When bartering successfully for his freedom, Hemings wound up training his younger brother Peter to take over his responsibilities. Hemings perfected the recipe for what so many of us know and love today as mac and cheese. They include Hercules (sometimes known as Hercules Posey), who cooked for George Washington, and James Hemings, whom Thomas Jefferson sent to France for training. “It’s beautiful,” says Stephen Satterfield, the host of the limited series “High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America,” debuting today on Netflix.Ĭooking the late-1700s-era recipe comes in the third of the show’s four episodes, which focuses on contributions of the chefs enslaved to the earliest presidents of the United States. Then the camera zooms in on a sight familiar to generations of Americans: grated orange cheddar melted into a glossy blanket over tube-shaped pasta. “Oh, it’s sizzling,” she says, the sound audible in the background like distant applause. She uses a pot hook to remove the cast-iron lid and reveal the casserole dish inside the baking vessel. Historian Leni Sorensen hovers over a kitchen hearth at Monticello, the Virginia plantation built by Thomas Jefferson. The macaroni pie is ready, so steamy and golden you want to reach through the television screen to scoop up a big helping.
