All of that great eating on Thanksgiving Day sometimes has natural consequences that lead us to seek entirely different recipes for Friday. If we’ve time-traveled to the mid 18th century and are relying on published cookbooks for information, we’re in luck: most books containing recipes were not strictly cookbooks in the sense that we know […]
What to serve for desert after a Thanksgiving meal? Pumpkin pie, obviously. Unfortunately for the revolutionary-era aspiring chef in America, pumpkins are plentiful but pie-making recipes using them have yet to be published. Indeed, one of the most widely-printed British cookbooks said that “The Pumpkin is a very ordinary Fruit, and is principally the Food […]
Yesterday we saw how to roast a turkey according to a popular 18th century cookbook. It wouldn’t be a Thanksgiving dinner without turkey, but it also wouldn’t be a Thanksgiving dinner without an assortment of tasty dishes to go with that luscious bird. This is where preparing the meal in accordance with published period recipes […]
It’s the time of year when Americans are musing over favorite recipes for Thanksgiving meals. Everyone has a favorite dish and there are countless family traditions, but the undisputed king of the holiday table is the turkey. This tasty fowl is also a cook’s challenge, because whole turkeys are seldom served in the home at […]
Although many immigrants to the American colonies enjoyed a richer and more varied diet than they had in their home countries, as evidenced by the relative height of European-born and American-born men[i], across much of inland New England, with trade disrupted by the Crown’s blockades and other military action of the Revolution, the most reliable […]
These articles have, to this point, focused on reproducing the meals of our Revolutionary-era forefathers with all of the conveniences of the modern kitchen. However, it is important to remember that the cooks of those days prepared all of these wonderful foods using wood fires and cast iron. When Daniel O’Neil, Executive Director of the […]
Most of us learned the song “Yankee Doodle Dandy” as schoolchildren, and many of us puzzled over the reference to macaroni in its lyrics. How could one confuse a feather for pasta, and did they even have macaroni back then? The short answer is, “yes,” but short answers are rarely as interesting as long ones. […]
Over the course of time, many fashions change. The hem lines on women’s skirts rise and fall, folks give up hula-hooping for jogging, and emus replace llamas as the trendy exotic livestock to raise. So it is with food fashions, as well. Reading “receipt books” – cookbooks – of the Revolutionary era, one is struck […]
One of the best ways to get a visceral sense of what life in the Revolutionary Era was like is to eat the foods that they ate. Of course, there are challenges in this endeavor, not the least of which are changes in ingredient availability, cooking technology, labor availability and the overall culture of food. […]
