Confectioners often had a “confectionery line” of items (candies, sweetmeats, etc.), in addition to a general assortment of cakes and biscuits, ice creams, cordials, jellies, custards, and tarts. But it appears there were confectioners who were pure candy makers (they did not use flour in their shop), and others who also made pastry (like Mrs. Goodfellow). This reflects the degree of specialization in both professions.35
A skilled confectioner could make a good deal of money because the public was willing to pay considerable sums for the beautifully handcrafted indulgences they produced. It was not easy to make them at home due to the artistic talents and equipment required, which helped to ensure demand.36
Fruiterers also often sold extravagant imported sweets such as Bordeaux prunes, almonds, lemons and limes, raisins, currants, cordials, and licorice. In fact, one of the earliest references to confectioners in Philadelphia was in 1765; a man named Abraham Smith ran a fruit business and sold a few simple candies.37
In June of that same year, German immigrant John William Millers placed an advertisement in the Pennsylvania Gazette announcing a huge display of sugar work he had sculpted. Millers claimed to have worked for the royal Prussian family, and the sculpture was a depiction of a grand temple housing the king of Prussia and goddess Pallas, as well as Prussian guards and a procession of carriages pulled by exotic animals such as lions, elephants, and camels. Millers hoped to bring patrons to his shop by showing his incredible artistry. Indeed, Philadelphians came in droves to view this sugar work, at first paying eighteen pence apiece to see it. Millers offered refunds for those who felt the sculpture was not as mentioned, and lowered the fee to six pence in October when the number of visitors began to drop. For sale to the public he offered finer confections for gentlemen's tables, weddings, or other entertainments, which he claimed were reasonably priced.38
It is not known whether this large-scale advertising enhanced Millers's business or not. However, it does show that as a variety of cultures continued to populate Philadelphia and began to create a new American cuisine, the love of sugar remained a constant.
Still a rather expensive commodity in Goodfellow's time, white sugar and its products were usually reserved for the well-to-do. As acknowledged by Philadelphia pastry chef Robert Bennett, these “baked goods and confectionery played a special role in Philadelphia's culinary history. Due to the high cost of ingredients such as sugar, chocolate, nuts, citrus, and spices, sweet dishes were greatly prized. Indeed, only wealthy Philadelphians could afford to prepare or purchase these items with regularity. Research, however, shows that shops around the city sold expensive, imported ingredients from Europe, the Caribbean, and neighboring colonies, and confectioners selling prepared goods maintained a steady patronage.”39
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Confectionery—A term that has come to represent a vast number of edibles or compounds that have sugar as a base or principal ingredient.
Pastry—When first introduced, pastries referred to both sweet and savory dishes that featured a “paste” of heavy dough made from flour, fat, and liquid. Today the term encompasses a wide variety of baked or fried sweet foods, and a paste is not necessarily a main ingredient.
Sweetmeats—Commonly used from medieval times through the end of the nineteenth century, it simply means a sweet food, which was often put on the table at the end of a meal. Wet sweetmeats were eaten with a spoon and included jellies, creams, floating islands, and preserved fruits in heavy syrups. Dry varieties included nuts, fruit peels, glacéed fruit, sugared comfits and flowers, chocolates, and small cakes.
Sugar work—Large ornamental structures, sometimes edible, sometimes purely artistic, constructed from sugar paste, almond paste, and royal icing.
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This access to foreign imports is apparent in looking at the goods sold by another early Philadelphia confectioner, Elizabeth Hannah Willing. A bill from Mrs. Willing's shop dated December 8, 1774, lists a variety of products containing exotic ingredients, including preserved ginger, pickled mangoes, and guava jelly.40
Sebastian Henrion was one of the best known and innovative of Philadelphia's confectioners. He sold imported chocolate and bonbons, as well as nuts, syrups, and fruits both fresh and candied.41 He joined forces with A. J. Chauveau in 1844 and together they became world famous for their cream caramels, which they shipped to New York and Caracas, as well as to London, Paris, and Vienna.42 They were also the first to manufacture gumdrops, jujube paste, and marshmallows in America, and in 1845 imported the first revolving steam pan for large-scale candy production in the United States.43
Finding accurate statistics regarding the number of sugary items sold is difficult because many confectioners and pastry chefs combined their sweets offerings with other products and services, and there was much crossover with occupational terminology. However, all the figures show that the use of sugar in America continued to rise at a steady pace throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.44
By the beginning of the 1800s, large-scale sugar production had become possible by the unfortunate spread of slave labor in the Caribbean, and by the 1820s Americans were well acquainted with sugar, although it was still considered a luxury item for most. Then sugar processing improvements, combined with the development of beet sugar, increased the supply and lowered costs.45
Sugar use in America really accelerated at this point, as more and more people were able to afford it. This development, in addition to better refrigeration, probably played a part in Goodfellow's shop expansion in the late 1830s. Her clientele would have increased, and she would have been able to keep dairy products fresher longer and make larger and more cost-efficient quantities of ice cream and other treats, such as blancmange, that had to be kept cool.
