Stella Kekalos 12/12/16
Humanities 7B
Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice: Food and Cooking in Colonial America
Food in Colonial America was very different from food in any other country at the time. It was a combination of many cultures and techniques. Food preparation required workers of all kinds, from slaves on the plantation to the cooks of the highest classes. Food was an important indicator of social class and was essential to the survival of the colonists in the New World. It was farmed, hunted, prepared, and served differently depending on your class and race. It brought people together at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day.

In Colonial America there were two kinds of kitchens on plantations that served many uses. The two kinds of kitchens were the Kitchen House and the Summer House. The kitchen house stored food, housed the tools for the cook, and was also the cook’s home. On large homes and plantations, the kitchen house was a different building. “The kitchen house was a special item reserved for the plantations and was detached from the Big House. It stored and preserved many things.” (pg. 26, Colonial Kitchen). Families who lived in places with cold winters often had two kitchens, the Kitchen House and the Summer House. The kitchen house was just a little walk away from the main house. It was separated from the house because the people did not want to hear the food being made and having a different building prevented house fires. The kitchen house required various workers.
Servants were necessary in the kitchen house for preparing, cooking and serving food. Servants also had to bring the food from the kitchen into the dining room, where most meals were eaten. Even though the food was made by servants and slaves the mistress of the house overlooked most of the work. The cook held a respectable role on the plantation. Four ranks of cooks were recognized in different classes. First male cooks and their staff in the grandest houses, then there were trained cooks with a couple of staff in gentry houses. Plain cooks with no staff in some houses and maids of all work or cooks-general who might do a bit of cooking in households. The kitchen staff included servants up to the late 17th century. The cooks at the plantation were all African women who cooked with the best ingredients and developed all the dishes that would become popular. Having these women cooking brought many traditional African meals to the tables of the English. African meals have inspired many of early American cookbooks too. The people in the south who did eat well were plantation owners who didn’t do any of their own cooking.
These servants were called house slaves. The living conditions of the house slaves were much better than other workers like field workers. They would prepare meals, clean, and attend to their masters. They also ate the family’s leftover which cost nothing. Other slaves had to figure out what they would eat and then get it by either growing it or buying it. Sometimes slave owners gave out rations to the slaves. House slaves were not the only ones who contributed to the meals of their masters. Other slaves did the butchering and grew the plants. House slaves were lucky to work in the house even though they were still enslaved. They were treated with more respect than workers and even got some of the families nicer clothes. This shows that even the slaves that were treated the best still were at the bottom of the social ladder. They didn’t only work in the kitchen they also attended to the pantry.
The pantry was a part of the kitchen house and was used to store food. The pantry was the main storage in the kitchen. It held pots, pans, serving dishes, and foods. Mostly dry foods were kept in the pantry but many others were too. Flour, herbs, and spices were stored in the pantry where they were out of the cook’s way until she needed them. The kitchen was too hot to store foods that spoiled easily, that’s when the pantry came in handy.
In summer Colonists cooked in the summer house. The summer house was essentially an outdoor fireplace or oven. Even though it was used in the summer, food and tools were still stored in the kitchen house. This was important because it kept the cook cool outside instead of cooped up in a hot building. The kitchen house was important because in winter when you didn’t want to stand in the cold there was somewhere to cook inside.
In Colonial America your food depended on your class. If you were a lower class you didn’t have as many food options as the gentry. “The Sumptuary Law of 31 May, 1517 dictated the number of dishes per meal: a cardinal could serve nine dishes, while dukes, marquises, bishops and earls could serve seven. Lower-ranking lords were permitted to serve only six, and the gentry class, with an income of £40–100 per year, could serve three.” Food was one of the ways of showing class because it was limited to many people. Higher-class people had many more options for food because they could afford it. The foods and preparation techniques used by the colonial Virginians varied depending on wealth and social standing of the person
The higher class had many dishes for dinner, about 7-9 with 3-4 meats including pork, fish and oysters, etc.. Many of these meats were only served to the rich because they were either able to buy it or they farmed these animals. Dinner was 50% meat and 50% grains and crops. One of the main crops in colonial America was corn, used throughout all classes in different ways. Dinner took place at two o’clock in the afternoon and was the largest meal of the day. Supper was eaten at sundown and was usually leftover of dinner. Dessert was another way of showing status while guests were over. Pies, cakes, and juices were very popular desserts for the wealthy. Another item only for the highest class was ice cream, another one of the many privileges for the rich. There weren’t many ice boxes so the ones they had were reserved for “relevant” people, not the others. People met in the dining room for dinner while servants and slaves served them platters of food. Some of the food like wafers were restricted all but the highest ranks. Dinner was usually pretty formal but when guest were coming impressing them was the number one priority.
