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VI SUPPLIES OF THE LARDER IT is a tradition of short commons,
usually extending
even to stories of starvation, in the accounts of all early settlements
in new
lands, and the records of the Pilgrims show no exception to the rule.
These
early planters went through a fiery furnace of affliction. The beef and
pork
brought with them became tainted, "their butter and cheese corrupted,
their fish rotten." A scarcity of food lasted for three years, and
there
was little variety of fare, yet they were cheerful. Brewster, when he
had
naught to eat but clams, gave thanks that he was "permitted to suck of
the
abundance of the seas and the treasures hid in the sands." Cotton
Mather
says that Governor Winthrop, of the Bay settlement, was giving to a
poor
neighbor the last meal from his chest, when it was announced that the
food-bearing Lion had arrived. The General Court thereat changed an
appointed
Fast Day to a Thanksgiving Day. By tradition — still commemorated at
Forefathers' Dinner — the ration of Indian corn supplied to each person
was at
one time but five kerpels. Still there was always plenty of fish —
the favorite
food of the English — and Squanto taught the colonists various Indian
methods
of catching the "treasures of the sea." With oysters and lobsters
they were far from starvation. Higginson said of the latter shellfish,
in 1630,
"the least boy in the Plantation may both catch and eat what he will of
them."
He says that lobsters were caught weighing twenty-five pounds each, and
that
the abundance of other fish was beyond believing. Josselyn, in his "New
England Rarities," enumerated two hundred and three varieties of fish;
yet
Tuckerman calls his list "a poor makeshift." The planters had plenty
of implements with which to catch fish — "vtensils of the sea" —
"quoils of rope and cable, roudes of twine, herring nets, seans,
cod-lines
and cod hookes, mackrill-lines, drails, spiller hooks, mussel-hooks,
mackrill
hooks, barbels, splitting knives, sharks hookes, bassonettes, pues and
gaffs,
squid lines, yeele pots," &c. Josselyn also tells some very pretty
ways of cooking fish, especially eels with herbs, showing that, like
Poins, the
colonists loved conger and fennel. Eels were roasted, fried, and
boiled. Boiled
"eals" were thus prepared: "Boil them in half water half wine with
the
bottom of a manchet, a fagot of Parsly and a little Winter Savory, when
they
are boiled they take them out and break the bread in the broth and put
in two
or three spoonfuls of yest and a piece of sweet butter, pour to the
eals laid
upon sippets." Another way beloved by him was to stuff the eels with
nutmeg and cloves, stick them with cloves, cook in wine, place on a
chafing-dish,
and garnish with lemons. This rich dish is somewhat overclouded by his
suggestion that the eels be arranged in a wreath. The frequent references to eels in early
accounts
prove that they were regarded, as Izaak Walton said, "a very dainty
fish,
the queen of palate-pleasure." Next to fish, the early colonists found in
Indian
corn, or "Guinny wheat" — "Turkie wheat" one traveller
called it — their most unfailing food-supply. Our first native poet
wrote, in
1675, of what he called early days: "The dainty Indian maize, Was eat with clamp-shells out of wooden trays." Its abundance and adaptability did much to
change the
nature of their diet as well as to save them from starvation. The
colonists
learned from the Indians how to plant, nourish, harvest, grind, and
cook it in
many Indian ways, and in each way it formed a palatable food. The
Indian
pudding which they ate so constantly was made in Indian fashion and
boiled in a
bag. To the mush of Indian meal they gave the English name of
hasty-pudding.
Many of the foods made from maize retained the names given in the
aboriginal
tongues, such as hominy, suppawn, pone, samp, succotash; and doubtless
the
manner of cooking is wholly Indian. Hoe-cakes and ash-cakes were made
by the
squaws long before the landing of the Pilgrims. Roasting ears of green
corn
were made the foundation of a solemn Indian feast and also of a
planters'
frolic. It is curious to read Winthrop's careful explanation, that when
corn is
parched it turns entirely inside out, and is "white and floury
within;" and to think that there ever was a time when pop-corn was a
novelty to white children in New England. Wood said that sukqutttahhash was
"seethed like beans." Roger Williams said that" nassaump,
which the English call Samp, is Indian corne beaten & boil'd and
eaten hot
or cold with milke or butter and is a diet exceeding wholesome for
English
bodies." No-cake, or nokick, Wood, in his "New England
Prospects," thus defines: "Indian com parched in the hot ashes, the
ashes being sifted from it, it is afterward beaten to powder and put
into a
long leatheme bag trussed at their back like a knapsacke, out of which
they
take thrice three spoonsfulls a day." It was held to be wonderfully
sustaining food in most condensed form. It was carried in a pouch, on
long
journeys, and mixed before eating with snow in winter and water in
summer.
