A taste of the old west

Corseted and dressed in calico to her ankles, Omahan Julie Ashton looks the part of a cook in the officer’s mess of Fort Atkinson in the early 1800s.

Her eyes dart left and right under her broad-brimmed hat as she checks the status of the fire in the hearth on this 80-degree day in early September 2009.

It could be 36 degrees or 106 degrees outside and Ashton still would be there to keep the cooking schedule apace. She needs plenty of glowing-hot, ash-covered coals. She also needs to prevent blazing logs from rolling out and setting fire to her, the kitchen or the barracks, which would have been full of soldiers in the era she emulates, 1819 to 1827.

Fire was a leading cause of death for women in the 1820s, so she follows the custom of the era, dunking the hem of her skirt in water to prevent ignition as she works in the hearth.

Ashton is part of a group of living history enthusiasts who bring life to Fort Atkinson State Historical Park, just east of Fort Calhoun, Neb., on selected weekends from spring to fall. The Friends of Fort Atkinson portray the officers, soldiers, families, workers and frontier people who might have populated the fort in the 1820s.

Ashton fell quickly into the role of cook about five years ago when her collaborators heard she had a way with food. Friends and neighbors call her the Martha Stewart of Ponca Hills. Ashton says Martha is OK, but Julia Child is her role model.

Ashton loves to bake bread of all kinds, boldly tackles complex recipes and doesn’t get intimidated when her husband brings home wild game. That makes her right at home cooking venison, bison, bear, turtle, beef tongue or whatever might come her way at the Fort Atkinson hearth.

Her job is to get dinner on the table for the officers and their wives. They expect a formal four-course dinner at noon, in addition to substantial breakfasts and lighter evening meals.

Even though this is a volunteer position, the pressure to duplicate a bygone era is real. Dinner in the officers’ dining room was pompous in the 1820s, with foods that would seem lavish for a fort surrounded by Indian tribes and fur trappers, Ashton said.

“It’s the European influence,” she said. “Everything is about presentation and making the officers feel like they are upper class and better than everybody else. Even dining table settings were very structured. The platters on the table have to be symmetrical. It had to be artistic.”

Enlisted men, on the other hand, ate stew and cornbread they cobbled together in their barracks.

The officers considered themselves aristocrats, Ashton said.

“You didn’t get your (officer’s) title because you earned it,” Ashton said. “You were born into it. They were mostly from New York — veterans of the War of 1812.”

For their aristocratic meals, the first course was a soup, a salad or a meat pudding (similar to sausage) arranged in a dramatic fashion, Ashton said. The main course typically featured wild game or pork, a meat issued as part of military rations. By the time the rationed meat reached the kitchen, it was often rancid or spoiled, so the cook served chutneys or other spicy relishes to camouflage the flavor.

Courses with cheese, nuts and fruit or dried fruit also were regular parts of the menu, as were imported wines.

Ashton works hard to make things as authentic as possible.

One midday meal on Labor Day weekend, for instance, opened with a raw vegetable and crouton salad that was typical for the 1820s. The main course was a pork loin roasted in the hearth with seasonal vegetables. A cheese course came next and then a fruit course of locally grown apples.

The desserts were not as sweet as today’s, but they were also an important part of the meal.

“I’ll often serve the gingerbread with brandied custard sauce and then brandied peaches on the side,” Ashton said. Although cooks in the 1820s didn’t have modern ovens, they baked in covered cast-iron Dutch ovens and steamed or boiled their desserts in covered molds to get similar results.

Tom Wood, an Omahan who has volunteered at the fort since 1976 and now portrays the fort’s commanding officer, Col. Henry Leavenworth, said Ashton’s cooking is wonderful.

“The effort to become an officer is certainly worth it, just to sit in the dining room,” he said. “Julie has brought a world of cuisine in there: venison, beef tongue, Scotch eggs. Her turtle soup is beyond compare. It’s an absolute delicacy. The breads she bakes complement everything.”

Officers of the 1820s would have had authority over the menus, but Wood happily surrenders his authority on that point, eager to taste what Ashton serves next.

Ashton said it’s amazing the supplies that were shipped up the Missouri River to the fort: citrus fruit, Jamaican rum, Madeira wine, olive oil, rose water and spices.

Despite the emphasis on having the best, the bread was stale.

“They thought that fresh bread was bad for your health,” Ashton said. “They only really served bread that was over the hill or toasted. It was always served hard and crusty, like hard tack. It was served wrapped in a napkin and put next to the fork. They thought that if you had fresh bread, it would make you sick. Maybe it goes back to baking with sourdough starter. If it just came out of the oven it would, indeed, still be fermenting and you often can get a stomachache if you eat it right away. It’s actually better a day or two later.”

Ashton says she doesn’t have the heart to serve old bread to the modern-era re-enactors, so she slips slices of her freshly baked bread into their napkins.

She does, however, stick to seasonal, locally grown vegetables like those the early military officers would have had from their gardens. In the 1820s, the officers had a garden at the fort and the enlisted men had a separate garden.

Ashton’s husband, Chris, portrays the fort sutler, the merchant with a military contract to get cloth, liquor and other supplies for the soldiers. So he provides the cooking oil, spices, wine and other cooking and menu items that his wife prepares for living history weekends.

As a couple, the Ashtons are collaborating with other members of the Friends of Fort Atkinson on a special dinner scheduled for Oct. 3, with proceeds going to support activities and facilities at the fort. Plans call for members of the Friends group to assume their character identities that evening so patrons will feel that they are, indeed, dining and living the frontier life of the 1820s.

Contact the writer:

444-1052, jane.palmer@owh.com