Impressing guests was very important to people. The cook took extra time on the food for them. She would trim the pies with braided dough and sprinkle the cake with sugar. This showed the quality of the cook and their skill. It also showed how put together the family was. Having great food boosted the social appearance of the family. These impressive meals were served on the best dishes the family owned. Some of the wealthier people owned dinnerware that was brought over from England.
Some places like the Governor’s palace served those at the highest of social standings. Professionally trained European cooks known as “principal cooks” were the highest paid servants on the property. They were treated much better than anyone on a plantation. Their training gave them a skill unmatchable to anyone in Virginia. The Governor was able to provide these cooks the best equipped kitchen. The middling class could not provide themselves which such great kitchens, meals, and cooks. In Colonial America the middling class did not get the same food opportunities as the high class. “Though the middling class somewhat reflected the gentry class dinner it had a different aspect too.” The gentry and middling classes shared some foods but had different ones that did not reflect the other.
Many of the main middling meals were the same. The middle-class dinner might be served by one or two servants and consisted of bread, soups, pies, and perhaps meats and fish. One of the breads they had was fluffy spoon bread. It was light, fluffy, and had a custard-like texture. Middle-class workers had a different eating schedule because they had shops to run unlike the gentry who had not much to do. Middle-class workers had to eat later. They couldn’t leave their shops to eat their own dinners until clients and customers had gone. For lunch they would eat at one or two and then hurry back to meet afternoon customers or the whole family would go and eat at a local working class restaurant. Lunch might be the main meal of the day, but more often it was a smaller second meal. Traders and merchants, who sometimes had to stay in the shop to handle the last daylight stragglers amongst their customers, might close shop at dusk and spend the last hour or two of their day in candlelight or firelight but they made it to bed as quickly as they could, to rise early the next day and open up their shops again. Candles were pretty expensive so they were most likely using the firelight. The usually workers breakfast was eaten at work. It consisted of bread and sometimes tea or coffee for those who could afford it. In the middling class one of the main desserts was a toffee dessert. It was made of breadcrumbs and chopped up nuts. The middle class’s food wasn’t that bad but the lowest class was.

In the lower class their main meals consisted of bread or porridge, peas or beans, maybe cabbage, turnips or onions thrown in. Their basic diet was supplemented with whatever meats and vegetables they could find that were affordable. Their meal was much like that of the middle class except there was usually less to eat, and little variety. Working hours were very much the same between middle class and lower class.
Peasants broke off after six or seven hours of work in the morning to have dinner around noon. Later many people in the middle and lower class would began to eat dinner in the evening as the nobles and gentry did. They did this because of the demands of the workplace. Not because they were up all night at parties like the highclass. Many of them retained the traditional dinner hour of noon or one on Sundays, when they were home from work.
While the other classes had servants, slaves, and cooks the lower class’s dinner depended on the skills of the wife. She prepared basic soups and grain porridges. The most common type was hominy, made from corn, often flavored with salt-cured pork and vegetables. The poor were very limited in cooking equipment, often having only one cast iron pot.

In Colonial America tools in cooking were very useful. They had wooden, stone, and iron tools. “Tools were important to many things in the Colonial era including cooking.” Obviously without the tools these cooks had foods and products could not be made. The first settlers that came from England carved all of their utensils out of wood because that’s what surrounded them.
Other wooden tools were spoons and a butter churn. The spoons were for scooping flour and butter. Butter churns could be a thin wooden barrel. The dasher was pumped up and down through the hole at the top. Even though it was more commonly wood butter churns could be a stone crock. Settlers made sure that the churn was spotless because the butter tasted and smelled of its container. Wooden bowls were made from logs. They were cut and hollowed to create a bowl type shape. One of the bowls they had was cut lengthwise and hollowed in the shape of a canoe. It was called a canoe bowl. These bowls were used for eating, mixing, or displaying fruits or vegetables. Iron tools were used very differently.
The only cooking tools made out of iron were tools used in the fire. A peel was used to bake bread. It was a long-handled, flat shovel. It looked like our modern day tools to put pizza in the oven but it isn’t made out of wood. Bread was also toasted over a fire in a iron toaster. The kettles and pots that hung over the fire were attached to a crane with hooks. The system of hooks that could raise and lower pot over a fire was called a trammel. This was important because it kept the cook’s hand away from the fire and helped the cook move pots away from the fire. Many of their tools had long handles. A very useful stone tool was used to grind grains and corn.
