When I penned the CityTavern Cookbook and CityTavern Baking & Dessert Cookbook, I conducted a great deal of research on the cuisine and culinary customs of the eighteenth century. Surprisingly, there was amountain of information—recipes, anecdotes about dining experiences in prominent homes, menus from the original CityTavern, and so on.

Since that time, my associations with prominent historians like David McCullough, conversations with other experts on the eighteenth century, like Susan Stein at Monticello, and many, many other books on the Founding Fathers have expanded my knowledge beyond what could be contained in those first two volumes. Consequently, I decided to combine both books into one comprehensive volume, add a few more recipes that didn’t make the cut before, and include photography as an aid to the modern cook.

Many of the recipes herein were inspired by those in The Art of Cooking Made Plain and Easy, written by Hannah Glasse in 1745, along with recipes penned by the first First Lady in her circa 1753 cookbook, MarthaWashington’s Booke of Cookery. Although I strive to preserve the authentic nature of the colonial recipes we use, I have had to adapt some of them to modern tastes and equipment.

Gone are recipes that would have commonly appeared on eighteenth century tables, but would not appeal to the twenty-first century diner. In keeping with increased health awareness, animal fats such as lard and schmaltz have been replaced with healthier alternatives like vegetable oil and vegetable shortening. The sodium and sugar contents of nearly every recipe have also been greatly reduced.

With regard to the photography, I must make the reader aware that although we know that meals were served family-style in the eighteenth century City Tavern, we are still uncertain exactly how dishes would have been presented and served. Even though we used authentic cookware, cooking tools, dishes, and other props, the photos in this book show both family-style and individual platings that are in keeping with today’s dining customs.

So how did a German become a custodian of eighteenth-century American culinary history? In 1979, I moved to Philadelphia, taking over as president for the Davre’s restaurant chain owned by ARA services. In 1989, I started my culinary consulting business, Concepts By Staib, Ltd. I heard about the City Tavern’s closing on New Year’s Eve, 1992, and couldn’t get the Tavern out of my mind. After inquiring with the National Park Service, which supervises the Tavern, I received a prospectus to apply for its operation. I couldn’t believe the lifestyle and level of sophistication those early
Philadelphians had. It quickly became clear to me that City Tavern had been, without a doubt, the greatest restaurant in eighteenth-century North America.

The more I learned about City Tavern and its special place in social, political, and gastronomic history, the more I started to believe in its potential. Realizing that, with the right management and cuisine, the Tavern could once again rival any restaurant in America, I began to feel like a culinary crusader, impassioned about keeping America’s gastronomic heritage alive. I submitted a proposal.

The first hurdle in my quest to become the Tavern’s operator—a process which took six months —was to win the approval of Congress. I was awarded the contract on April 15, 1994, and set about immediately undertaking extensive restorations to bring the Tavern back to its original elegance. The National Park Service’s library and archives provided volumes of research material to assist me and my wife, Gloria, with this huge project.

Before we opened our doors on July fourth of that same year, we had completely renovated the kitchen, removed the freezers and the commercial laundry facility, and installed a pastry and bake shop. Independence Historical National Park chief curator, Karie Diethorn, worked closely with us to recreate the most authentic City Tavern experience possible, with slight adjustments to make room for the modern day context. The walls were painted in the Tavern’s original colors, the rooms were decorated in reproduction furniture and fabrics, and we dressed our service staff in handmade eighteenth-century attire. We chose reproduction table settings, including candlesticks, plates with a china pattern based on one from 1793, and mid-eighteenth-century style lead-free pewterware for our tabletops. Even our glassware, which was imported from Italy or hand-blown by artisans inWest Virginia, was selected to reflect styles used in the late eighteenth century. And for an authentic ambiance, we decided to commission colonial-period “characters” for special events, such as Thanksgiving, and to provide live harpsichord and Irish harp music on weekends.

As critical as the setting was, the most important thing for me as a chef was to work diligently on the food and dining experience. I was fortunate enough to have a head start—a few years earlier—as a consultant to a restaurant of the same period in Richmond, Virginia. There, I had researched colonial culinary and dining traditions with New York food historian Dr. Lorna Sass. It became my mission to recreate the culinary heritage of City Tavern, a one-of-a-kind dining institution.

This experience turned out to be a delightful awakening as I discovered how close to “home” eighteenth-century food was for me. Having grown up in the OldWorld, where everything was done the old-fashioned way, the original City Tavern recipes were comfortably familiar. Many of them could have come right from my own grandmother’s kitchen. At a very young age, I spent a great deal of time in my uncle and aunt’s restaurant, Gasthaus zum Buckenberg, complete with its own huge butcher shop. I started out doing odd jobs and was soon learning about food and developing cooking skills. My uncle Karl Hintze was a Master Confissier and Master Pâtissier in Pforzheim both at the Café Frei and at the CaféWagner, and my mother, Herta Staib, was a great baker and chef; the entire family had a passion for baking, cooking, and gardening.We made our own preserves, canned fruits and vegetables, baked our own breads and pastries—all of the techniques that mirrored what the early Americans did back in 1773.

In keeping with OldWorld tradition, my food philosophy for the Tavern continues to be “from the farm to the table, as fresh as possible.” Accordingly, our produce is delivered two to three times a day, breads and pastries are baked each morning, and we use no walk-in freezers—our meats are delivered daily and marinated in the same manner as they were in the early colonial era.

This philosophy is also reflected in our beverage selection. Our beers and ales are custom-brewed for us by a local microbrewery, free of all preservatives and additives, and are served in traditional twenty-ounce British pints. City Tavern offers a unique selection of colonial shrubs, a beverage produced today in the same manner in which it was produced in the eighteenth century.

Thankfully, all our attention to detail has been rewarded with national and international press coverage. On June 29, 1994, days before we opened, City Tavern was the cover story, penned by Florence Fabricant, for the New York Times Living Section. That same year, JohnMariani of Esquire magazine named City Tavern one of the best “new” restaurants in America, and we’ve continued to garner praise from food professionals and the public alike.

City Tavern is indeed more than a restaurant. It is a piece of history; a living culinary museum that offers diners an experience unavailable anywhere else—insight into America’s vast and underappreciated culinary heritage. I wrote this book to extend that experience to a larger audience, and to solidify City Tavern’s place in American gastronomic history.

This collection of more than 200 recipes reflects the kind of food enjoyed by our country’s Founding Fathers in the Tavern’s heyday—which we faithfully recreate today.
I hope you enjoy this delicious lesson in our country’s culinary history.

Cheers! Or as they would have said in colonial days, Huzzah!—a precursor of today’s Hurrah!

Walter Staib,
Chef/Proprietor