Thomas Jefferson's Creme Brulee

by Thomas J. Craughwell

  Although he was fighting back, Jefferson felt that Hamilton was getting the upper hand, that the latter’s slurs were more effective than his own. In a letter to President Washington, Jefferson complained, saying, “I will not suffer my retirement to be clouded by the slanders of a man whose history, from the moment at which history can stoop to notice him, is a tissue of machinations against the liberty of the country which has not only received and given him bread, but heaped it’s honors on his head.”10

  In an attempt to drive Hamilton out of the cabinet, Jefferson wrote a list of charges accusing the secretary of the Treasury of mismanaging government funds, manipulating the markets, and even embezzling money from the very federal department he was entrusted to manage. Jefferson drafted his accusations as a speech, which his political ally, Representative William Branch Giles, delivered in the House of Representatives on February 27, 1793. Jefferson and his friends assumed Hamilton would be so ashamed that he would resign from office. Instead, two days later, Hamilton published a reply exposing the charges against him as deliberately invented and completely false.11

  It was Jefferson who resigned. In the fall of 1793, he left Philadelphia and headed home to Monticello. James Hemings was still with him. Compelled to serve as Jefferson’s chef, first in New York and then in Philadelphia, he’d had no opportunity to train his successor. He had been back in America for nearly four years, and it appears he was becoming impatient and may have expressed his discontent to his master, because among Jefferson’s papers is a contract between the two men, drawn up before they left Philadelphia:

  Having been at great expence 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 do hereby promise and declare, that if the said James shall 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 be thereupon made free, and I will thereupon execute all proper instruments to make him free. Given under my hand and seal in the county of Philadelphia and state of Pennsylvania this 15th. day of September one thousand seven hundred and ninety three.12

  At Monticello Jefferson chose twenty-three-year-old Peter Hemings, James’s younger brother, to master the art of French cooking. For more than two years, James and Peter worked side by side in the basement kitchen below Monticello’s south pavillion.13 All the kitchen equipment and utensils acquired in France were now installed in the house. In 1796 Jefferson had a charcoal-burning brick stove built along one wall of the kitchen; this appliance eliminated much of the need for open-fire cooking. Now it was easier, not to mention safer, for James and Peter to sauté meat and vegetables or let soups and stews simmer. The stove had eight openings or grates, which generated a great deal of heat, so Jefferson had the stove placed below a window, for ventilation. At one end of the stove stood a large copper kettle that provided hot water.14

  As mistress of Monticello, Jefferson’s daughter Martha planned the daily menus that the Hemings brothers and their assistants would prepare. According to Isaac Jefferson, the master of the house “never went into the kitchen except to wind up the clock.”15

  To get the food to the table, the kitchen staff used covered platters that had a compartment filled with hot water or hot sand to keep the food warm. The platters were carried into the house, to the office, where more servants transferred the cooked food to porcelain or silver serving dishes. These were placed inside a revolving cabinet; when the servants turned the cabinet, the serving dishes appeared in the adjoining dining room. There, Jefferson’s butler Martin Hemings (he would be succeeded by Hemings’s nephew Burwell Colbert) carried the covered dishes to the small tables that stood between each guest—Jefferson had kept the habit he had acquired in France of letting guests help themselves. Meanwhile, a servant in the wine cellar sent up bottles to the dining room by means of a dumbwaiter.16

  Isaac Jefferson tells us that Jefferson “never would have less than eight covers at dinner—if nobody at table but himself.” If he had guests, Jefferson “had from eight to thirty-two covers for dinner: plenty of wine, best old Antigua rum and cider.”17 Peter Fossett, son of Edith Fossett, who succeeded the Hemings brothers as chef at Monticello, recalled that so many visitors came to the house that life at Monticello was “a merry go round of hospitalities.”18

  After more than two years of intense training, in early 1795 Peter Hemings was ready to take over as chef of Monticello. The day of James’s emancipation came at last on February 5, 1796. In the presence of two witnesses, Jefferson wrote the necessary document that made James a free man:

