goldfields

The cook at Sutter’s Fort, an Englishman, promised he could produce a Christmas dinner “that would rival Delmonico’s best efforts.” (Delmonico’s Restaurant in New York City being the epitome of fine dining.)

A banquet at Delmonico’s, not to be confused with dinner at Sutter’s Fort. From Wikipedia.

He also promised to top off the whole affair with “a dessert consisting of a real John Bull plum pudding.” It sounded irresistible, but where was he to get the necessary ingredients?

As our author notes, the cook had no spices, no butter or milk or eggs. The only fruit he had was the little sour grapes that grew along the river banks. How could he make a real plum pudding?

After five courses of variations on beef and chile colorado, the diners were ready for relief to the rumbling stomachs. It was time for that crowning achievement, the plum pudding!

He brought it in with an air of great self-gratulation, and such a pudding! It is doubtful if another, to compare with it, has ever been or ever will be concocted. In its construction the cook had used common beef tallow liberally, and filled it with the aforesaid sour grapes, and seasoned it unsparingly with chile colorado, black pepper, salt and garlic. He also made a sort of sauce with the panoche sugar and tallow, and had also dosed that liberally with chile and black peppers.

The pudding was served to the diners, and they all watched as Captain Sutter tasted his portion. Captain Sutter was a man of the most courteous manners, and felt it his duty to eat whatever was put before him. But this dish bothered him.

As he would gulp it down, he would look around at us, with a sort of dazed and helpless look, evidently to see if we were really eating it, and how the thing was affecting us. But he was too well bred and dignified in bis manners to say a word.

Poor Captain Sutter! At last another man asked “Cook, what is it?”

“Why, sir.” replied the cook, “it is a regular Christmas plum pudding, Mexican style!”

And so ended Christmas dinner, 1845, at Sutter’s Fort.

Note: The author mentions “panoche” sugar. This is unrefined Mexican brown sugar, formed into a cone, and also known as piloncillo. You can buy it in most grocery stores. “Unbolted” flour is coarse, unsifted whole wheat flour.

Sutter’s Fort in the 1840s

If you were living at Sutter’s Fort in 1845, before the Gold Rush, what was available for you to eat? Would you enjoy lots of good foodstuffs, or a limited diet? It could be both, depending on the time of year and your own imagination. But one thing is for sure — there would be beef.

Looking in the California Digital Newspaper Collection for information on women and side saddles, I came across something completely different. With the headline “A Pioneer Repast,” it was the story of Christmas dinner at Sutter’s Fort in 1845, by a man who was there.

It was published in the Christmas Day edition of the San Francisco Call in 1892. I turned the story into a vignette for the Bidwell Mansion Association’s annual “Christmas with the Bidwells” party and we will be performing it this Friday, December 6th inside Bidwell Mansion.

The gentleman telling the story relates how he went to the cook and asked him what he could come up with for Christmas dinner:

The cook was an English Cockney, but a good fellow withal, who, when approached upon the subject. declared that he could get up a menu that would rival Delmonico’s best efforts, if I would only leave the whole matter in his hands. I agreed to his terms, but did not quite see how he could do it, as our commissariat consisted wholly of beef, frijoles (brown beans), unbolted flour, Mexican panoche sugar, about the color of natural beeswax and of about the same consistency, with an abundance of chile colorado (red peppers), plenty of salt and black pepper, with coffee and tea. There were no vegetables, butter or milk, but he was so confident I let him have his own way.

Not only did the cook claim he could create a spread to rival Delmonico’s, but he also promised a genuine “John Bull plum pudding.”

And yet, as the author says, all he had to work with was beef, beans, unbolted (unsifted) whole wheat flour, red peppers, and brown Mexican sugar. Christmas Day came and the men sat down to dinner “with expectancy and no little curiosity.” Out came the first course:

The first course was beef soup, garnished with frijoles, chile colorado and garlic; the second course was roast beef: the third course was baked beef pie; the fourth course was stewed beef, and the fifth course was fried beef, accompanied with black, unbolted flour bread. All these dishes were garnished with the same condiments as the first, but the chile colorado dominated over all the others, and our bodies were aglow with heat, and our stomachs were like a boiling cauldron.

You can’t say that the cook didn’t do his best to vary the menu!

And what of the “John Bull plum pudding? Wait until the next installment and I will tell you about the English cook’s greatest culinary accomplishment.

We will also solve the mystery of the author of this piece, a man who only signs himself as “S”.