The settlers who had no gristmill nearby had to grind grain themselves. They crushed it into a coarse flour using a mortar and pestle. Some settlers owned querns, which ground the grain between two heavy stones. The bottom stone stayed still while the top one was turned by hand. In some ways the Native Americans, English, and Africans had similar tools but some were different.
\Many of the Natives tools were made out of wood and clay. Pots were sculpted out of clay. The early pottery used by the Native Americans was porous. It absorbed liquid so water could boil and over time Native American cookware progressed to include waterproof cooking vessels. Native Americans would create a cooking basket out of large leaves. Gourds were dried and used as bowls, spoons and containers. Corn was ground in carved out wood. It was like a mortar and pestle but bigger.
In Africa they too had bowls made of clay. Plates were just a banana leaf. Some of the people with higher social status ate off European style plates and had a fine mat to sit on while eating. Like the English they used a thick and sturdy cast-iron pot. It was either hung above the fire or balanced over the fire using stones. They also could have buried it in coals. The pots they used were very multipurposed. The pot served as an oven, frying pan, a roaster, and a communal bowl. The Africans also used the mortar and pestle. Some were made out of two heavy stones and other were made out of wood. They were for grinding grains and they would pound the grain by stabbing at it with the pestle. This was a very different technique from the English who kind of rolled their wrists while they were doing. Banana leaves and corn husks were used in many forms of African Cooking. They wrapped the food in banana leaves and then placed it in hot coals ashes or a pot of hot sand. Food was also put in the leaves to be steamed.

In Africa many things were different from England. Some of the things were farming and hunting. “Different cultures all over the world had different approaches to everything. Farming and hunted depended on where you were living and the weather.” In Africa the heat was extreme compared to England where it was quite cool all the time and not all animals lived everywhere. This is important because you can see how different cultures come together to make a dish.
Men hunted many animals including elephants, which gave them ivory used for tools, antelopes, smaller game and fished in rivers and off the coast. Men also raised animals like goats, cattle and sheep. Goats provided them with milk which could be made into butter or cheese. The cattle provided them with meat. Cattle were also a great working animal and were very strong. Sheep gave them wool for clothes. The African men also tended trees which they drew oil and much more.
African women were responsible for the farming and prepared the food. Many crops were brought over from Africa during the transatlantic slave trade, it was what they were eating on the ship. They crops included were rice, okra, tania, black eyed peas, kidney beans and lima bean, later on more crops were brought to North America by the Africans. Peanuts which were ultimately from South America were very popular on English dishes. Sesame, melons, yams, and small seeded grass were also brought from Africa. The crops the Africans tended to were maize, which they only used for livestock, and trees. Trees again gave them oil, various types of bananas, and sap which they made wine from. The wine was called palm wine which was an alcoholic beverage created from the sap of various species of palm tree such as palmyra, date palms, and coconut palms.
Dinner for the slaves/free Africans in the New World included red beans and rice, molasses water and sweet potato pie. Baked macaroni and cheese, potato salad, and kwanzaa brownies were foods for religious and holiday celebrations. Some mealtime customs were fried apples, tomato, cucumber, and onion salad, and fried bologna.
Overall the both genders played a very important role for the wellbeing of their people. The Native Americans gender roles were very similar to African gender roles.
The Native Americans had equally important roles for men and women. The men hunted, fought, collecting meat for their village. Women and children farmed providing crops. Women also collected water, firewood, wild plants, reeds for mats, and clay for pottery. Women and men were both involved in trading. Women traded corn with the English for cloth which they used for clothing, they didn’t have cloth they only had fur and skin.
Men started hunting at age six, trying to kill small animals like squirrels and rabbits. When they got older they hunted many of the wildlife. Bobcats, ducks, geese, wolves, deers, and bears were some of the animals that were hunted. The Native Americans ate a lot of deer and turkey. They had to hunt all of their animals because they didn’t breed them. They also made all of their hunting tools. Their fishing tools included fishing net and line and they used a bow and arrow for hunting.
Women planted communal fields. There were up to 100 acres of corn, beans, squash and more. They used a long pole to ready the soil. It was so the soil was ready for seeds. They also used stone hatchets, pointed sticks, bone shovels, and hoes for farming. After the settlers arrived Native American farming started changing. Many of English methods influenced the Natives but the Natives also influenced them.
