Jefferson's Recipe for
Vanilla Ice Cream

Holograph recipe,
1780s
Manuscript Division

A passionate gourmet, Jefferson acquired a stock of standard French recipes for sauces, fruit tarts, French-fried potatoes, blood sausages, pigs' feet, rabbit, pigeons, and various other dishes. Among the most popular of these recipes at Monticello was this one for vanilla ice cream--written by Jefferson, with his own recipe for Savoy cookies to accompany the dessert on the back.