Jonne-cake, or journey-cake, was also made from maize. For years the
colonists
pounded the corn in stone mortars, as did the Indians; then in wooden
mortars
with pestles. Then rude hand-mills were made — "quernes" — with
upright shafts fixed immovably at the upper end, and fastened at the
lower end
near the outside edge of a flat, circular stone, which was made to
revolve in a
mortar. By turning the shaft with one hand, the com could be supplied
to the
grinding-stone with the other. These hand-mills are sometimes still
found in
use as "samp-mills." Wind-mills and water-mills followed naturally in
the train of the hand-mills. Wheat but little availed for food in early
days,
being frequently blighted. Oats were raised in considerable quantity, a
pill-corn or peel-corn or sil-pee variety. Josselyn, writing in 1671,
gives a
New England dish, which he says is as good as whitpot, made of oatmeal,
sugar,
spice, and a "pottle of milk;" a pottle was two quarts. At a somewhat
later date the New Hampshire settlers had a popular oatmeal porridge,
in which
the oatmeal was sifted, left in water, and allowed to sour, then boiled
to a
jelly, and was called "sowens." It is still eaten in Northumberland. By the strict laws made to govern bakers
and the
number of bake-shops that were licensed, and the sharp punishments for
baking
short weight, etc., it seems plain that New England housewives did
little home
baking in early days. The bread was doubtless of many kinds, as in
England —
simnels, cracknels, jannacks, cheat loaves, cocket-bread, wastelbread,
manchet,
and buns. Pure wheaten loaves were not largely used as food —
bread from corn meal dried quickly; hence rye meal was
mixed with the
corn, and "rye 'n' Injun" bread was everywhere eaten. To the other bountiful companion food of
corn,
pumpkins, the colonists never turned very readily. Pompions they called
them in
"the times wherein old Pompion was a saint." Johnson, in his
"Wonder-Working Providence," reproved them for making a jest of
pumpkins, since they were so good and unfailing a food — "a fruit which
the Lord fed his people with till corn and cattle increased." "We
have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at
noon,
If it were not for pumpkins we should be undone." Pompions, and what Higginson called
squantersquashes,
Josselyn squontersquoshes, Roger Williams askutasquashes, Wood
isquoukersquashes — and we clip to squashes — grew in vast plenty. The
Indians
dried the pompions on strings for winter use, as is still done in New
England
farm communities. Madam Knight had them frequently offered to her on
her
journey — "pumpkin sause" and "pumpkin bred." "We
would have eat a morsel ourselves, but the Pumpkin & Indian-mixt
bread had
such an Aspect." Pumpkin bread is made in Connecticut to this day. For
pumpkin "sause" we have a two-centuries-old receipt, which was given
by Josselyn, in 1671, in his "New England Rarities," and called by
him even at that day "an Ancient New England Standing-dish." "The Housewives manner is to slice them
when
ripe and cut them into Dice, and so fill a pot with them of two or
three
Gallons and stew them upon a gentle fire the whole day. And as they
sink they
fill again with fresh Pompions not putting any liquor to them and when
it is
stir'd enough it will look like bak'd Apples, this Dish putting Butter
to it
and a little Vinegar with some Spice as Ginger which makes it tart like
an
Apple, and so serve it up to be eaten with fish or flesh." This must be a very good "sause," and a
very good receipt when once it is clear to your mind which of them —
the
housewives or the pompions — sink and are to fill and be filled in a
pot, and
stirred and stewed and put liquor to. In an old book which I own, which was used
by many
generations of New England cooks, I find this singular good "rule to
make
a "Pumpion Pye:" "Take about halfe a pound of Pumpion and
slice
it, a handful of Tyme, a little Rosemary, Parsley and Sweet Marjoram
slipped
off the stalkes, and chop them smal, then take Cinamon, Nutmeg, Pepper,
and six
Cloves and beat them, take ten Eggs and beat them, then mix them, and