Philadelphians were among the first Americans to serve frozen desserts, and “Philadelphia ice cream” became the standard of excellence. Its list of ingredients was simple, but all had to be the finest quality: pure cream, ripe fruit, and sugar—no thickening substances were added. Again, Philadelphia's Quaker influence was coming into play. The city's residents adamantly claimed that their “Philadelphiastyle” ice cream (made without eggs) was tastier than New York's recipe, or even the French method which used a custardy base of beaten eggs.46
Ice cream was advertised in Philadelphia newspapers as early as 1784, and ice cream houses cropped up soon after.47 While the ice cream served in Goodfellow's shop may not have been considered one of her signatures, it is important to note that she did begin advertising it after her expansion in the 1830s, probably to keep up with the competition.
The members of Philadelphia high society who craved all these sweet treats kept Goodfellow busy and provided an outlet for her products and services. When these wealthy families gave parties or banquets, guests expected to see complicated and fanciful desserts such as charlottes, creams, meringues, jellies, blancmanges, tarts, syllabubs, soufflés, and special ice creams.48 Some of the specialties sold by Goodfellow included lemon pudding, Queen cake, cheesecakes, citron cake, jumbles, kisses, macaroons, and apple pie.49
Society ladies would go to great lengths to arrange luscious and eye-catching dessert tables, trying to outdo each other in creating unique and artistic spreads that would be discussed by their guests afterward. This feat was of such importance that these women's status as hostesses was often at stake each time they held a social event. It was a popular trend for a table brimming with sweetmeats to be hidden or covered, and then revealed with a grand gesture as the high point of the festivities, usually around 11 P.M.50 In addition to the desserts, rich sideboard dishes and regional specialties such as terrapin soup and oysters were also popular.
As Quaker Martha J. Garrett writes in her Memories of Philadelphia in the Nineteenth Century,
Simple tea parties—by which we understood going out to supper in a friend's home—were common among us. For such occasions the table was loaded with good things, all put on at once, and set with taste and harmony. A silver cake
basket might occupy the centre of the table, and pretty dishes of clear preserves the middle of one side. The lady of the house sat behind the tea service, placed on a large tray. At the other end of the table was the principal dish, which might be oysters, while plates of hot rolls, muffins, or “Sally Lunn,” and olives and sliced tongue, appeared in symmetrical arrangement. Ice cream, lemonade or apples and nuts might be brought into the parlor about nine o'clock.51
The women hosting these social events needed to learn how to put together appropriate menus and then either make these items on their own or be able to instruct their cooks how to do so. As Louise Conway Belden notes in her book The Festive Tradition, “A hostess could rise to heights of excellence or sink to mediocrity in the opinions of guests who judged her efforts not alone on the quantity and quality of the dessert but on its novelty, beauty and wit.”52 It was a rite of passage for young ladies to be able to make at least some fine cakes and confectionaries; in fact, it was often a way to attract a husband. Goodfellow's school had found its niche.
THREE
Dining Out
As with many other culinary advancements, the evolution of the food service industry, particularly restaurants, can be traced back to the French.1 Although the idea of taverns and inns as places to eat and drink had been around for years, the French popularized the concept of restaurant dining. The main advantage of a restaurant was that it offered diners a choice rather than the limited selection available in taverns and boardinghouses. As noted by the French gastronome Antoine Brillat-Savarin, this concept allowed people to eat when they wanted, what they wanted and how much they wanted, knowing the cost in advance.2 Early nineteenth-century Philadelphia was the perfect setting for this development.
Although British influence in the colonies had prejudiced Americans against French cookery, affluent Americans, particularly in Philadelphia, began to develop an appreciation for it, perceiving traditional English cookery to be less sophisticated. As a result, the city's significant French presence and awareness helped cultivate the idea of fine dining, as well as increase interest in French pastry-making and confectionery skills. The French alliance of 1778 added to this popularity, and the first four U.S. presidents enjoyed Parisian cuisine. Thomas Jefferson even brought a French chef to the White House.3
Many French came to the United States after the French Revolution and settled in Philadelphia, bringing their culinary expertise and pastry-making skills with them. The part of the city around Third and Fourth and Walnut streets near the Delaware River actually became a kind of French Quarter, and until the 1820s about one quarter of Philadelphians were of French descent.4
Additionally, others fled the French colony of Haiti during the slave rebellion there in the 1790s and relocated to Philadelphia. Some were upper-class mixed-race people with advanced culinary training who knew their services would be in demand in Philadelphia owing to the existing French influence and the city's role as the U.S. capital.5 Here, they set up catering and pastry-making operations. Through their business presence and the wide renown they achieved, many new dishes were added to Philadelphia menus, including chicken croquettes and desserts such as meringue glace.6
West Indian immigrant Peter Augustin ran one of the most successful of these operations, making Philadelphia catering famous throughout the young country. His business was known to provide the best and most elegant food service at the city's social gatherings.7 He had actually ended up in Washington, D.C., around 1815 after becoming the private chef to the Spanish ambassador. However once Augustin's wife became pregnant, she wanted to leave, since she didn't want to have her baby anywhere slavery was legal (which it still was in Washington at the time). He also turned down a job in a fancy Baltimore hotel because slavery was also legal in Maryland. And so they came to Philadelphia and established a culinary empire. The Augustins became fabulously rich catering private dinners and established restaurants later on.8
As interest in more innovative and sophisticated dishes increased, housewives began to feel the need to familiarize themselves with French culinary techniques in order to stay fashionable.9 This may have helped increase attendance at Goodfellow's school. It is not known what training or experience she had with French cuisine, but recipes appear in cookbooks from this era, including one published by her student Eliza Leslie in 1832 entitled Domestic French Cookery.
