American Cuisine...The Early Beginnings

    The Spaniards were overjoyed stepping foot on land in the Caribbean. They welcomed meals of broiled fresh fish, conch, oysters, bread from corn, baked yams, custard apples and chilis used for seasoning. With their movement northward, the Spaniards introduced new foods from the Caribbean and also from Europe into Florida. One of the most important first foods introduced to the New World was the chicken followed by domesticated cattle in 1493 by Columbus. Texas Longhorns would develop from escapees of these first herds. DeSoto introduced the first hogs into North America in 1542. The orange would become the most unique contribution made by Ponce de Leon.

    As time went on, the conquistadors ran out of peoples to loot and turned to the creation of plantations for the cultivation of sugar cane transplanted from Spain. The Spanish government granted large tracts of Florida land to the pioneers and local Indians were considered part of the deal. The Spaniards quickly ran out of Indians and began importing fresh laborers from Africa. In the mean-while, the French were establishing French Louisiana and the English were to the North. This territory changed hands back and forth a number of times. This history of conquest produced a cosmopolitan flavor to the food--more than any other area of the country. But, after all was said and done in Florida, the Spaniards only passed on two lasting dishes--jambalaya and a sausage. Their influence in the Southwest mimicked that in Florida. It was the English speaking colonists who would leave a culinary mark.

    The English Colonists in the 1600's brought with them the tastes, eating habits and prejudices of the Mother Country. They held onto the familiar even though the New World offered an abundance of choices. The salmon, strawberries, lobsters, crabs, terrapins were large and plentiful. The Indians near Raleigh made a strawberry bread--the ancestor of strawberry shortcake. Lobsters were so plentiful and easily harvested that the Colonists considered them fit for only poor folk. The Virginians scooped up terrapins by shovelfuls.

    The Hudson River was full of shad which the Dutch ate and enjoyed. Not to be thought commonfolk, they pretended to eat them for force. The Dutch would however admit to eating the nobler sturgeon which were thriving in the Hudson. Weighing in at 200 pounds, they were called "Albany beef". The sturgeon could be found on the Colonial table all the way south to Virginia. Over 30 coastal rivers from Connecticut to Canada were swarming with salmon on their way to spawn. Following close behind were eels, sea trout, herring and brook trout. The Colonists were inundated. Cape Cod was named by English navigator Bartholomew Gosnold in 1602 for the most common of the saltwater fish.

    Besides fish, game was plentiful.

    Much of the abundance was wasted on the narrow-minded first Colonists. They were surrounded by fish and game and benefiting from the cultivated crops the Indians had taught them to grow--sweet corn, beans, squash, pumpkins etc.... The forests were full of edible mushrooms and nuts. The fields were covered with strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, currants and other berries. The rivers were crowded with ducks, geese, swans and cranes.

    But for all the plenty around them, the first settlers nearly starved.

    The Pilgrims in Massachusetts and the Cavaliers of Virginia would have disappeared into oblivion had it not been for the Indians. In Massachusetts, the Pilgrims would stumble upon the Indians' caches of food they had stored for winter. In Virginia the Indians knowingly supplied the settlers with provisions.

    Survival in the New World was not easy whether in New England or in Virginia. The Jamestown Colony picked the least favorable site to build on and the supply ship returned 2 1/2 months late. Half of the Colonists had died of starvation or malnutrition. The Indians, two years later, had decided that being nice to the Colonists was not a good course of action. They attacked Jamestown Colony during planting time. The crops and cattle were destroyed. The Colonists boarded their ships and headed home. They were met by Lord de la Warr, who turned everyone around to try again. At least he had brought ample supplies.

    In Plymouth, the first three freezing months claimed half of the 102 colonists due to cold, scurvy, starvation and malnutrition. Many of the hardships they faced were due to their own short-comings. A minor shortcoming was their characteristic unwillingness to change their eating habits. They did not pay enough attention to collecting foods they did not like such as fish, shellfish and lobsters. The Virginians also did not adapt themselves to locally available foods, instead, they depended on supplies from England. A major shortcoming was the fact that the first English speaking Colonists were not the right ones to ike out an existence in the New World. Most of them were refugees from the middle class and unaccustomed to working with their hand and backs. It wasn't 'til about 1630 that indentured servants began arriving with the necessary skills and desire. The Pilgrims were indifferent fishermen, hunters and farmers even though they were surrounded by waterways teeming with fish, forests with game and fertile land.

    The Pilgrims, because of the more extreme climate, did become self sufficient within a single generation. The Virginians were longer in doing so. They clung to trading their tobacco crop for food supplies etc. from England.

    Both groups continued to import their meat supply--both poultry and pork since they made the passage easily or were eaten enroute.

    French influence in American eating habits didn't come into play until American eating habits were firmly entrenched.

New Foods

    The Colonists stuck to foods that were familiar or similar to ones they had in Europe. They easily accepted fish, game, American bean and squash. The grim winters forced them to accept Indian corn as a staple or starve. Adaptability of European grains to American soil was difficult The Colonists became so use to corn by the time wheat, barley, rye became established, that they never gave corn up. Two of the most important present day vegetables that the Colonists did not partake of was the white potato and the tomato. They were South American vegetables that would travel to Europe first and then to the States. Two lesser known vegetables were quickly accepted--the sweet potato and the Jerusalem artichoke.

    The Indians were not reluctant to adopt the foods Europeans brought into the New World. The peach, in particular, was accepted wholeheartedly and spread across the Continent faster than the settlers did. Pears, apples, apricots were also quickly cultivated and spread by the Indians. Wheat, lettuce, cabbage, lentils, carrots followed the fruit trees to their new home in the Colonies.