beat them
altogether, and put in as much Sugar as you think fit, then fry them
like a
froiz, after it is fryed, let it stand til it be cold, then fill your
Pye, take
sliced Apples thinne rounde-wayes, and lay a row of the Froiz and layer
of
Apples with Currans betwixt the layer while your Pye is fitted, and put
in a
good deal of sweet butter before you close it, when the pye is baked
take six
yelks of Eggs, some White-wine or Vergis, and make a Caudle of this,
but not
too thicke, cut up the Lid and put it in, stir them wel together whilst
the
Eggs and Pompions be not perceived and so serve it up." I am sure there would be no trouble about
the
pompions being perceived, and I can fancy the modest half-pound of
country
vegetable blushing a deeper orange to find its name given to this
ambitious and
compound-sentenced concoction which helped to form part of the "simple
diet of the good old times." I have found no modern cook bold enough to
"prove" (as the book says) this pumpion pie; but hope, if any one
understands it, she will attempt it. Potatoes were on the list of seeds,
fruits, and
vegetables that were furnished to the Massachusetts Bay colonists in
1628, and
fifteen tons (which were probably sweet potatoes) were imported from
Bermuda in
1636 and sold in Boston at twopence a pound. Winthrop wrote of
"potatose" in 1683. Their cultivation was rare. There is a tradition
that the Irish settlers at Londonderry, N. H., began the first
systematic
planting of potatoes. At the Harvard Commencement dinner, in 1708,
potatoes
were on the list of supplies. A crop of eight bushels, which one Hadley
farmer
had in 1763, was large — too large, since "if a man ate them every day
he
could not live beyond seven years." Indeed, the "gallant root of
potatoes" was regarded as a sort of forbidden fruit — a root more than
suspected of being an over-active aphrodisiac, and withal so wholly
abandoned
as not to have been mentioned in the Bible; and when Parson Jonathan
Hubbard,
of Sheffield, raised twenty bushels in one year, it is said he came
very near
being dealt with by his church for his wicked hardihood. In more than
one town
the settlers fancied the balls were the edible portion, and "did not
much
desire them." Nor were fashionable methods of cooking them much more to
be
desired. In "The Accomplisht Cook," used about the year 1700,
potatoes were ordered to be boiled and blanched; seasoned with nutmeg,
cinnamon,
and pepper; mixed with eringo roots, dates, lemon, and whole mace;
covered with
butter, sugar, and grape verjuice, made with pastry; then iced with
rosewater
and sugar, and yclept a "Secret Pye." Alas, poor, ill-used,
be-sugared, secreted potato, fit but for kissing-comfits! we can well
understand your unpopularity. Other vegetables were produced in New
England in
abundance. Higginson speaks of green peas, turnips, parsnips, carrots,
and
cucumbers, and a dozen fruits and berries. Cranberries were plentiful
and soon
were exported to England. Josselyn gives a very full list of fruits and
vegetables and pot-herbs, including beans, which were baked by the
Indians in
earthen pots as they are now in Boston bake-shops. There was a goodly supply of game.
Bradford wrote of
the year 1621, "beside waterfoule ther was great store of wild
Turkies." Wood said these turkeys sometimes weighed forty pounds
apiece,
and sold for four shillings each. Josselyn assigned to them the
enormous weight
of sixty pounds. All agreed that they were far superior to the English
domestic
turkeys. Morton said they came in flocks of a hundred; yet the
Winthrops had
great difficulty in getting two to breed from in 1683, and by 1690 it
was rare
to see a wild turkey in New England. The beautiful great bronze birds
had flown
away from the white man's civilization and guns. Flocks of thousands of geese took their
noisy,
graceful V-shaped flight over New England, and were shot in large
numbers.
Dudley wrote home that doves were so plentiful that they obscured the
light.
Josselyn said he had bought in Boston a dozen pigeons all dressed for
threepence. It is said they were sometimes sold as low as a penny a
dozen.
