Dr. Mudd's slave who cooked breakfast for JWB and David Herold

[L Verge]

(09-16-2018 04:13 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  I am wondering why the title uses "cook" instead of prepare breakfast. Do we know what it was? We don't cook breakfast at all (just prepare as it's usually cold despite the coffee - bread or müsli/cereals) , so I am eager to learn...I well remember the grits, was that a typical breakfast back in those days, too? What was a typical breakfast prior to cornflakes & Co?

I can't speak for the entire country, but even during my childhood in the 1940s and 50s, a Southern Maryland breakfast consisted of a hot cereal, perhaps with some fruit, or a more substantial meal. That consisted of fried or scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, or fried ham (even steak on Sundays or special days when beef became more plentiful thanks to refrigerated transportation), biscuits or toast or griddle cakes, pancakes, or waffles, sometimes grits. If there were left-over cooked potatoes from the day before, we might have fried potatoes and onions also on the menu in place of the various starches. My father was from southern Virginia and enjoyed brains and eggs for breakfast -- which my mother refused to cook!

The point of a large breakfast was to build up sufficient stamina to do hard labor from then until the dinner bell rang. At the Surratt House, it would ring about 1-2 pm and signaled another substantial meal to get one ready for afternoon work. Supper was served later in the evening and was the smallest meal of the day.