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Home > Museum Shop > Books & Media > A Taste of Virginia
  A Taste of Virginia
Edited by Margaret Page Bemiss and Mary Tennant Bryan
Photographs by George D. Nan
Price: $9.00
Guidebook and cookbook, introduction or souvenir, this book offers a sampling of two of the favorite preoccupations of Virginians—their houses and their food—from the Eastern Shore to the Valley.
Both architecture and cookery combine the simple and the sophisticated. Both are grounded in British and European tradition, but the materials are native: red clay, heart pine and stone for the houses; and for the food, the bounty of farm, garden, orchard, water and woodland. The architecture is influenced by the vagaries of Virginia's climate, the food by the varied heritage of its cooks. There is great variety in the houses pictured here. There are town houses and country places, some elegant in concept and detail, some very simple; but the grand ones are comfortable and livable, the small ones stylish and distinctive. All are open to the public; one is still a private residence.
Cookbooks came early to Virginia. The first cookbook produced in British Colonial North America was published in Williamsburg in 1742: The Compleat Housewife, by Eliza Smith. This is a less than complete descendant, its recipes, or receipts, chosen to give an idea of typical Virginia cooking, as well as the directions for some of its peculiar specialties. There are many other delicacies to try and many other beautiful and interesting places to visit all across the Commonwealth. The editors present only a taste of Virginia to whet the appetite for more.
40 pages, paperback, The James River Gardening Club, 1992.
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428 North Boulevard, Richmond, VA 23220 | Mail: P.O. Box 7311, Richmond, VA 23221-0311 | Phone: 804.358.4901
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