Roger Clap said it would have been counted a strange thing in early
days to see
a piece of roast veal, beef, or mutton, though it was not long ere
there was
roast goat. By 1684 a French refugee said beef, mutton, and pork were
but
twopence a pound in Boston. Clap says he ate his samp, or hominy,
without
butter or milk, but Higginson wrote in 1630, and Morton in 1624, that
they had
a quart of milk for a penny. John Cotton said ministers and milk were
the only
things cheap in New England. By Johnson's time New Englanders had
"Apple,
Pear and Quince Tarts instead of their former Pumpkin Pies." They had
besides apple-tarts, apple mose, apple slump, mess apple-pies, buttered
apple-pies, apple dowdy and puff apple-pies — all differing. Josselyn said the "Quinces, Cherries,
&
Damsins set the Dames a-work. Marmalet & Preserved Damsins is to be
met
with in every house." Skill in preserving was ever an English-woman's
pride, and New-English women did not forget the lessons learned in
their
"faire English homes." They made preserves and conserves, marmalets
and quiddonies, hypocras and household wines, usquebarbs and cordials.
They
candied fruits and made syrups. They preserved everything that would
bear
preserving. I have seen old-time receipts for preserving quinces,
"respasse," pippins, "apricocks," plums, "damsins,"
peaches, oranges, lemons, artichokes, green walnuts, elecampane roots,
eringo
roots, grapes, barberries, cherries; receipts for syrup of clove
gillyflower,
wormwood, mint, aniseed, clove, elder, lemons, marigolds, citron,
hyssop,
liquorice; receipts for conserves of roses, violets, borage flowers,
rosemary,
betony, sage, mint, lavender, marjoram, and "piony;" rules for
candying fruit, berries, and flowers, for poppy water, cordial, cherry
water,
lemon water, thyme water, Angelica water, Aqua Mirabilis, Aqua
Coelestis, clary
water, mint water. No wonder a profession of preserving
sprung up. By
1781 we find advertised in June in the Boston News Letter, "At
Widow Bonyots All Sorts of Fruits in Preserves Jellys and Surrups. Egg
Cakes,
All sorts of Macaroons, Marchepane Crisp Almonds. All sorts Conserves,
Also
Meat Jellys for the sick." We can see plainly by these statements
that New
England was no Nidderland. Even in Josselyn's day he wrote, "they have
not
forgotten the English fashion of stirring up their appetites with
variety of
cooking their food." The pages of Judge Sewall's diary give many hints
of
his daily fare. He speaks of "boil'd Pork, boil'd Pigeons, boil'd Bacon
and boil'd Venison; rost Beef, rost Lamb, rost Fowls, rost Turkey, pork
and
beans;" "Frigusee of Fowls," "Joll of Salmon,"
"Oysters, Fish and Oyl, conners, Legg of Pork, hogs Cheek and souett;
pasty, bread and butter; Minc'd Pye, Aplepy, tarts, gingerbread,
sugar'd
almonds, glaz'd almonds;" honey, curds and cream, sage cheese, green
pease, barley, "Yokhegg in milk, chockolett, figgs," oranges,
shat-tucks, apples, quinces, strawberries, cherries, and raspberries; a
very
fair list of viands. "Yokhegg" is probably "yeokheag,"
a name for Indian corn, parched and pounded into meal, a name by which
it was
known for many years in Eastern Connecticut. Sewall was a very valiant trencher-man. He
records
with much zest going down the Bay to an island, or riding to Roxbury
for an
outing and dinner, and coming home in "brave moonshine." And, like
his neighbor, Cotton Mather, he drew many a spiritual lesson from the
food set
before him; especially, however, at a scambling meal, or at any repast
which he
ate alone, and hence had naught and no one to divert therefrom his
ever-religious thoughts. From a curious account of Boston, written
by a
traveller named Bennet, in the year 1740, we take the following
statements of
the cost of food there: "Their poultry of all sorts are as fine as
can
be desired, and they have plenty of fine fish of various kinds, all of
which
are very cheap. Take the butchers' meat all together, in every season
of the
year, I believe it is about twopence per pound sterling; the best beef
and
mutton, lamb and veal are often sold for sixpence per pound of New
England
money, which is some small matter more than one penny sterling. "Poultry in their season are exceeding
cheap. As
good a turkey may be bought for about two shillings sterling as we can
buy in
London for six or seven, and as fine a goose for tenpence as would cost
three
