That afternoon at City Tavern, the delegates “were very agreeably entertained with excellent company, good cheer,” and music from a band of Hessians, Adams wrote to his daughter Abigail. Throughout the meal, they listened to toasts “in honour of our country, and the heroes who have fallen in their pious efforts to defend her.” They sat in the Long Room, a private dining room on the second floor with generous windows that allowed light to pour in. Though we don’t know for sure what they ate on July 4, 1777, we can make an educated guess based on bills of fare and descriptions of other dishes served in the period, as well as the diary entries and letters of the Founding Fathers documenting their day-to-day lives. The meal would have been served family style, with many dishes laid out on the table all at once, next to their accompanying sauces and jellies.
The delegates would have started with tureens of soup set at both ends of the table. Turtle soup, a delicacy of Colonial American cuisine, used green sea turtles, typically immersing the sweet meat in a delicate veal broth with a final splash of acidity from imported sherry or Madeira wine. West Indies pepper-pot soup was a favorite of Philadelphians (it also figures in a myth about how George Washington’s troops survived at Valley Forge). The dish came to the city by way of the Caribbean, where enslaved people working on the brutal sugar plantations had re-created a leafy-green West African stew called callaloo. One of the variations that became popular in Philadelphia utilized ingredients native to the Americas, such as chili peppers. It also used Asian spices such as cloves and mace, alongside meat like beef and pork, which had not been available on the American continent until Europeans introduced them.
Large platters of fish would have dotted the table too. Sturgeon from the Delaware River were likely fastened to a spit and basted with butter, then sprinkled with flour, nutmeg, mace, salt, sweet herbs, and breadcrumbs before being dressed in a tangy sauce that usually included anchovy, lobster, lemon, horseradish, and white wine. Other fresh fish were lightly dredged in flour, fried, baked, and then garnished with parsley and black walnuts.