What Animals Did The Middle Colonies Hunt

What people ate in colonial America largely depended on where they lived. Due to differences in climate, available natural resource and cultural heritage of the colonists themselves, the daily diet of a New Englander differed greatly from his counterparts in the Heart Colonies—New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware—and even more so from those in the South.

Merely ane abiding across all of the thirteen colonies was that bated from imported goods such as spices, molasses and rum, people in the pre-Revolutionary War era mostly consumed nutrient they produced themselves. They sowed corn, caught fish, hunted wild game and raised farm animals for meat, also equally milk to make their ain butter and cheese. They planted vegetables in their kitchen gardens, brewed their own beer and pressed their own cider.

Though regional, seasonal and other differences arrive difficult to generalize about a typical colonial diet, the following 7 foods and beverages are a minor sample of what might have been found on many colonial tables.

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Indian Corn

A bunch of flintstone corn.

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With its multicolored white, bluish, red and brown hues, flint corn—also known equally Indian corn—is one of the oldest varieties of corn. It was a staple food for Native Americans, who essentially saved the earliest colonists from starvation by teaching them how to plant the crop, when to harvest information technology and how to grind information technology into meal. Corn became a dietary staple across all 13 colonies, with cornmeal used in favorite recipes such as jerky pudding (corn boiled in milk) and johnnycakes, a fortifying and highly portable food similar to pancakes.

READ MORE: 6 Common Jobs in Colonial America

Wild Game (Including Pigeon)

An 1896 drawing of the Passenger Pigeon, which was hunted into extinction.

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Colonial forests were packed with wild game, and turkey, venison, rabbit and duck were staples of the colonists' meat-heavy diets. In addition to these meliorate-known (by modern standards) options, many colonists enjoyed eating rider pigeons. The birds were incredibly plentiful in colonial times, and their meat was prepared in many ways—including boiled, roasted and baked into pie—similar to the way we use chicken today. Rider pigeon was such a pop dish, in fact, that the birds eventually went extinct; the last known passenger pigeon died in 1914.

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Like many colonial dishes, pigeon pie had British roots, and a recipe was included in Eliza Smith's The Compleat Housewife : or Achieved Gentlewoman's Companion, a cookbook originally published in London that became the first to be published in the colonies in 1742. The popularity of Smith's book reflected the dominant influence of British cuisine on the colonial diet. The Compleat Housewife would probable have been found in whatever well-to-do household in the late colonial era, when the mid-day "dinner" could consist of 3 courses, with multiple dishes per form.

"They are eating high-end British food," says Lavada Nahon, a culinary historian specializing in the Mid-Atlantic region from the 17th-19th centuries. "Nosotros're not talking about post-industrial British cuisine here—this is the acme of British food."

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Potted Meat

In an era long earlier refrigeration, pop methods of food preservation included drying, salting, smoking and brining, or some combination of these. Another method used to preserve meat was potting. This involved cooking the meat and packing it tightly into a jar, then covering it with butter, lard or tallow (beef fatty) before capping it. Potting kept meat prophylactic for weeks or even months; cooks would then open the pot and slice off pieces to serve for a repast.

Pickles

Another common fashion of preserving food was pickling, an ancient method that colonists used for everything from meat and fish to fruits and vegetables. A dish of pickled vegetables was a favorite side dish on colonial tables, while beefiness was commonly pickled in vinegar and brine and preserved in large wooden barrels. Colonial brines were probable flavored with salt, saltpeter and spices, but they would not take contained garlic, which Nahon says was seen as purely medicinal until the 19th century.

Jumble Cookies

Jumble cookies—sometimes spelled "jumbal"—can be considered the ancestors of modern saccharide cookies, though far less sweet. Recipes appeared in cookbooks in England as early on every bit 1585, and the cookies became a popular staple in the colonies. "You will find recipes for jumble cookies past the thousands," says Nahon; even Martha Washington was said to take her own. A recipe in The Compleat Housewife calls for egg whites, flour, saccharide and caraway seeds mashed into a paste, and Nahon says colonial cooks often flavored their jumble cookies with rosewater, a Middle Eastern import that reflected the vibrant trade and open up-minded civilisation Dutch settlers had established in the Middle Colonies from the beginning. "There were a variety of foodways here," says Nahon. "When you say the colonial era, everyone thinks everything is grey, merely that is so not true. We have a lot of richness here."

Pepper Cake

Black pepper's antibacterial properties brand information technology a good preservative, and this imported spice took center stage in the pepper block, a gingerbread-like loaf flavored with black pepper and molasses and studded with candy-coated fruits. The classic colonial-era recipe for "pepper cakes ye volition keep halfe a year" was included in The Volume of Cookery , a handwritten manuscript given to Martha Washington on the occasion of her spousal relationship to her offset husband, Daniel Custis, in 1749.

Syllabub

Syllabub is a traditional English dessert made with whipped cream and alcohol.

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Colonial Americans drank a lot of alcohol, and this popular drink-dessert dating to the 18th century combined sweetened whipped cream with vino or difficult cider. The resulting frothy concoction was oftentimes served on special occasions. Amelia Simmons' American Cookery, which in 1796 became the first cookbook by an American to be published in the United States, included a recipe for syllabub that called for the cook to flavor cider with sugar, grate nutmeg into it—and milk a cow directly into the liquor.

Source: https://www.history.com/news/13-colonies-food-drink

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