shillings and sixpence or four shillings in Condon. The cheapest of all
the
several kinds of poultry are a sort of wild pigeon, which are in season
the
latter end of June, and so continue until September. They are large,
and finer
than those we have in Condon, and are sold here for eighteenpence a
dozen, and
sometimes for half of that. Fish, too, is exceeding cheap. They sell a
fine fresh
cod that will weigh a dozen pounds or more, just taken out of the sea,
for
about twopence sterling. They have smelts, too, which they sell as
cheap as
sprats are in Condon. Salmon, too, they have in great plenty, and those
they
sell for about a shilling apiece, which will weigh fourteen or fifteen
pounds. "They have venison very plenty. They will
sell
as fine a haunch for half a crown as would cost full thirty shillings
in
England. Bread is much cheaper than we have in England, but is not near
so
good. Butter is very fine, and cheaper than ever I bought any in
Condon; the
best is sold all summer for threepence a pound. But as for cheese, it
is
neither cheap nor good." I am somewhat surprised at Bennet's dictum
with
regard to cheese, and can only feel that he had special ill fortune in
choosing
his cheesemonger. For certainly the Rhode Island cheese, made from the
rich
milk of the great herds of choice cows that dotted the fertile and
sunny fields
of old Narragansett, was sent to England and the Barbadoes in great
quantity,
and commanded special prices there. Brissot said it was equal to the
"best
Cheshire of England or Rocfort of France." This cheese was made from a
receipt for Cheshire cheese which was brought to Narragansett by
Richard
Smith's wife in the seventeenth century; and her home is still
standing, though
built around, at Cocumcussett, where her husband and Roger Williams
founded a
colony. We have a very distinct rendering of the
items of
family expense, chiefly of food, at about that time, given us by a
contemporary
authority, and bequeathed to us in a letter to the Boston 'News
Letter
of November 28, 1728. The writer refers to other "scheams of expense"
for a household which have been made public, one apparently being at
the rate
of £250 a year for the entire outlay. This sum he thinks inadequate and
"disproves in a moment." He gives his own careful estimate of the
cost of keeping a family of eight persons. It is computed for "Families
of
Midling Figure who bear the Character of being Genteel," and reads
thus:
Certainly we gain from this "scheam" a
very
clear notion of the style of living of this genteel Boston family. There is, of course, no possibility of
exactly
picturing the serving of a meal in early days; but one peculiarity is
known of
the dinner — the pudding came first. Hence the old saying, "I came in
season — in pudding-time." In an
account of a Sunday dinner given at the house of John Adams, as late as
1817,
the first course was a pudding of Indian corn, molasses, and butter;
the
second, veal, bacon, neck of mutton, and vegetables. For many years the colonists "dined exact
at
noon," and on farms even half an hour earlier. On Saturday all ate fish
for dinner. Judge Sewall frequently speaks of his Saturday dinner of
fish. Fish
days had been prescribed by the King in England, in order that the
fisheries
might not fail of support, as was feared on account of the increased
consumption of meat induced by the reformation in religion. New
Englanders
loyally followed the mandate, but ate cod-fish on Saturdays, since the
Papists
ate fish on Fridays. One very pleasant and friendly custom that
existed
among these kindly New England neighbors must be spoken of in passing.
It is
thus indicated by Judge Sewall when he writes, in 1723, of Mr. and Mrs.
Belcher, "my wife sent them a taste of her Diner." It appeared to be
a recompensing fashion, if invited guests were unable to partake of the
dinner
festivities, or if neighbors were ill, for the hostess to send a
"taste" of all her viands to console them for their deprivation. This
truly homely and neighborly custom lingered long in old New England
families
under the very descriptive title of "cold party;" indeed it lingers
still in old-fashioned towns and in old-fashioned families. In earlier days when a noble dinner seemed
to be the
form of domestic pleasure next in enjoyment to a funeral, a "taste of
the
dinner" was truly a most honorable attention, and a most pleasing one. |