  This indenture made at Monticello in the county of Albemarle and commonwealth of Virginia on the fifth day of February one thousand seven hundred and ninety six witnesseth that I Thomas Jefferson of Monticello aforesaid do emancipate, manumit and make free James Hemings, son of Betty Hemings, which said James is now of the age of thirty years so that in future he shall be free and of free condition, and discharged of all duties and claims of servitude whatsoever, and shall have all the rights and privileges of a freedman. In witness whereof I have hereto set my hand and seal on the day and year above written, and have made these presents double of the same date, tenor and indenture one whereof is lodged in the court of Albemarle aforesaid to be recorded, and the other is delivered by me to the said James Hemings to be produced when and where it may be necessary.19

  Before he left Monticello, James wrote an inventory of the kitchen equipment. In addition to the many French copper pots and pans, he also mentions brass and marble “pistle[s] & mortar[s]”; most likely these came from France, too, where they were standard equipment in any kitchen.20 Then with thirty dollars in his pocket, James set out for Philadelphia, where he found work as a cook. There is some evidence that he went back to France for a time. In 1797 he was back in Philadelphia and got in touch with Jefferson, telling him that on his next trip to Europe he planned to visit Spain.21

  Thomas Jefferson’s deed of manumission to James Hemings, dated February 5, 1796. (Courtesy Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va., accession #5589)

  In 1801, when Jefferson was the newly elected president, he sent an intermediary to invite James to serve as chef at the President’s House (not yet called the White House). James was working as a cook at a tavern in Baltimore and sent back the reply that he would like to receive a few lines from Jefferson about the post; Jefferson never sent the note and hired another man as chef.

  As president, Jefferson continued his merry-go-round of hospitalities. His predecessor, John Adams, grumbled, “I dined a large company once or twice a week, Jefferson dined a dozen every day. I held levees once a week. Jefferson’s whole eight years was a levee.”22 In fact, Jefferson abandoned the levee tradition established by Washington and Adams—these afternoon receptions, which originated with the kings of England, were too aristocratic for a good democrat like Jefferson. He did enjoy dinner parties, however, and to keep them egalitarian he seated his guests at a round table. These were not mere social gatherings; as he had learned in France and confirmed at the dinner with Hamilton and Madison, fine food and fine wine combined with lively conversation could serve a political purpose. Historian James S. Young characterized these dinner parties as one of Jefferson’s “power techniques” for reconciling political opponents and advancing his own political agenda.23

  Federalist congressman William J. Plumer of New Hampshire joined eleven other members of Congress at a one such dinner party. In a letter home to his wife, he praised the president for serving “a very good dinner, with a profusion of fruits and sweetmeats. The wine was the best I ever drank, particularly the champagne, which was indeed delicious.”24 After dining with the president, the Reverend Manasseh Cutler of Ohio wrote to his wife of the lavish meal Jefferson served, including a dish that was new to
him—“a pie called macaroni.”25 Most likely this was the dish we know today as mac and cheese.

  Days before his inauguration as president, Jefferson wrote to the French envoy, Philippe de Letombe, asking for advice on finding a French chef and a French maître d’hôtel. Letombe found the men Jefferson needed: Joseph Rapin, a gentlemanly Frenchman, and Honoré Julien, who had been the chef for George Washington during the last four months of his presidency. Jefferson was pleased with both, but after six months, Rapin moved on. He was replaced by yet another Frenchman, Étienne Lemaire, lately maître d’hôtel in the home of the wealthy Bingham family of Philadelphia.26

  No doubt, Jefferson gave Lemaire the same instructions as he once sent to Rapin. “While I wish to have every thing good in it’s kind, and handsome in stile, I am a great enemy to waste and useless extravagance, and see them with real pain.” 27 The result was what Washington hostess Margaret Bayard Smith described as “republican simplicity … united to Epicurean delicacy.”28 As he had done with James, Jefferson brought two slaves from Monticello to learn French cuisine from Chef Julien. Edith Fossett was fifteen years old when she began her apprenticeship, and her sister Fanny Hern was eighteen. They would become the French chefs during Jefferson’s final years.29

