University Place

Susan Caya-Slusser

So, welcome to Villa Louis. And our tagline is "Enter the World of Victorian America." Here we have a spring photo of the Villa Louis. Our main time period, our main focus for Villa Louis is the 1890s. It's the most well-documented time period of the family in Prairie du Chien. The kitchen, it's a working kitchen. We are very fortunate that our kitchen stove is set on a different HVAC system than the rest of the house. So we can use it, so it keeps the smoke and the soot away from the major collections throughout the house. Now unfortunately, the stove that you see today, it is a period stove from 1898. But a stove that we bought from a private collector outside of Duluth, Minnesota. The original stove that the Dousmans had was a Governor Winthrop Hotel model, number 8. A larger, more industrial-size stove, because of all of the meals that Mrs. Johnson was cooking, six meals a day. Three for the family and three for the servants. Because of course, they ate in a totally different style, most likely a different cut of meat. And here we have our head historic cook, Marcia Crowley, who's actually an art teacher from La Crosse that comes down and helps us with our programming during one of our breakfast workshops. And guests sign up for the workshops and we prepare a bill of fare, and you cook. We facilitate, but you cook on our two wood stoves. Jelly omelet, it's a very time-consuming dish to make. It's something that we do make at our cooking workshops. So jelly omelet, you take, depending on how many people you have at your table, and when we serve our workshops we have 16, so we have about 16 eggs. You split the yolk and the white and you whip them separately to stiff peaks. You then blend the eggs together. You pour it into a cast iron frying pan. And then bake it. You then pull it out and spread jelly over half of it, fold the omelet over and sprinkle sugar. And then you slice it. Once again, it was part of the presentation. Adding that color to your plates by having the jelly with the egg, and so that's what a jelly omelet is. And using one of these, it is quite a difficult task. And so, to undertake.

audience laughing

Susan Caya-Slusser

Hot chocolate was served with every breakfast, even during the summer. Usually coffee and hot chocolate during the Victorian times. And then the other workstation here is for Wisconsin gem cake. Wisconsin cakes or Wisconsin gem cakes, it's a muffin, but baked in a tin like this, a gem pan. Or a Waterman pan, a nice cast iron. So it's a muffin, but it doesn't get to our same consistency that we think of today, with our big, thick blueberry muffins. And they're very tasty served with maple syrup, butter, or some of the different jams and jellies. Now labeled in the Dousman's inventory and their documentation, they called their back kitchen the preserve house kitchen, not a summer kitchen as we think with the South. Mainly because the hot water system for the Dousman's house, the Villa Louis, was hooked up to that first kitchen stove. But this was an overflow kitchen, called the preserve kitchen because the house kitchen was too busy with activity to do all that seasonal work of preserving and canning. So ladies were hired from the village to do that work in the second, back kitchen, and also this was used for overflow cooking during special events, and we're able to use this during our cooking workshop as well. And here we have the workstation for fresh fried Mississippi catfish. And when people sit down at the table, and they hear the bill of fare, they kind of look at each other like, "Catfish, really?" But fish was served at almost every Victorian breakfast. It's a staple. Breakfast for the Victorian times for this family, we know was served in the buffet style. You could come and go at your leisure, ending at 9 a.m. But catfish, for us, it's a local flavor that we can add to our menu. And then when we get the fish, it's soaked in milk overnight. Once again, that milk clarifies and takes out that river taste. And then anything tastes good that's fried in lard and butter.

audience laughing

Susan Caya-Slusser

The frying we do out in this back kitchen. Not in the house. And here she is frying some of that great, fresh, Mississippi catfish. And then we have a German pancake. It's basically a souffl. They bake up really high. It does eventually fall. Also tastes very good served with fresh Wisconsin maple syrup. Just like they did and just like we see with their receipts and bills, we choose items that are in season. And so in the fall, as you see in the bill of fare from last weekend, with sausage fried with apple rings. And then tomatoes with shirred eggs, another favorite. You core out the tomato and you crack an egg, slip the egg in, and cover it with buttered cracker crumbs and then you bake it. A wonderful way to serve eggs in a very, once again, presentation, adding that color to your plate. We do have an opportunity to do place settings and to decorate. And so you get to basically wander our grounds and pick from our gardens to decorate the table. And these ladies, these are some of the goods that they picked on November 5th for our November 5th breakfast. And the resulting table decoration. And then you sit in the kitchen and dine, and this is where you become a guest and we serve you. And at the end, everything is washed and all the tinware and cast iron is drying on the stove as the stove cools.