Old Macdonald had roast duck
A literary look at the diet of Canada’s first prime minister
Everyone knows the Fathers of Confederation plotted Canada’s creation amid scandalous amounts of oysters, lobsters and Champagne during 12-course dinners in Charlottetown in 1864. But few know the new union escaped a grievous wound five years later, thanks to a tasty roast duck dinner cooked by Lady Agnes, the wife of the first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald.
By early 1869, Nova Scotia was threatening to secede, believing it was snookered by Confederation. Leading separatist Joseph Howe came to Ottawa in January for a makeor-break meeting with Macdonald. But Howe buckled after being offered a cabinet post, more money for his province and generous servings of wine and roast duck.
“Agnes’s roast duck dinner had saved the nation,” writes Lindy Mechefske, a Kingston author and food columnist, in her new book, Sir John’s Table: The Culinary Life and Times of Canada’s First Prime Minister (Goose Lane Editions). That was quite an accomplishment for Lady Agnes, considering her dinners back then often involved underwhelming mock turtle soup, mutton and apple pudding. Her husband was quite content to skip meat and potatoes altogether and just imbibe Champagne or claret (his favourites) or tumblers of gin. But by the 1880s, the Macdonalds were winning kudos for sumptuous dinners of fresh oysters, consommé, lamb cutlets and, of course, roast duck.
Mechefske’s book is an often tongue-in-cheek romp through the life of Sir John A., and the food he consumed, from his voyage, at age five, on an immigrant ship to Canada (mouldy bread and watery horsemeat stew) to fancy state dinners during his long political career (Champagne and oysters were essential).
As a lad in the settlement of Hay Bay, west of Kingston on the Bay of Quinte, young John chatted up a fisherman one day and then stole a newly caught large black bass. “Mother said it was the best black bass she ever cooked,” Macdonald recalled many years later. We do not know exactly how Mother cooked the bass but Mechefske provides a recipe for baked and stuffed black bass from the 1877 edition of The Canadian Home Cookbook. Ingredients include onions, bread crumbs, butter the “size of hen’s egg,” salt, pepper and anchovy sauce.
Diehard Conservatives wishing to eat as Macdonald ate are not provided with recipes for all of his favourite foods. The author has refused to tell us how to create such “inedible” 19th century delicacies on Sir John’s table as “collared calf ’s head.” The recipes Mechefske provides tend to come from cookbooks of the times and may not be exactly the ones used by Lady Agnes or her servants.
But who dares question the authenticity of a recipe called Sir John’s Shortbread, which Mechefske tell us is served today at the Kingston pub called Sir John’s Public House, the building where Macdonald practised law from 1849-60. Combine flour, sugar and salted butter and bake at 325 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 or 25 minutes and you, too, can snack like Sir John in this, the 200th anniversary of his birth.
Before moving to Ottawa, Macdonald ate regularly — Sunday mornings, anyway — at the Kingston tavern owned by his close friend Eliza Grimason. Saturday nights were spent drinking in the tavern. He would sleep off the booze in a room upstairs and then be served tea and toast Sunday morning by Grimason herself. Were they lovers? There’s no proof but Grimason is buried next to the Macdonald family plot at Kingston’s Cataraqui cemetery.
Sir John dined on occasion with Queen Victoria in England. The monarch was considered the fastest eater in the Empire. She could consume six courses in 30 minutes. Whenever she finished a course, all guests would be obliged to down forks. Slowpokes left the table hungry. And contrary to Victoria’s prissy image, she disliked teetotallers, regularly drank a mixture of claret and whiskey and provided eight pints of weak beer daily to her staff.
On May l6, 1870, Macdonald was found writhing on the floor of his Parliament Hill office. Painful gallstones were to blame. James Grant, Macdonald’s physician, put the prime minister on a diet of poached white fish and milk, with just half an oyster as a treat. “Remember, Sir John,” said Dr. Grant, “The hopes of Canada are now depending on you.” Macdonald replied: “It seems strange that the hopes of Canada should depend on half an oyster.”
As a child, young John was especially fond of puddings, including bread pudding. So, it is fitting that in Macdonald’s latter years, Dora’s Cook Book surfaced in 1888 with a tribute recipe for Sir John A. Pudding. Ingredients include breadcrumbs, sugar, milk, eggs, butter the “size of an egg” and grated lemon rind. Instructions are vague: “Bake in oven a few minutes and serve with butter.” Hmm. The recipe might have said: Serve with Champagne or a tumbler of gin.
‘It seems strange that the hopes of Canada should depend on half an oyster’