    A culinary revolution occurred for the Indians when the Colonists introduced domesticated animals to America. The first cows came in 1550 and gave the Indians their first taste of milk. They already knew meat from the bison. The cattle they began raising on corn which produced tender meat. The pigs brought into the southern colonies were fattened on peanuts and smoked when cooked. Smoking meats was a new experience for the Colonists and would later produce the famous Smithfield hams. Sheep were brought into the Colonies by the Jesuits where the Cherokees stuffed them with apples and nuts and roasted them.

    Besides the animals brought in from Europe, the Colonists partook of the abundance of game. Sometimes game was the main food for the settlers. Game ranged from the passenger pigeon to the turkey to the canvasback duck and other bird species. Bear was accepted partly due to the fat content being useful in cooking. The early settlers did not have butter or lard. Bison and deer were not used as often because of the difficulty in preserving the meat. Among the small game, rabbit was common and eaten quite readily.

    For all the new foods introduced in the Colonies by the Europeans, the most important contribution was actually the iron kettle.

Colonial Food

    Throughout the 17th century, Colonial cuisine was one of survival. It was not until after the Revolution that we as a nation began developing our own unique cooking.

    The 17th century American housewife had her job cut out for her. Cooking was done over an open fire in a primitive fireplace. The main utensil she used was a large iron kettle with 3 short legs to sit directly over the fire or hang from a hook made of green wood. Burns and spills when the green wood burned through were common. Development of an iron hinged crank was a great addition to the kitchen. Controlling cooking temperatures was a complicated process: the correct wood had to be chosen--oak or hickory--because they burned longer and more evenly; when to the start the fire depended on whether the object to be cooked was over flames or embers; measuring the heat of the fire was by hand.

    Timing the cooking process was not easy without a clock. Clocks were scarce and expensive. She had to calculate cooking times by the sun's progression through the sky. Clear days were easier than cloudy days. Sometimes sundials were painted on the floor but one had to take into consideration the angle of the sun as seasons change. Matches did not exist, so the cook was careful not to let all the embers go out. If they did, she would have to go to a neighbors to get some and try making it home with them lit.

    Since the iron kettle was the sole cooking pot, several items had to be cooked at the same time. A stew could be steaming away in the kettle with a brown bread steaming above it. A sweet pudding could be wrapped in a cloth and boiling the stew at the same time.

    A large pan with 3 legs was a happy addition to the utensils available to the 17th century cook.

    Baking was important. At first, a sheet of tin was vertically fastened outside the hearth to reflect the heat back onto the bread or biscuits to cook them top and bottom. Dutch ovens were invented--portable metal boxes that set on the hearth with an open side towards the fire with fixed shelves for breads, cakes, pies. Reflectors were then added to acquire higher temperatures.

    As the art of masonry improved, the portable ovens gave way to fixed ones--simple brick compartments built into the inside walls of fireplaces. A fire was started directly inside, cleaned out and the product to be baked put it. Baking was usually done once a week. These early American cooks would bake everything at once. Breads were placed in the back, then cakes, pies and cookies--all according to cooking times. In time, the baking oven was moved outside the fireplace and given a flue of its own. Luxury was having an oven with a hinged iron door with a damper that controlled the intensity of the fire. Of course, if the English Colonists had paid attention to the Scandinavian settlers, they would have had a cast-iron stove to work with.

    Glass had to be imported and was very expensive, therefore, colonial cooks used mixing bowls made of wood. Cooking utensils had to be made of iron, pewter, earthenware or stoneware. Indoor plumbing was unheard of. A farm wife had the luxury of her own well for water, but her town/city counterpart did not. The town dwellers had private wells and many of them were polluted as populations increased. They were forced to draw from a common public well. Municipal water systems would not be seen in Philadelphia until 1830, NYC in 1842, Boston in 1848 and Chicago during the Civil War.

    Escaping to a restaurant for a night away from cooking was an impossibility. Taverns of those days were for drinking. As the 17th century slid into the 18th, Americans were still dependent upon game as the main source of food. Agriculture held little incentive since why abandon the forest full of game and waterways full of fish for the backbreaking work of clearing and tilling the soil. Of course, lets not forget the fact, that the first Northern settlers had to spend a good deal of time defending themselves against Indians. Even if the settlers were successful in clearing land, planting and caring for the crops, frequent Indian raids made mincemeat out of their efforts. Settlers welcomed the arrival of winter and a respite from Indian attacks. Sometimes, they would venture out into the fields after the first bite of frost to prepare the soil for spring planting and find themselves still under attack if the weather turned mild. Because this was not the "normal raiding season", the settlers named this time "Indian summer".

    Settlers in the South did not have the Indians as an excuse to not take up farming. They were viewed as "slovens". Cattle and hogs were released into the wild to fend for themselves. But expending energy in caring for livestock was difficult when combating hookworms and malaria. It didn't held that the Southerners planted first corn and then tobacco on the same soil to the exclusion of any other crops. British policy forced Southern settlers to limit who they traded with and what they planted, thus destroying American initiative. Their policy also did not take into account the difference in English to American climate.

    Even with all the pitfalls of the early years, by the time of the Revolution approached, both the North and the South made considerable progress in farming. They had added a number of new foods to their repertoire. The black-eyed pea, okra and watermelon came to the colonies from Africa with the slaves. Better breeds of cattle and sheep were being purposely imported. The Northerners rapidly developed fisheries and in particular cod--which they dried and exported both to England, the West Indies and illegally to the Mediterranean countries. Molasses and rum made the return trip. The Southerners went from tobacco to rice, sugar cane and then cotton. By the 1750's, America was eating very well, even if only in amount......then came the Revolution.

Source: Eating In America by Waverley Root & Richard de Rochemont

Resource:"Eating in American" by Waverly Root & Richard Rochemont