  Like Jefferson, Lemaire kept an account book, which has survived. In it, we can see what he purchased in the Washington, D.C., markets for the president’s table. And as one would expect, Jefferson and his guests ate exceptionally well. Turkey was served at least once, and more often twice, a week. Pheasant, quail, pigeon, and canvasback ducks also made regular appearances, although Jefferson’s favorite game bird was the guinea hen. Fish was cheap because it was readily available—rockfish and sturgeon weighing fifty pounds or more were pulled straight from the Potomac River, while the Chesapeake Bay yielded up an endless supply of oysters, which were sold two for a penny, or ninety cents for a gallon. The president, his staff, and his guests ate so much bread that the cooks could not meet the demand. Additional amounts were purchased from a Washington baker named Peter Miller, who, in a typical month, delivered $50 worth of bread and rolls to the President’s House. Dairy products were pricey: milk was nine cents a quart, butter thirty cents a pound, eggs twenty cents a dozen. Each month, Lemaire spent between $500 and $600 on food, sometimes laying out as much as $50 in one day.

  As president, Jefferson received an annual salary of $25,000 per year. He thus was able to supplement the President’s House provisions with his favorite luxury goods, paying out of his own pocket for European wines and delicacies. But the building had no wine cellar, and no part of the basement was cool enough to store the bottles properly, so Jefferson had a cellar dug on the grounds. In addition to wine, he ordered from Europe olive oil, anchovies, and Parmesan cheese—all new taste sensations to his guests.30

  In politics and in his personal life, Thomas Jefferson was a complicated man, but in one thing he was consistent: he wanted the best of everything, for himself and for his country. He loved what was native to America—Indian corn, Virginia ham, representative government—but he knew there was more to be had. And so when he went to Europe, he traveled with his eyes and his mind wide open, and his taste buds eager for the next delicacy. Like a true tourist, Jefferson could not wait to bring the treasures he found back to the United States, hence all those crates of mustard, and nectarines, and almonds, and olive oil, not to mention the 680 bottles of wine.31 Patrick Henry, that culinary chauvinist, denounced Jefferson’s newly acquired European palate: “He has abjured his native victuals in favor of French cuisine.” Like most charges that political opponents hurl at one another, this one is untrue. Jefferson didn’t abandon his native victuals; he married them to those from France.

  The man who made that possible was James Hemings. In a three-year apprenticeship in Paris, he mastered French cuisine as well as the French language. When he took over as chef de cuisine at Jefferson’s house in Paris, the meals he prepared must have met the highest French standards, because Jefferson did not hesitate to send dinner invitations to some of the most distinguished and discriminating men and women in France. And, of course, it was James’s cuisine that put those determined rivals, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson, in the mood for some serious political horse trading.

  In summer 1801, James returned to Monticello to serve as chef during Jefferson’s long vacation from Washington. In September, when Jefferson arrived home from the capital, James returned to Baltimore. A month later, Jefferson received the tragic news that James Hemings had killed himself. He had been drinking heavily for several days, and while delirious with alcohol he committed suicide. He was thirty-six years old. Jefferson wrote to his chief builder at Monticello and asked him to deliver the unhappy news to the Hemings family in person.32

  * * *

  Thanks to his training in France, James Hemings founded a culinary dynasty in America. His brother and successor, Peter, preserved James’s recipes and taught them, as well as his techniques, to other slaves at Monticello, including Edith Fossett. She then passed these skills on to her son Peter Fossett (James Hemings’s great-nephew). In 1850, after Peter Fossett’s family and friends purchased his freedom, he moved to Cincinnati, where he opened a catering business and went on to become one of the most successful caterers in the city.

  Jefferson longed for “choice meals,” as he called them, and it was James Hemings who fulfilled that longing. The master-and-slave relationship was surely fraught with tensions and resentments that today we can only imagine. Yet it is apparent there existed some friendly feelings, perhaps even affection, that linked these two men. Indeed, after his emancipation, James stayed in touch with Jefferson. He spent some of the final months of his life back in the Monticello kitchen, among family and friends. When word of James’s “tragical end” reached Jefferson, he sent a friend to Baltimore to learn what had happened, and then he arranged for the news to be broken to the Hemings family as gently as possible.