It was around this time (the early nineteenth century) that the words “restaurant,” “menu,” and “café,” as well as “à la” dishes came into use in Philadelphia and other U.S. cities.10 Café Français in Philadelphia was one of the country's first “French” restaurants.11 However, it was still mainly the wealthy that had a chance to enjoy a true restaurant experience, which was at first also reserved for men; women were not usually included. It was not until the twentieth century that the idea of “eating out” at a dining establishment became available and affordable to the general public.
A meal could be had in colonial America as early as the seventeenth century at a tavern, inn, or boardinghouse, but the cooking there was usually simple; supplying alcoholic beverages was often their primary business. Ordinaries were taverns similar to an eating-house, a cross between a restaurant and a boardinghouse. Oyster houses and coffeehouses also appeared in many coastal American cities in the eighteenth century. Oysters were abundant and inexpensive at the time and were often sold in these places on an all-you-can-eat basis for just a few cents. Coffee-houses were found near city financial districts and marketplaces and offered spirits as well as coffee, serving as sort of a businessman's tavern.12
In rural locations, taverns and inns were located on main thoroughfares and were sometimes simply log cabins or farmhouses. They served not only as rest stops for people traveling, but also as popular gathering places for the local residents. By 1840, there were about sixty taverns between Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia. Here travelers could expect a hot meal and a place to sleep.13 Meals were offered at set times and quickly eaten; those who arrived after the dining hour were out of luck. Sleeping arrangements were crude—it was not unusual for people to share a room or even a bed.14
In towns and cities, taverns were traditionally central meeting places where individuals could conduct business, such as buying and selling ship's cargo, organizing new companies, and posting notices. They were also important socially as sites where news was shared, fraternal societies met, political discussions held, and dances and live music staged.15
Many Quakers were not keen on these activities beyond providing food and shelter, since taverns back in England were often viewed as corrupt places of ill repute, spawning public drunkenness and political deception.16 However, the oldest inn or tavern in Philadelphia, the Blue Anchor, was ironically owned by a Quaker, George Guest. It was on this sandy beach along the Delaware that William Penn first stopped and “broke bread” upon his arrival in what was to become Pennsylvania. This house was the southwestern one in a row of houses on Front Street, which was known as Budd's Long Row and formed what is now the northwest corner of Front and Dock streets. The Blue Anchor was subsequently renamed the “Boatman and Call.”17
The original tavern was viewed as Philadelphia's first place of business, “the proper key of the city,” at the time. All boats made their landings here, and a public ferry carried people over Dock Creek to Society Hill, before the causeway and bridge over Front Street were built. Residents could also ride to Windmill Island, where there was a windmill for grinding their grain, or travel over to New Jersey. As John Fanning Watson noted in his Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, “It was, in short, the busy mart for a few years of almost all the business the little town required.”18
From this important Dock Street location, eating and drinking places multiplied throughout the city. A 1799 Philadelphia city directory lists 248 taverns, plus 42 combination taverns/boardinghouses.19 Many were right along the wharves lining the Delaware River, conveniently located for all the ships coming in and out of Phila
delphia's port. Sea captains could barter their goods, particularly perishables which had to be quickly sold before they spoiled due to the lack of refrigeration. Cargo was often auctioned on the docks to the local tavern owners and caterers.20 Mrs. Goodfellow probably made some purchases in this manner, as her first shop and school would have been just a short walk away on Dock Street.
Although the city had quite a large number of these establishments for its size, this was not due only to the residents' drinking habits. It is more a direct result of the stream of immigrants coming into Philadelphia during the first half of the eighteenth century, as well as the large numbers of newcomers who made the city their home during and after the Revolution. In addition, the fact that Philadelphia was a port city meant that ships brought a steady flow of sailors and travelers to the area. All these people needed food and lodging, and many innkeepers and boardinghouse owners profited from the demand.21
There were more than two hundred boardinghouses in Philadelphia at the turn of the nineteenth century. Like the taverns, over half were clustered along the Delaware River, often side by side within a block of the waterfront. For example, Short Elbow Alley had four pairs of boarding-houses on both sides of the street as well as three taverns. Four boardinghouses were on Arch Street between Front Street and the river, and the same size block of Spruce Street featured six boardinghouses and a tavern.22
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