Catherine Spears Carpenter 1818 Casey County sweet-mash and sour-mash recipes

The sheet is in the Carpenter Family Papers at the Kentucky Historical Society, the family papers of Catherine Spears Carpenter. One side gives a "Receipt for Distilling Corn Meal Sweet Mash." The other gives a "Receipt for Distilling by a Sour Mash," which starts the mash with hot slop left over from an earlier run.

Catherine Spears Carpenter was born in Rockingham County, Virginia, in 1760. She came to Kentucky with her first husband, John Frye, and about 1779 they settled at Carpenter's Station in present-day Casey County. Frye was killed at the Battle of Blue Licks in 1782. In 1784 she married Adam Carpenter, one of the station's founders, and after his death in 1806 she ran the family farm herself until she died in 1848.

The family donated the papers to the Society in 1995. A note in different ink dates the recipe sheet, and it names no author. The recipes are often called Catherine Carpenter's, but the Society's archivists say it is unclear whether she wrote them, used them, or kept recipes that were shared in the family or community. Either way, they are among the earliest written sour-mash directions known from Kentucky.

Sources: Kentucky Historical Society, The Sour Mash Whiskey Recipe of Catherine Carpenter (opens in a new tab); Kentucky Historical Society, MSS 47 Carpenter Family Papers finding aid (opens in a new tab)