Food discoveries intrigue settlers

     Today it is possible to travel coast to coast, at any time of the year, without feeling a need to change eating habits. Sophisticated processing and storage techniques, fast transport and a creative variety of convenience foods have made it possible to ignore regional and seasonal food production.
     It was not always so. In early years, as Americans moved about they had to change eating habits to fit local conditions. Climate played a major part, but influences included soil, water and other vegetation.
     There is no question the good supply of early America may have been better than that available in many of the immigrants' homelands, but inadequate yield, seasonal availability, poor preservation techniques, constant labor and danger of contamination made even American nutrition chancy.
     Most early immigrants from Europe were accustomed to a limited, monotonous diet. Fresh meat was infrequent on the tables of the working classes.
     Two meal's worth of meat per week was regarded as good treatment for a servant.
     Game was property of the royal family in some countries and killing a deer could be a capital offense.
     "Milk, butter and cheese are the laborer's diet, and a pot of good beer quickens his spirit," said a 17th century English author.

Few vegetables in Europe

     Only a handful of vegetables were known in Europe prior to the discovery and settling of the New World. The short list included root vegetables such as beets, carrots, radishes, turnips and parsnips, plus cabbages, onions, leeks and lentils.
     There was considerable variety of fruits and berries, but they were available only during a brief harvest period.
      Standard grains included wheat, barley, oats and rye. Finely ground wheat flour, "boulted" or sieved through fine cloth, was used to make white bread for the rich early in the 15th century.
      Most of the gentry ate what we would call cracked or whole wheat bread. The poor ate coarse-ground wheat flour mixed with oats, ground peas or lentil.
      During their voyages to the New World, immigrants subsisted for weeks on even more monotonous diets. The Mayflower's provisions were typical - brown biscuits and hard white crackers, oatmeal and black eyed peas plus bacon, dried salted codfish and smoked herring. The only vegetables available were parsnips, turnips, onions and cabbages. Beer was the beverage.

Brought basic foods

     As the Pilgrims set foot on their new homeland, they didn't know what to expect. Each brought a stock of basic foods to get through the first year, as well as a variety of basic utensils and kitchen tools. Also included were the essential accompaniments for whatever they found or could raise when they arrived -- a bushel of coarse salt, two gallons of vinegar, a gallon of "oyle" and a gallon of quavite (strong liquor).
     Nothing they had been told, however, prepared them for the staggering variety of totally unfamiliar plants being used as food by the Indians -- corn, sweet potatoes, peppers, pumpkins, squash, peanuts, sunflower seed and cranberries for examples.
     In addition to the strange food, there were strange ways of cooking. In Europe, meat was boiled; the Indians, lacking iron pots, roasted theirs on a spit over an open fire.
     Indians also had a long, slow cooking process that yielded what we now call Boston baked beans, and they used a fore-heated, rock-lined pit for baking clams.

Introduced to corn

     Where Pilgrims were accustomed to raised wheat bread, Indians introduced them to corn based spoonbread. Corn also provided hominy, used as a vegetable and later, of course, as grits. For sweetening, Indians used maple syrup and honey -- sugar was unknown at that time.
     Although many of the foods Pilgrims and other colonists found were strange, others had traveled the route before them. The Spanish had brought pigs, which thrived especially in areas where peanuts grew. Peaches and oranges were also naturalized citizens.
     Even the white potato was an early migrant, coming in a roundabout route in the 1500s and 1600s. Potatoes were also significant in the Irish immigration to America following Ireland's potato famine of the 1840s.

Spices in short reply

     Spices and seasonings were in short supply in America's earliest days. Within a few years, however, settlers had planted seeds they brought with them or imported, and most had adapted to the climate and were flourishing in orderly rows and patterns in kitchen gardens along the Atlantic Coast.
     There were a few, ginger, pepper, cloves, mace, cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice, which couldn't cope with the weather or soil and were scarce. Olive oil, lime juice, prunes and saffron were available, but only at high prices.
     Abundance of meat in America brought a major change in the diet of early settlers. Rabbits and squirrels were available year-round nearly everywhere, plus deer and other large game in many regions.
     As settlers moved west, buffalo gained importance in the diet. Fish, shellfish and wild fowl became common food, and were all essentially free.
     Existence of the various forms of game was a literal lifesaver in times of uncertain crops and unbroken land. Game gradually diminished of course, as human population expanded and settlers pushed west, but it provided a large share of the diet in early and frontier days.

Ham on settler's tables

     Ham appeared on almost every settler's table, rich or poor. It might be the only meat served at a meal or it might appear in company with more exotic roasts and fowl, but it was always there -- breakfast, dinner and supper.
     Corn was also a staple of the colonists, either fresh in summer or as hominy or corn meal all year. Corn was also put to another use by an early Virginian, Capt. George Thorpe, who may have been the first food technologist in America -- he invented bourbon whiskey shortly before he was massacred by the Indians in 1622.
     Eating patters of working people in rural early America were different than those most common today. Breakfast was usually early and light -- bread, hominy grits, and sometimes fruit in season. Coffee, a new beverage at the time, was popular.
     Supper was late and usually light -- bread and butter, some of the leftover meat from dinner, fruit, fresh if in season, pickled or spiced if not, and coffee or tea.

Desserts kept simple

     Desserts were simple, a scooped out pumpkin baked until done and then filled with milk, to be eaten from the shell. Or more complex, ice cream or fruit flavored frozen pudding, or a blanc mange.
     Various alcoholic beverages including wines, applejack, "perry" (hard cider made from pears) or beer were commonly consumed.
     In winter, peaches and other fruit disappeared from the dinner table, to be replaced by dishes made from stored apples and dried fruit of various sorts. Soups or broths also took their place. Milk grew scarce as cows dried up in the short days. Vegetables gradually decreased in variety as stored crops wilted.
     Apples quickly became a staple. Orchards were easy to start, required a minimum of care, and apples stored well. Housewives devised a multitude of recipes, including sauces and butters for off-season, as well as many using dried apples.
     Not as many varieties of fruits and vegetables grew in the South, and emphasis was put on those which would store well or could be converted to something stable through salting, drying or pickling.
     Although mutton had been the main meat supply in England, pigs were more attractive than sheep in the new land. For one thing, sheep usually had only one lamb at a time, while a litter of a dozen piglets was not uncommon.

New foods discovered

     In other parts of the country settlers found more new foods and used them in various ways. In Louisiana, for example, French settlers adapted their old world recipes to accommodate such new foods as tomatoes, okra, crayfish, red snapper and catfish.
     In Charleston, S.C., and Savannah, Ga., rice cultivation began early, and in the southwest the Spanish introduced a new cuisine as they moved north from Mexico bringing varieties of beans, corn and something new, hot peppers.
     By 1970 almost three quarters of the 200 million Americans were city dwellers. Along with this change came gradual changes in the food supply. Where once each family fed itself, many now came to depend on others.
     Food could be produced where it grew best and shipped to cities for consumption. Specialization aimed at lower cost and higher quality increased, and longer shelf life became more important.
     Also, as the distance between food production and its consumption grew, new regulatory activities aimed at ensuring wholesomeness and safety of the newly separated food supply also grew.
     From the earliest immigrants' monotonous shipboard fare, through nearly 350 years of growth and discovery, food and foodstuffs have become a great industry as well as a life-sustaining endeavor.
     Days of hard-tack and crackers have given way to the day of canned, freeze-dried convenience foods, feeding a nation that has grown and flourished through hard work, imagination and ingenuity.

Extracted from the Eau Claire Leader Telegram
Special Publication, Our Story 'The Chippewa Valley and Beyond', published 1976
Used with permission.