The Native Americans had many popular and important foods. Cornbread was a staple of the Native American diet for many years before the Europeans arrived on the continent.. Something else they had was frybread which could be served plain or with honey. The Natives ate a variety of soups, their soup consisted of a combination of available meats, like mutton and buffalo, and vegetables. The black drink was a ceremonial beverage brewed from the leaves and stems of Yaupon Holly and whiskey, made from ground maize. Akutaq, also known as “Eskimo ice cream, made of caribou or moose tallow, meat, berries, seal oil, and sometimes fish.

In England roles for men and women were very different. Only the men would hunt and many regular everyday people didn’t hunt. They would buy meat and fish from markets. Most people in England did not contribute to the farming or hunting, especially women. Only farmers would farm and people would buy crops from them. Some homes had small garden run by the houses mistress and sometimes servants or slaves would farm depending on their master. In Jamestown things were a little different.
Obviously in the first years of settlement in Jamestown men were the only ones hunting, cooking, and farming because there were no women. Even when the women arrived men still continued to hunt because they brought over many English ideas. But women did a lot of the farming along with men. In the New World they needed as many workers as they could get so there was no laying around. Even though they needed a lot of people the higher class was not going to work on the farm.
It wasn’t very fair to women because they were expected to cook and care for the house while men worked and made all they money. There were still many cases where a woman was working or owned and shop/tavern but they didn’t get the same education that men got. If a women was an indentured servant then she would obviously be working because she had no choice. When she broke the contract she would probably marry if she wasn’t already and would become a housewife. Men were given so many opportunities. Women were very dumbed down and could not live out their full potential because of gender restrictions.
In all of the three cultures women and men had very different roles. Even though women and men were treated more equally in African and Native American culture they still didn’t really go out. Women in England really couldn’t do anything.
In Colonial America taverns were a very social place. The taverns of Williamsburg provided food, drink, and an atmosphere that helped drive the American Revolution. Eating there together was one of the most important ways of exchanging information. On many nights the Burgesses finished their day at one of the taverns in Williamsburg to continue political discussions with food and drinks. Most food served in taverns were middle class food, only affordable for some. Even though there was a wide choice of food in taverns they could not provide the same variety that the gentry could.
The taverns had many meats that were served including beef, mutton, veal, pork, house-lamb, and doe venison. They also served poultry like geese, chickens, rabbits, woodcocks, snipes, larks, teals, widgeons, partridges, and pheasants.
There were many ways of preserving meat and fish. They kept meat and fish from going bad by drying them in the sun. They were cut into strips and laid out for many days. The dried meat or fish was added to water and vegetables to make stew. Adding it to water brought it back to its original tenderness.
Fruits were hung on a piece of string to be dried. They were hung by the fireplace to become dried. Dried apples were a favorite winter treat. Herbs were dried in winter when they couldn’t be grown. Vegetables were kept cool in root cellars that were underground. Places that kept things cool were underground, springs, rivers, wells, ice houses. In winter big chunks of ice were cut from a river or lake and put into a big hole in the floor of the ice house. The ice was packed with straw and sawdust to keep it from melting in the hot seasons. It kept the small building cool.
Another method of preserving was salting. Salted meats were popular on ships. To prevent the meat from spoiling it was heavily salted to draw the moisture out. Some types of meat were preserved in the smokehouse. Ham and bacon are examples. Meat was hung inside the smokehouse to give it extra flavor and to preserve it. Hickory wood was very popular. Vegetables like cucumbers, onions, and cabbage were pickled. Pickled meat was packed in a barrel. Vinegar was used for pickling
By the end of the eighteenth century, fashionable gentlemen began to dine with regularity in large taverns. As tavern food gained in popularity, the chefs who cooked the fare began to publish their own cookbooks. These new culinary stars claim not to have learned their trade in a private household, but through methodical study as an apprentice. Food in the taverns had a very homey feel. Most of the food in Colonial America was held in a special place in the heart.
Food in Colonial America was a necessity to everyone. It also reflected class and origin. Your social status and race determined your meal. Slaves were mistreated by only getting minimal food and the English gentry were showered in things they didn’t need. The Native American and Africans meals were very different from English food because of farming, hunting and land. In Colonial America food was savored by most and was a bigger part of people’s lives; in a way it showed who they were. Today food does not have that special connection to people as it once did. We can just order and/or buy any food we want from any culture. In the Colonial world food from different cultures was very limited. Even though the values of food has gone down some people still savor food as much as people in that time did. Food is still a way that people express their culture and beliefs.