Filming ‘A Taste of History.‘ Kitchen at Monticello sizzles again for PBS series

An internationally known chef, who’s an expert in Colonial cooking, fired up meals in Thomas Jefferson’s kitchen on Tuesday, becoming the first to do so in at least 40 years.

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Cameramen zoomed in on fried asparagus that sizzled on Monticello’s stove, as Walter Staib described — for a new TV series that will air this fall — how to cook dinner that would have pleased Jefferson’s taste buds.

“Everything Mr. Jefferson liked to eat was easy to eat,” Staib said, explaining that Jefferson had teeth that “were kind of on the soft side.”

Staib cooked one of Jefferson’s favorite meals for the TV series: stuffed cabbage, fried asparagus and mashed potatoes. Prepared with great detail, a full head of cabbage was soaked in salt water, for example, long enough for each leaf to be pulled back delicately and stuffed with meat, cooked for about an hour and a half, and topped with parsley and freshly churned sweet butter.

“Now, if you want to make this at home for a large group, it takes a lot of planning,” Staib advised TV viewers, adding that the meal could serve 15 people though it would be easy for amateurs to mess up if they don’t pay close attention. “So simple. So good. So eloquent. So Thomas Jefferson.”

The kitchen, where the third president’s meals had been cooked, was restored several years ago.

Though there may have been some occasional use of the kitchen during the past century and a half, nobody had regularly cooked in the kitchen since the 1860s, said Monticello’s director of communications, Wayne Mogiel-nicki.

Staib made use of the kitchen as part of a new TV series, “A Taste of History,” which will be aired nationally on PBS in the fall. Four episodes are being taped at Monticello. The series will take viewers back to 18th- and early 19th-century America and provide a taste of food eaten by men such as George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.

The program will reach as many as 80 million viewers, said Miranda Orso, public relations coordinator for the City Tavern Restaurant in Philadelphia.

Staib, the chef of City Tavern, also recently published a book, “The City Tavern Cookbook: Recipes from the Birthplace of American Cuisine,” which has recipes of food enjoyed by 18th-century leaders.

Enslaved cooks trained in French culinary arts prepared two meals a day in the Monticello kitchen, including a hearty breakfast of muffins, hot wheat and corn breads and cold ham, according to Monticello officials, and dinner consisted of a variety of dishes.

Jefferson’s kitchen had a fireplace, bake oven, set kettle, stew stove and cooking equipment, including dozens of copper pots and pans that had been sent to the president’s Albemarle County home from France. Much of the food was grown or raised at Monticello.

The cooks used conventional hearth cooking methods with a split jack driven by lead weights, and meats were slowly turned as poultry roasted on spits placed near the fire.

“A Taste of History” producer Ariel Schwartz said that Staib has both fine-tuned cooking skills and detailed knowledge of Colonial culinary history. Staib said that dinner party meals were often the centerpiece of entertainment in Colonial America.