Rosedown displays hearth cooking

• Advocate staff report
• Published: Jan 4, 2009 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Staff at the Rosedown Plantation State Historic Site in St. Francisville demonstrated 19th-century down-hearth cooking techniques in the plantation’s old kitchen Saturday.

They prepared a traditional New Year’s meal with pork roast using authentic family recipes, along with period and reproduced cooking equipment.

Sasha Trana, a Rosedown park ranger who prepared the meal, explained to onlookers that pork is eaten “because people ‘move forward’ into the New Year, and pigs move forward as they forage; as opposed to chickens, which move backward; and cows, which more or less stay stationary.”

The hearth-prepared meals will be demonstrated for the public at Rosedown on the first Saturday of every month through March, as well as occasionally in the plantation’s Lost Arts program.