De Voe, Thomas F

The master butcher Thomas Farrington De Voe (1811–1892) was the author of two works indispensable to students of American food history: The Market Book (1862) and The Market Assistant (1867). They present, respectively, a chronological account of the city markets from Dutch rule on and detailed descriptions of foods sold at market.

Descended from a French Huguenot family, De Voe was born in Yonkers and apprenticed at sixteen to a New York City butcher. Butchering was then a highly skilled trade carried out by licensed artisans who received livestock brought into the city by bargemen or drovers, performed all slaughtering operations without mechanized equipment, and dressed the carcasses for sale at the public markets. For obvious sanitary reasons, butchers were the most stringently regulated of all market sellers, and the market stalls that they leased from the city were usually more expensive than any others.