One of the essential survival skills that the Pilgrims learned from Native Americans was how to fish by hand for the cod that abounded in New England waters. Cod was admirably suited for preserving by drying or salting. Preserved cod had been an important part of the European diet for hundreds of years. I learned …
If we were rational in our food preferences, we would all be subsisting on beans, seaweed and preparations of cricket flour. But we are not entirely rational creatures. Habit, associations and cultural context are as important as flavor and aroma in determining our food choices. New England settlers brought their English food prejudices with them. …
Nineteenth-century New England women managed their kitchens frugally, which meant that they had to be clever in the use of leftovers. Lacking refrigeration, they had to recycle cooked foods promptly. Sometimes that meant cooking more than they knew they needed in order to have enough ingredients for tomorrow’s dinner. Leftover baked beans became bean soup, …
The Colonial Revival was a nationalistic movement in architecture, interior design and garden design that looked back to 18th-century America, especially New England, for inspiration. Symmetrical design, many-paned windows, elaborate doorways and clapboard, shingle, or brick construction characterized Colonial Revival architecture; period textiles served as interior design models. Although the style is still an influence, …
Chowder parties became popular in the mid-19th century. The following excerpt describes a family beach picnic in southern Maine in 1865. Hersina Fletcher Paul of Eliot was writing to her brother, Aaron Jones Fletcher, who was still serving in the Union Army. Although General Lee had surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia in April, the …
The abundance of advertising in the pages of “The Green Mountain, White Ribbon Cook Book,” published in 1895 by the Vermont branch of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), shows how savvy New England women had become in raising funds for charitable causes. The ads document social history. For example, commercial powdered gelatin was an …
Asparagus was brought to America by European settlers sometime in the 18th century. Abigail Adams, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson all learned to appreciate asparagus and grew it on their home farms. In the first American cookbook, published in 1796, Amelia Simmons calls asparagus “an excellent vegetable” and wisely cautions against overcooking it: “by over-boiling …
“The September evening set in brisk and chill, and the cheerful fire that snapped and roared up the ample chimney of Captain Kittridge’s kitchen was a pleasing feature. “The days of our story were before the advent of those sullen gnomes, the ‘air-tights,’ or even those more sociable and cheery domestic genii, the cooking-stoves. They …
Four years before Thoreau published “Walden,” Susan Fenimore Cooper (1813-1894) published her journal of observations and musings on the natural world around Cooperstown, N.Y. The daughter of James Fenimore Cooper, she was an acute observer, noting, for example, which flowers ruby-throated hummingbirds preferred and considering whether flower structure or fragrance were more important in attracting …
Whether called griddle cakes, hotcakes, flapjacks, slapjacks or flannel cakes, pancakes were enjoyed by everyone in New England in the 19th century. Humble folk and gentry alike devoured them. Caroline Howard King, who grew up in a prosperous family in Salem, Mass., in the 1820s and 1830s, in recalling popular dishes, remembered that “pancakes … …
Known as Castle Tucker, an Italianate mansion on a hill overlooking the Sheepscot River in Wiscasset, was home to a young woman whose venturesome spirit got her embroiled in one of the great political scandals of the late 19th century. Jane Armstrong Tucker, who much later in life would publish “The State of Maine Cook …
Henry David Thoreau was fond of foraging on his lengthy tramps through Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine. His favorite fruits were wild apples from trees randomly planted by animals or from neglected trees where the grafts had died and the root stock survived. In his natural history essay “Wild Apples,” he raves about the spicy …
