that was an exorbitant amount.Jefferson was also an inveterate collector of recipes, both foreign anddomestic.Surprisingly, far before the great immigration of Italians to theUnited States, Jefferson had introduced pasta to America (ibid., 39).Hehad Parmesan cheese shipped to the United States because he felt thatit would be a fitting accompaniment to his macaroni.Found among hisFood 119papers was a drawing and description of a machine especially designedto shape macaroni (ibid.).Jefferson s pasta recipe, which calls for twoeggs, a wineglass full of milk, a teaspoon of salt, and hard flour to makea firm dough, surprisingly resembles current recipes for pasta (ibid.).Jefferson was instrumental in introducing rice into the American dietas well.In his travels abroad, at great personal risk, he had smuggledout rice (in his pockets) to America.He also had paid an Italian muledriver to smuggle a sack of rough rice out of northwest Italy.Later, hewas able to import African dry rice to Virginia a crop that did notrequire swamped fields (ibid.).Rice soon became a part of many Amer-ican diets.COFFEE AND TEAHaute cuisine was not the only gastronomic phenomenon in the newrepublic.American beverage preferences began to change at this time.Tea, a by-product of America s British heritage, was still the most pop-ular drink.But coffee drinking was quickly on the rise.Tea drinkersduring the war began to turn to coffee as a patriotic alternative to theBritish practice of tea drinking.By 1800 twice as many pounds of coffeewere consumed per capita than tea (Cummings, 34).(However, tea pro-duces twice as much per pound than coffee.)The War of 1812 radically changed the drinking habits of Americans.Because Great Britain had been America s primary source of tea, theinterruption of the tea trade due to the war caused high price inflation.Concurrently, Brazilian ports were now shipping coffee throughout theworld.Coffee prices were much more in line with modest Americanbudgets.After the war, tea prices soared from 80 cents per pound to$1.13, in comparison to the relatively stable coffee price of 20 cents (ibid.,35).COOKBOOKSThis was also the period marked by the appearance of the Americancookbook [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]