DOI 10.60531/INSIGHTOUT.2023.1.3| WILLIAMS-FORSON: SEEKING THE ABSENT POTENTIAL_ INSIGHTOUT 1(2023) 49 pes required a pound of butter to be used for chicken that is fried or fricasseed(a process of stewing pie­ces of meat in butter). In contrast to a single cooking method, Lucy Lee, one of several enslaved cooks at Mount Vernon, most likely blended African, Native American, and European styles of preparation and cooking, thereby leaving her imprint on Washington family meals. This discussion is illustrated by recipe books found in the NLM collection. Another object in the neighbouring display case was a dinner plate from the Mount Vernon collection, which we used to represent how enslaved butlers like Frank Lee, of the Washington estate, mastered invaluable management skills. More than ensuring the costly porcelain was simply well maintained, but­lers like Frank helped safeguard the Washingtons’ ability to entertain in genteel society. This included orchestrating meals with symmetry and exactitude. For example, at the conclusion of each course, he removed soiled napery to reveal a new tablecloth. To illustrate the complexity of the tasks, we included a page from The Complete Practical Cook: or, new System of the Whole Art and Mystery of Cookery by Charles Carter(1730), showing what a table filled with only the second course would look like. The final banner was simply titled“Freedom”, emp­hasising the truism that slavery was never benevo­lent or kind regardless of an enslaved person’s sta­tus on the plantation or farm. Though some were afforded extra privileges, including the opportunity to travel outside the plantation to earn income from selling leftover foodstuffs or their own crops in the marketplace, the opportunity to wear fine clothes; or to have various tools(hammer, nails, fishing rod, and even a shaving razor), they knew they were not free. Despite these minor advantages, and no matter how appreciated or“well-treated” they were, enslaved people still longed for freedom. And slaveowners did everything they could to re­mind enslaved people of their status as property. For example, during his presidency, George Washington repeatedly rotated, albeit illegally, enslaved Africans between their official household in Philadelphia and the Mount Vernon plantation. This circumvented the Gradual Abolition Act, which allowed those sla­ves who remained in Pennsylvania for more than six months to gain their freedom. Rotating them consist­ently reset the point when the clock on their residen­cy began. Fig. 9:“A Second Course thus”, taken from The Complete Practical Cook: or, new System of the Whole Art and Mystery of Cookery , by Charles Carter(1730)). The rendering shows what a table filled with the second course of a genteel meal would look like. Courtesy National Library of Medicine, 2016. Despite these shenanigans, enslaved men and some women and children found ways to escape, often using the distractions provided by holidays and ce­lebrations. For example, it is said that noted chef Hercules, considered George Washington’s favourite “capital cook”, used the occasion of 22 February, 1797, Washington’s sixty-fifth birthday, to escape and was never heard of again. Similarly, in her book Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge, historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar tells the story of how Judge,