We recreated the dinner from Hamilton’s The Room Where It Happens! Specifically, we recreated what Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison ate in 1790 when they agreed to meet to discuss Hamilton’s debt plan.
One of the most exciting parts of this project was learning about James Hemings, the man who cooked the original meal. Hemings was an enslaved man who traveled with Jefferson to France and studied French cookery. He was paid wages, which he used to hire a tutor to teach himself French. He ran the kitchen at Jefferson’s Paris home, supervising white servants. He returned to the US with Jefferson and created America’s first French-Virginian fusion cuisine, before eventually negotiating for his freedom.
The menu included: wine jelly; a green salad with vinaigrette; capon stuffed with Virginia ham, chestnut purée, artichokes, truffles, white wine and cream with a Calvados sauce; Beef a la mode with a French style bouillon; and a dessert buffet highlighted by vanilla ice cream profiteroles. Each course was accompanied by a wine that Jefferson himself picked out. We tried our best to replicate his pairings.
This was an epic project and we couldn’t be more thrilled with the results. We hope you’ll enjoy this video as much as we enjoyed making it!
For more information on the dinner and the people behind it, please see:
Dinner at Mr. Jefferson’s: Three Men, Five Great Wines, and the Evening that Changed America
The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
My Dear Hamilton: A Novel of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton
Afroculinaria: Exploring Culinary Traditions of Africa, African America and the African Diaspora