The Society to present culinary workshop with Explore Charleston

Don’t miss this unique workshop featuring our very own Linda Gillette, Chef and member of the Society.

A culinary entry into Huguenot history!

Join Society member Linda Gillette and our Executive Director Elizabeth Gay as they present a culinary workshop utilizing the orange fruit in two recipes and presenting a program on the early Orange Garden of colonial Charleston. The candied orange recipe is from Harriott Pinckney Horry’s receipts.

Join Elizabeth and Linda as they prepare two delicious dishes celebrating the orange citrus and the enjoyment of the orange in colonial Charleston with a focus on early Huguenot settlers. The orange was very popular in 17th century France as were “pleasure gardens” and the colonists enjoyed these delights as well.

The Orange Garden was between King /Tradd/Broad Streets along what we know today as Orange Street.

Mrs. Gabriel Manigault described the Orange Garden as: “bordered by Seville orange trees and the central portion laid out in broad walks and fancy flower beds, with gay little refreshment booths scattered around, and with a raised platform at the end, where concerts were given in the spring and summer; that many longed for the pleasures within.”

Source: The Plan of Charles Town, 1780, Carolana

The Orange Garden was a pleasure garden in full swing by 1754 and was modeled along the lines of the ones in England and France. They were open spaces with groves and seating that hosted performances and refreshment.

“Listening to music outdoors was very much in vogue in 18th-century Europe, and so it did not take long for Charles Town, America’s “Little London,” to create an open-air venue of its own: The Orange Garden… Laid out with wide walkways and bordered by flower beds and hedges of Seville orange trees, the attraction featured refreshment booths and, at one end, a stage.” (Source: Charleston Magazine, May 2017) In France, ten Parisian Wauxhalls or Pleasure Gardens were in operation by the mid 1700’s: Jean-Baptiste Torre's 'Vauxhall' on the Boulevard Saint Martin (1764-80), the 'Wauxhall' at the Saint Germain fair (1768-83), Pierre Ruggieri's garden on the Rue Saint Lazare (active by 1765-84), the Colisée (1771-79), Jean Ferret's 'Vauxhall' at Belleville (1772-?), Ranelagh (1774-1830), Cirque Royale on the Boulevard Montparnasse (1775, 1777-84), Pleinchesne's Redoute Chinoise, later called Pavilion Chinois (1781-85), the Panthéon (1784-91) and Michel Mellan's 'Vauxhall d'Été' (1785- 88). (Source: Vauxhall on the boulevard: pleasure gardens in London and Paris, 1764–1784, JONATHAN CONLIN, Urban History, Vol. 35, No. 1 (May 2008), pp. 24-47.

The gardens were open to the aristocratic and middle societies and combined tree-lined allées for promenading with temporary structures in which to drink, dance, eat, view paintings and enjoy short performances. Mrs. Gabriel Manigault provides us with a description of the Charles Town orange garden as “bordered by Seville orange trees and the central portion laid out in broad walks and fancy flower beds, with gay little refreshment booths scattered around, and with a raised platform at the end, where concerts were given in the spring and summer; that many longed for the pleasures within.” It is interesting to see the early colony, founded in 1670, devoting a sizeable portion of outdoor space to a pleasure garden for the enjoyment of all residents and visitors. Charleston had a hospitality mindset from the very beginning.

Orange trees flourished in colonial Charleston and were often included in pre-Reovlutionary War advertisements for property sales. Gardens are often mentioned for homes and plantations. Orange trees were planted extensively in South Carolina in the 1740’s and in 1747 the colony exported 296,000 oranges, mainly to the northern colonies. A brutal frost on February 18, 1748 destroyed most, if not all, of the orange trees at the time. By 1837 the citrus all but disappears from mention thanks to more frosts and a blight.

Robert Pringle “maintained an experimental garden on Tradd Street. By 1744 he harvested 10-12,000 oranges a year from his own trees” as reported in the Gazette. This was a commerical enterprise operating just down Tradd Street closer to King Street. In 1736 Thomas Ellery listed a home for sale at corner of Queen and Meeting featuring ‘50 orange trees.’ Without question, the early colonists were fond of this fruit and grew it with enthusiasm.

In a 1732 description of Purrysburg we find: “There are in the forests cypress trees of astonishing size, nuts, chestnuts, citrons, oranges, lemons, pomegranates, dates, jujubes, and a thousand kinds of other trees and fruit, herbs, roots.” (Source: LETTER FROM ANTHONY GONDY, CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA, TO HIS BROTHER IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF LAUSANNA, SWITZERLAND, Schaleton [Charleston] May 28, 1733 S. C.)

In 1747 Henry Laurens wrote of the orange trees in his garden at his home which was located facing the Cooper River near present day Laurens Street.

By 1763, Watson’s Nursery was operating at Trott’s Point and advertising the sale of various citrus plants including the orange. The 1770 receipts of Harriott Pinckney Horry included forty-five uses of the orange in various dishes.

There is so much to explore about the orange and its place in colonial Charleston and enjoyed by our Huguenot ancestors. The workshop will bring the story to life with tastings and an interesting talk.

About our Chef

Linda Gillette attended La Varenne at The Greenbrier, and after retiring from her career, attended Le Cordon Bleu of Paris. She traded her business suits for a chef’s jacket and since 2000, she has been a food writer and television cooking show guest. She has written for The Greenville News, The Art of Fine Living, Talk Greenville, South Carolina Homes & Gardens, PBS Television Garden Smart, the Christian Science Monitor, Texas USA and other newspapers and magazines. Linda’s recipes have been featured in the Winston-Salem Journal, Savannah Now, The James Beard Magazine, Saveur Weekend and The Atlanta Journal.

Linda has recipes and features in the following cookbooks: Southern Soups & Stews, Cook & Tell, Someday You will Thank Me for This, Southern Pies, as well as her own cookbooks, Memories from Home and Seasoned in the Kitchen.

 From 2000-2009, Linda was a culinary teacher and she cooked live on the air for the after-news show on Greenville-Spartanburg’s WSPA 7, as well as taped segments for Asheville’s 13 and Dove Broadcasting 16. Dove Broadcasting was a PBS contributor, so her guest spots were shown on PBS stations in Oklahoma, Oregon, and Colorado. When her cookbook went on the market in 2007, she was featured on Charleston’s channel 5 during the news. Even though she considers herself retired, she still spends time cooking, writing recipes, and blogging.

Linda is a member of The Huguenot Society of South Carolina and her primary Huguenot ancestor is Thomas Lenoir.