The Food in Colonial Williamsburg Is More Relevant Than You Think

"Dominek Marsh had to make jugged hare five times. Working from a recipe written in the 18th century, he put butchered pieces of rabbit in a jug along with clove-stuffed onions, shallots, herbs, spices, and red wine; sealed the top with a board and a brick; and placed the jug in a pot of water boiling over the flame in the hearth to slowly cook over several hours."

""This is the best cooking job in the world," says Frank Clark, Marsh's boss and master of historic foodways at Colonial Williamsburg, the world's largest living history museum. At the museum, hundreds of historical interpreters work every day to recreate 18th-century life for visitors - wearing period-appropriate clothing, telling tourists about their fictionalized 18th-century lives, playing famed historical figures like Patrick Henry or the Marquis de Lafayette, and dodging shit on the street left by the carriage horses."

Dominek Marsh repeatedly prepares jugged hare from an 18th-century recipe, placing rabbit, clove-stuffed onions, shallots, herbs, spices, and red wine in a sealed jug and slow-cooking it in a water bath over the hearth. Apprenticeship requires executing colonial-era recipes while visitors observe and inquire about dishes such as chicken the French way, veal sweetbreads, beef pie, bath buns, pate a choux, and candied fruits. Frank Clark directs a historic foodways program at Colonial Williamsburg where interpreters wear period clothing, grow period-appropriate ingredients, and use tools made by onsite tradespeople. The program identifies as the only full-time historic food program in any museum and reports heightened visitor interest during Clark's 35-year tenure.

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