  It is unfortunate we do not know more about James Hemings. It is a loss to culinary history that more of his recipes have not survived. And it is tragic that a man with such a gift would become an alcoholic and take his own life. His cooking set the standard for Jefferson; for the rest of his life, he would have either a French chef or a slave who had been trained in the art of French cuisine to serve in his kitchen.

  In 1802 Mahlon Dickerson, a Philadelphia judge, dined at the President’s House. It must have been a memorable meal, because Dickerson wrote afterward that Jefferson “takes good care of his table. No man in America keeps a better.”33 It is the type of compliment that Thomas Jefferson and James Hemings would have savored.

  EPILOGUE

  Thomas Jefferson served two terms as president of the United States. In 1809 he was succeeded in the White House by his friend James Madison. Jefferson went home to Monticello and never again visited Washington, D.C. In 1814, after an invading British army burned the Library of Congress, Jefferson offered to sell his personal library to the federal government. The following year, Congress approved an appropriation of $23,950 for the purchase of his collection of 6,487 books. No sooner had the cases been shipped off to Washington than Jefferson resumed buying books. At age seventy-six, Jefferson founded the University of Virginia. He designed the curriculum, recruited the faculty, and served as the first rector, or president. The school opened in 1819 with eight professors and sixty-eight students. Today it has almost eight thousand full-time faculty and more than twenty-one thousand students.

  On July 4, 1826, as the citizens of the United States celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both lay dying. Adams’s last words were, “Thomas Jefferson still lives.” He was mistaken: his friend had died just hours earlier.

  Jefferson’s daughter Martha married her third cousin, Thomas Mann Randolph, in 1790. The couple had eleven children, yet their marriage was hardly a success. For many years, Martha and h
er children lived with her father at Monticello and in Washington, D.C., where Martha acted as hostess at the President’s House. To settle debts left after Jefferson’s death, the family was forced to sell Monticello. Martha spent the rest of her life living with one or another of her children. She died in 1836 and is buried in the Jefferson family cemetery at Monticello.

  Upon her return to America, Polly Jefferson took to calling herself Maria. In 1797 she married John Eppes, one of the cousins she had played with as a child. They lived at Eppington and had two children, a son and a daughter. In 1804, two months after giving birth to a girl, Maria died.

  It is generally accepted by scholars that Sally Hemings became Jefferson’s mistress and together they had six children, four of whom survived to adulthood. Jefferson did not free Sally while he was alive nor in his will. It seems that Martha Jefferson Randolph freed her, although the exact date of her manumission is unknown. Sally spent her final years in Charlottesville, living with her sons Madison and Easton. She died in 1835.

  Many of Jefferson’s friends and dinner guests from his Paris years fell victim to the French Revolution. In 1794 Princess Lubomirski was beheaded. For the crime of defending Louis XVI at his trial, Chrétien-Guillaume de Lamoignon de Malesherbes was forced to watch as his daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter were beheaded; then he, too, was taken to the guillotine. The Marquis de Condorcet may have been a champion of liberty and human rights, but in the eyes of the revolutionary tribunal, his noble blood outweighed his political principles. Rather than face public execution, he drank poison. The Duke de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt escaped France in 1793; he forced a Norman fisherman, at gunpoint, to take him across the English Channel. Antoine Lavoisier would pay for his association with the tax system: on May 8, 1794, he was guillotined in Paris. Before the French Revolution was over, all his fellow tax collectors would lose their heads as well. As for Jefferson’s old flame, Maria Cosway moved to Lodi, Italy, where she became the benefactress of a convent school for girls. She and Jefferson corresponded from time to time; her last letter to him arrived a year before his death. In her home, Cosway kept a portrait of her friend, painted by John Trumbull. In 1976, for the bicentennial of the United States, the government of Italy presented the portrait to President Gerald Ford. Today the painting hangs in the White House.