Monticello’s later kitchen incorporated all the newest and best cooking technologies available at the time.
From the first year of Jefferson's retirement in 1809, the kitchen bustled with activity. Expert enslaved cooks trained in French culinary arts worked hard to prepare two meals a day — a hearty breakfast of muffins, hot wheat and corn breads, and cold ham, and a dinner consisting of many different dishes.
At this exhibit you can view life as it was for enslaved head cook Edith (Hern) Fosset who managed almost every aspect of food preparation during Jefferson's retirement in what was then one of the best equipped kitchens in Virginia. See the tools used to cook the meals that fed Jefferson's friends and family. Authentic equipment is on display, including artifacts of cooking implements likely used in this kitchen.
Records rarely mention that the preparation, cooking, serving and cleanup for the meals enjoyed by Jefferson, his family and his guests was made possible by Monticello’s enslaved cooks and their families.
An enslaved, French-trained chef who served at the White House during Jefferson's presidency and later ran the kitchen at Monticello.
Born into slavery at Monticello, Peter Fossett gained freedom at age 35, became a caterer, a pastor, and a conductor on the Underground Railroad in Ohio.
Completed by 1809, Monticello's best-equipped kitchen was the domain of enslaved chefs Edith Fossett and Frances Hern, who brought French-trained culinary expertise to the mountain after serving at the White House.
Jefferson did not invent macaroni and cheese, nor did his enslaved chef James Hemings. But its appearance on the menu at the White House was seen as a novelty.
Monticello's enslaved chefs prepared often elaborate dinners for Thomas Jefferson, his family, and guests uniquely inspired by French and Colonial Virginia cooking.
Thomas Jefferson held periodic dinners at the President's House in Washington to build relationships with political allies and opponents often using the events as a tool to gain political ends.
Thomas Jefferson can be credited with the first known recipe for ice cream recorded by an American and likely helped to popularize it in this country.
