The Spirit of Seventy-Six!

In honor of the 250th birthday of the Declaration of Independence, all recipes through August 16, 2026 are from Centennial and Bicentennial cookbooks and the 1796 first American cookbook. Enjoy this look at the (gastronomic) spirit of ’76 as we enjoy the sestercentennial!

I’ve also published a Sestercentennial Cookery with recipes and photos.

Lemon Barbecued Chicken: Mrs. Mary E. Wilson’s Lemon Barbecued Chicken, from the 1976 Benton Harbor—St. Joseph Bicentennial Cookbook.; seventies; 1970s; barbeque; barbecue, BBQ, grill; lemons; garlic; chicken

Mrs. Mary E. Wilson contributed this to the 1976 Benton Harbor—St. Joseph Bicentennial Cookbook. That’s a pair of cities in Michigan toward the west coast with Lake Michigan. Mrs. Wilson, however, is from Dallas Texas. She contributed several recipes to this book, and they all look good. The book is from the Benton Harbor-St. Joseph chapter of “Squaws, Incorporated”; presumably they opened it up to other chapters as well.

The organization has since changed to a more boring but less controversial name that I can’t remember off-hand.

This chicken doesn’t need an oven, of course. It could just as well be barbecued on a grill. I’d cover the grill to get a good smoky flavor to it. The sauce itself would probably be good for basting on a rotisserie.

Drop in again soon for another vintage recipe! I’ll have a different recipe every Sunday afternoon throughout the year. Keep an eye on this page or subscribe to the RSS feed for further details. You can also browse past featured Club recipes as well as some of the vintage promotional cookbooks I’ve used as sources. And I collect many of these recipes in A Traveling Man’s Cookery Book.

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This is what enjoying life is all about. To be together. Food, family, friends. Wine. — Jacques Pépin (Heart & Soul: Fete Des Boules)