Historic Foodways classes at the Wallace House in Somerville offer lessons in authentic Colonial cooking.
By:Jillian Kalonick
(TIMEOFF/FRANK WOJCIECHOWSKI/Michele Dansak (here, accompanied by her daughter Meredith) leads students in preparing historically inspired meals, from roast chicken to chocolate cream, at the Wallace House.)
Once a home cook gets spoiled by a KitchenAid mixer or Cuisinart
food processor, it’s hard to imagine going back.
But before electricity, it was just the cook and her two hands.
In hearth cooking, "you don’t have anything that plugs into
a wall," says Michele Dansak, who teaches monthly Historic Foodways classes at
the Wallace House and Old Dutch Parsonage in Somerville. "You’re working with
an open fire and coal, and you’re cooking with cast iron cookware," she says.
"It gets hot and it’s very heavy. You’re mashing potatoes by hand, peeling apples
with a paring knife and crushing salt in a mortar and pestle."
The cooking is intense, but rewarding, says Ms. Dansak. She
instructs 10 students in preparing a hands-on, historically inspired meal. The
selections aren’t so out of the ordinary soups, roasted chicken, baked
fish, tarts, puddings but the cooking methods, from the 18th century, are
much different than today’s.
Ms. Dansak scours cookbooks from the 1700s for authentic "receipts"
(recipes). Some are found in journals, but Dover Publications reprints a number
of cookbooks from that era. The "bible of 18th century cooking," she says, is
The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy by Hannah Glasse, which was first
printed in 1747.
"It went through numerous editions, and it’s one book I tend
to use a lot," says Ms. Dansak of the book, which is available online and at major
bookstores and has recipes from soups and meats to jellies and cakes.
"One of my new favorites is sliced apple pudding," she says.
"I love roasting a chicken and having gravy with it the chicken comes out
so tender, the meat falls right off the bone."
A typical cooking class begins with making a soup, which serves
a light lunch for students, followed by preparing a full meal, consumed at the
end of the lesson. Cooks take home recipes modified by Ms. Dansak "since not a
lot of kitchens have fireplaces," she says.
Part of the job is also decoding recipes in their original 18th
century spellings and punctuation. A recipe for onion soup, from Pleasures
of Colonial Cooking (Harvard Printing Company, 1982), is typically short on
detail: "Cut as may great Onions as you please into Slices," it begins. "Then
put a half a pound of Butter into a frying pan and make it a little red."
A resident of Hillsborough and mother of an 18-month-old daughter,
Meredith, Ms. Dansak has been cooking ever since she can remember. She became
interested in learning hearth cooking after several years of volunteer work at
the Wallace House. Four years ago she began teaching herself historic cooking
and doing demonstrations at the Wallace House with an assistant, and this year
began teaching others. She also takes classes taught at the Johnson Ferry House
in Washington Crossing.
The classes are about having fun, says Ms. Dansak. Whether or
not the students are experienced cooks, "you’re not going to get graded on it,"
she says.
"My mom was in my last class, and she’s not a big cook, not
like I am," she says. "She took it because she wanted something that was fun to
do. It’s a lot of hard work, a lot more labor-intensive, but it was a lot of fun.
I want it to be a fun as well as a learning experience."
The Wallace House was built in 1776 as a farm for Philadelphia
merchant John Wallace, but before he was able to move in it was used as headquarters
for George Washington from December 1778 to June 1779, during the Middlebrook
encampment. The Old Dutch Parsonage, which is where the cooking classes take place,
was built in 1751 and was the residence of the Rev. John Frelinghuysen and his
family. Theological classes held there were the beginning of Queens College, later
Rutgers University.
Michele Dansak will teach Historic Foodways classes at the Wallace House and
Old Dutch Parsonage, 71 Somerset St., Somerville, Jan. 14, Feb. 11, March 11,
April 8 and May 13, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Classes cost $40, including a light lunch,
a meal at the end of the day, beverages and recipes. A portion of the cost goes
toward restoration of the site. Registration is required. For information, call
(908) 725-1015 or e-mail Ms. Dansak at [email protected].
Wallace House hours: Wed.-Sat. 10 a.m.-noon, 1-4 p.m.; Sun. 1-4 p.m.

