Brown Fricassee, Elizabeth Isabella Purviance

• 

The “Purviance Family Papers” at Duke University’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library contain a near syllabus of early U.S. History: “Revolutionary War activities”, “Civil War veterans’ activities”, “U.S. relations with Napoleon.” They also contain some of the oldest Maryland cooking manuscripts – two small books filled with handwritten recipes, remedies (my favorite is the “Cure For Weak And Weeping Eyes”), and some agricultural ‘lifehacks’ pasted into the covers.

• 

Samuel Purviance, Jr. was born in Ireland in 1728 – one year before Baltimore was founded. The city was still just a bustling little port town when the Purviance family moved to the colonies in 1754. Samuel started doing business as a merchant in Philadelphia, dealing in sugar, tea, coffee, linens, wine, housewares, and enslaved people.

In 1765, Samuel’s brother Robert built Baltimore’s first rum distillery, and I guess that was an incentive for Samuel to take his business there as well.  Baltimore was really coming into its own around this time. According to the Maryland State Archives, the brothers “developed several of the original town lots, especially in the area of Commerce and Water streets.” During the Revolution, they were privateers who equipped Baltimore-based ships for service and provided clothing, bread, and iron to the American troops. Samuel gained notoriety for devising an overzealous plot to capture Robert Eden, the Royal Governor of Maryland. The Maryland Convention censured Samuel for this premature and ambitious attempt at patriotism.

• 

In the late 1770s, the Purviance brothers began to acquire land in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Kentucky. Samuel Purviance, Jr. finally paid the price for claiming ownership of inhabited lands. In 1788, newspapers reported that he was captured on the Ohio River by “Shawanese,” and most likely murdered.

The Purviance Family Papers’ cookbook’s author, Elizabeth Isabella Purviance, was born to Samuel and his first wife Susannah Schley in 1770. I couldn’t find much about her life other than a letter at the Maryland Historical Society from Samuel to Elizabeth, encouraging her to study hard and “be a good girl.”

A few years after Elizabeth’s mother died (around 1774), Samuel had married Catherine Stewart. They had a daughter in 1779 and named her Isabella. Now I may be petty, but I think if I was about nine years old and my parent and step-parent had a child and named them my middle name I would be pretty ticked off.

• 

We have no way to know how Elizabeth felt about this, BUT a few years after Isabella died in 1804, Elizabeth married her half-sister’s widower, a merchant named Henry Courtenay (1776-1854). Emily Brontë would approve.

I have made fricassee for this blog once before, in the form of the far-more-enduring White Fricassee, which contains cream. That is what people tend to envision when they hear the word ‘fricassee’ today (if they ever hear that word?). Recipes for Brown Fricassee tended to be printed alongside white fricassee recipes in old cookbooks. Variations could be thickened with flour, augmented with forcemeat balls or flavored with pickle, gravy or anchovies.

• 

The wine in Purviance’s recipe substitutes the acid from the pickle, but anchovies seemed like a good addition so I added a little fish sauce to the liquid. I should have saved the chicken-skin for another use but overall this was good.

As is often the case with old cooking manuscripts, I suspect that the Purviance recipe books had multiple contributors. The fricassee recipes are penned in the same handwriting that wrote “1801” on the inside book cover. However, some of the printed clippings appear to be from the 1840s. Elizabeth died in 1823. The scraps may have been pasted in by another family member, since Elizabeth left no children. She left behind these two recipe books, which is way better from my vantage point. Thanks, lady. You’ll always be the one true [E.] Isabella Purviance Courtenay to me.

• 

Recipe:

• 1 chicken, cut in quarters
• water
• onion
• parsley
• thyme
• a blade or two mace
• 1 lump of butter
• 3 egg yolks
• black pepper
• salt
• spoonful of wine

“Cut your Chickens in quarters, Brown them of a pale color, put them in your stew pan with as much water as will make a rich gravy, add onions parsley and thyme chop fine a blade or two of mace and lump of butter cover them very close and turn them very frequently for fear they should burn, a few spoonfulls of water is sufficient at [?] and that must be boiling, after they have stewed some time, add a little more when you think they are done take them off and thicken the gravy with the yolks of 3 eggs well beaten season it with pepper and salt To your taste add a spoonfull of wine and warm them for a few moments great care should be taken to prevent them from being too Brown”

Recipe transcribed from the E. [Elizabeth Isabella] Purviance recipe book, Purviance Family Papers, 1757-1932, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University

• 

• 

• 

• 

•