December 2016

(K. J. Historical/Corbis)

New Year’s Day, in any culture with a calendar, is a fairly obvious holiday. And so perhaps it follows that it is the oldest holiday celebrated in the United States. Approximately 2,750 years ago the earliest Romans had, according to legend, a singularly hedonistic emperor named Titus Tatius. It was either he (if he existed) or someone else at the time who declared that the first day of the year should be a holiday, with gift-giving.

Hominy was adopted from the Indians and became an important basic food for American pioneers. It is, simply, hulled corn—the pioneers removed the hulls by soaking the grains of corn in a weak wood lye. Washed and boiled until it was tender, hominy was often served in place of potatoes. It was ground, too, into grits—fragments slightly coarser than corn meal—which have become closely identified with the South. Grits are traditionally eaten for breakfast with butter and milk, or made into breads and puddings. G. W. Featherstonhaugh, an Englishman traveling in the South in 1837, wrote: "Our breakfast was admirable, excellent coffee with delicious cream, and that capital, national dish of South Carolina, snow-white homminy brought hot to table like maccaroni, which ought always to be eaten, with lumps of sweet fresh butter buried in it! this is certainly one of the best things imaginable to begin the day liberally with."

1 cup hominy grits 1/2 cup light cream

5 cups boiling water 1 teaspoon salt

Indians grew a wide variety of squash long before the first white men reached America. Crooknecks and bush-scallops grew in the Northeast, cushaws and sweet potato squashes in the South, the Boston marrow and autumn turban in New England. Captain John Smith described the squash ("macocks") he found in the early days of Virginia, saying that the Indians "plant amongst their corn pumpions, and a fruit like unto our muskmelon, but less and worse, which they call macocks."

Forcemeats, as they were generally called in old cookbooks, are nothing more than seasoned mixtures used to stuff meats, fish, and fowl. Forcemeat derives from the French fareir, "to stuff." Today, they are generally called stuffings or dressings. The stuffings given here are taken from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century cookbooks.

Chestnut Stuffing

2 pounds chestnuts

11/2 cups (3 sticks) butter

2 cups onion, chopped fine

2 cups thinly sliced celery

9 cups fine dry bread crumbs

2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon dried thyme

1 teaspoon dried marjoram 1 teaspoon dried savory

Wash the turkey thoroughly, remove any pinfeathers, and singe any hairs along the edges of the wings and around the legs. Rub the cavity with the cut side of a half lemon and stuff the bird lightly with any of the suggested stuffings ( pages 70-71). Close the opening by skewering or sewing it and truss the bird well. Rub the turkey with butter and season with salt and pepper.

Place in a large roasting pan and cover with several layers of cheesecloth soaked in butter. Do not add water to the pan. Roast in a preheated 325° oven. Baste several times during roasting period, right through the cheesecloth. Remove the cheesecloth during the last half hour of cooking to allow the turkey to brown. To test whether it is done, move the leg joint up and down—it should give readily—or take several layers of paper towels and squeeze the fleshy part of the drumstick—if properly cooked, it should feel soft.

To roast an 8- to 10-pound stuffed turkey, allow 4 to 41/2 hours; for a 12- to 14-pound stuffed turkey, allow 5 to 51/4 hours; and for a large stuffed turkey, 18 to 20 pounds, allow 61/2 to 71/2 hours.

This recipe is adapted from The Lady's Companion, a cookbook published in 1753, which was owned by Martha Washington.

2 large Bermuda onions, thinly sliced

1 quart milk

1 egg yolk

1/2 teaspoon mace blades

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

Chopped parsley

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter Croutons

Place onions, milk, mace, butter, and salt in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and cook slowly for 30 to 40 minutes or until onions are very tender. Pick out mace blade and discard. Beat egg yolk in a small bowl, then add a little of the hot soup, beating constantly. Pour egg mixture into soup and cook a minute or two to thicken slightly. Sprinkle each serving with finely chopped parsley, then add a few croutons. Serves 4.

To make toasted croutons: Toast old firm bread, then cut into tiny squares.

Hot soup at table is very vulgar; it either leads to an unseemly mode of taking it, or keeps people waiting too long whilst it cools. Soup should be brought to table only moderately warm.

—Charles Day, Hints on Etiquette, 1844

Listed below are links to recipes for some of the Washingtons' favorite recipes, taken from the American Heritage Cookbook.