A lavishly illustrated history, and engaging and accessible tour, of Philadelphia cuisine, including modernized recipes and Weaver’s re-creations of historical dishes

In Pepperpot City, veteran food writer and Philadelphian William Woys Weaver explores the fascinating culinary history of Philadelphia. Seventeen thematic essays, ranging from memoir to participant observation to investigative history, provide an engaging and accessible tour of Old Philadelphia cuisine. For Weaver, it is pepperpot soup that evokes the dynamic at the center of Philadelphia’s culinary history. At one time a humble street food available in taverns and in the city’s markets, this spicy dish arrived in Philadelphia from the Caribbean in the early eighteenth century. In the essay that gives the book its name, Weaver traces how the soup’s African and Spanish heritage underwent many local adaptations that made it thoroughly Philadelphian.

Chronicling the careers of important individuals—such as the Black caterers Robert Bogle and Thomas Dorsey, the cooking school instructors Mary Newport and her niece Elizabeth Goodfellow, and Joseph Head, whose Mansion House Hotel produced some of the finest period menus in the country—Weaver shows how the culinary touchstones of what it means to cook American first emerged from the hands of an array of Philadelphia cooks and caterers. Their portraits, among others, can be found within the book’s pages, as well as photographs of menus, trade cards, and other period culinary ephemera—many of which have never before been published.

From the reign of the Oyster House to a New Jersey muskrat dinner and from terrapin soup to sweet potato pie, the book highlights the foods created in the Philadelphia region that are now quintessential symbols of American food culture: lemon meringue pie, cream cheese, tomato catsup, the hamburger, and even bubblegum. Pepperpot City also includes modernized recipes from Old Philadelphia as well as full-color photographs of unusual ingredients and Weaver’s re-creations of historical dishes.