Specific Soups and Stews: Pepper Pot

Pepper pot was a savory West Indian stew made with juice of the bitter cassava root with seasoning. This recipe changed in the eighteenth century to include meat, fish, or vegetables, spiced with red pepper. Recipes for pepper pot had been published in British cookbooks by the mid-eighteenth century, and some of these recipes were reprinted in America. However, pepper pot may previously have been brought to America by African slaves who had lived in the Caribbean. American pepper pot was composed of a variety of ingredients, such as fish, mutton, pork, vegetables, lobster, and crab, but all recipes were highly seasoned with crushed peppercorns or red pepper. Pepper pot recipes had been published in America by the early nineteenth century. Randolph’s Virginia House-wife includes a traditional West Indian pepper pot employing tripe and veal spiced with red pepper. Lee’s The Cook’s Own Book includes two recipes, the first of which is made from spinach, onions, potatoes, lettuce, bacon, suet, dumplings, and cayenne pepper; the second includes beef, ham, onions, potatoes, fowl, pork, and lobster. The pepper pot recipe in Mrs. Porter’s New Southern Cookery Book (1871) includes tripe, mutton, onions, potatoes, turnips, red pepper, and dumplings. Pepper pot generally disappeared in the twentieth century but lives on in culinary fakelore, which purports that this dish was first made at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, by George Washington’s army.