Colonial American recipes that are common today

[tenngun]

Parmesan and pasta are not something I would have initially thought! How would pasta have been made/used/served?

Parmesan was real popular in the colonies. The oldest recipe for lasagna by that name is an English recipe from cr 1300. text.
Pasta tended to be flat or Pearl.
It becomes more popular after 1800.

 

[Brokennock]

Potatoes?? They are a new world vegetable, & nothing like the potato we know. Even corn in colonial days wasn't what it is now. Homany would be closer to correct. As for beans & peas, those weren't the vegetables you know either.. barley flour would've been more common in a colonial kitchen than any wheat flour. Barley grows better in temperate zones for a bigger faster yeild..

I highly recommend the 1st cookbook published in the U.S.
Published in 1796,,, with quite a backstory on the author and the book.

Available on Amazon, I have the Kindle version on my phone.
Just a quick search of potatoe,,

21 uses of potatoe/s including use in recipes and advice on purchase and handling.

 

[tenngun]

One of the things about colonial recipes is less flavor.
Tomatoes were all most non existent. Pepper flesh was rare. Often cooking used vinegar as a flavor. A meat pie was often meat and salt and pepper few herbs or mixed onion or such. Meat and thick broth in a pastry.
Sweet foods tended to be less sweet. Spices were expensive.
An apple cored wrapped in dough and boiled was a desert.
This isn’t to say it wasn’t good, just a little plainer then today.
They worked hard and lots of butter or cream was common
Rice with a little sugar boiled in milk till a paste was another desert.

 

[TDM]

There must have been a lot of recipes for wild game and fowl which would have been grilled or stuffed and roasted or just roasted ,they would be so common and uncomplicated that they would never be written down .
The potatoes which made it here to New Zealand were introduced by Whaling ships , they were small, purple /blue or red and are still grown today . The corn was maize ( Zee Mays Dent) not sweet corn, The maize dried and kept well but took a lot of processing including soaking to make it edible .
When tomatoes first made it here ,in my grand parents childhood, they were treated with suspicion by many who considered them poisonous , and were eaten by the brave ones as a desert , sliced with cream and sugar

It did indeed take folks a long time to warm up to tomatoes.

 

[TDM]

Rice with a little sugar boiled till a paste was another desert.

Would that have been the fore runner of rice pudding?

 

[Magungo1066]

Thanks for all the thoughts everyone! Good stuff. This is a fun topic. I love cooking and I love to join it with my passion for history. Hearing how/what people ate is a fantastic way to get a glimpse into their daily life. Keep it coming!

 

[Bushfire]

Michael Dragoo is really good at modernising 18th century cooking. Unfortunately his book isn't available in Australia.

 

[TDM]

Michael Dragoo is really good at modernising 18th century cooking. Unfortunately his book isn't available in Australia.

I’ve been meaning to order a cookbook from Townsends for years and haven’t gotten around to it. @Brokennock has a good one above too.

 

[tenngun]

Would that have been the fore runner of rice pudding?

Yes but notably absent is cinnamon that was very expensive and raisins. I don’t think raisins were a product anywhere then in America and had to be imported. I think the Mediterranean was the only supply at the time
Rice was grown here, and you could have rice in New England
Nutmeg was THE spice in early America. Ask Jon Townsend

 

[Brokennock]

Michael Dragoo is really good at modernising 18th century cooking. Unfortunately his book isn't available in Australia.

Even an "E" version like for Kindle?

 

[zimmerstutzen]

Well there are pancakes, BUT you need to omit any baking powder or baking soda...
Pasties... in fact these are found in many areas once colonized by the British.
Hominy..., not hominy grits, but just hominy.....boiled
Pasta, though they would've likely hand cut the noodles....
Boiled oats, but they boiled the kernels whole, while we "roll" them first, or steel cut them, ...
French Toast, but it was a bit different than ours...,
A lot of the sausages haven't changed much...,
Cheddar and Parmesan cheese...,
Blanc Mange...,
You can find commercially made "porter" and "stout" but both have changed a lot since the 1700's....
Hard cider...,


LD

This is curious, since allegedly baking soda was not developed until just before the civil war. Yet, Mary Randolph's, 1830's Cookbook, The Virginia Housewife makes reference to biscuits made with "soda" Sour dough as a leavener was known and used for thousands of years before colonial America. Mary Randolph's cook book also has a recipe for multiplying purchased yeast into yeast cakes to be used for future cooking and baking. She does not make any reference to pearl ash, which is a leavening agent developed in the mid 1700's. In addition, potasium bitartrate had been known and used in baking for thousands of years as a leavening agent. Known more commonly as Cream of Tartar, a bi product of making wine. It is the prime leavening ingredient in my wife's favorite cookies, Snicker doodles. And as I recall the leavening agent in a New England specialty calledcCream biscuits..

The Pennsylvania Dutch make something they call pot pie, which is cooked in a kettle on the stove top and in no way resembles a pie. It is quite a bit more like southern chicken and dumplings. The noodles are thick and 2 inches square and the meat is not always chicken, sometimes beef. The Germans who settled here had several variations on their foods. Scrapple is famous. Lesser known is a thing called mush, which is a loaf of cornmeal simmered in meat broth until thickened. It is sliced and fried like scrapple.. Another similar thing has no con meal, just meat, liver, kidneys, skin, tc, ground fine and simmered until it thickens. It is know as "puddin" and also put into loaf pans. it is usually sliced cold and eaten in sandwiches. Some less commonly found is schnitz und knepp. Dried apples and ham cooked together in a watery broth. This area seems to be the center of the universe for pretzels. whether hard, beer, soft or cheese.. A local farmer's market stand sells gigantic soft pretzels that weigh about 2 pounds and measure 15 inches across. (soft pretzel dough is surprisingly similar to the dough for bagels.) And of course fastnachts a type of potato based doughnut has been made here every shrove Tuesday for centuries. Another thing this area has that many do not, and also comes from central Europe is fermented meat usually in the form of large sausages stuffed into cotton muslin bags and cold smoked. The most famous of which is something called Lebanon Bologna, a fermented semi dry beef sausage, developed here in Lebanon PA before the revolution.

 

[tenngun]

Rodgers Rangers wrote of using bologna as a field ration. Probably closer to the Lebanon bologna then Oscar mayer

 

[TDM]

Yes but notably absent is cinnamon that was very expensive and raisins. I don’t think raisins were a product anywhere then in America and had to be imported. I think the Mediterranean was the only supply at the time
Rice was grown here, and you could have rice in New England
Nutmeg was THE spice in early America. Ask Jon Townsend

Growing up my mother made rice pudding fairly often. With the raisins and cinnamon, she probably used nutmeg too. It was very tasty. I never here of it anymore.

 

[zimmerstutzen]

Growing up my mother made rice pudding fairly often. With the raisins and cinnamon, she probably used nutmeg too. It was very tasty. I never here of it anymore.

Rice pudding is still sold in stores here (PA) , both prepackaged and in deli counters, but it seems only in fall and early winter.

 

[TDM]

Rice pudding is still sold in stores here (PA) , both prepackaged and in deli counters, but it seems only in fall and early winter.

That’s good to know! Wish my wife would make some.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

This is curious, since allegedly baking soda was not developed until just before the civil war. Yet, Mary Randolph's, 1830's Cookbook, The Virginia Housewife makes reference to biscuits made with "soda" Sour dough as a leavener was known and used for thousands of years before colonial America. Mary Randolph's cook book also has a recipe for multiplying purchased yeast into yeast cakes to be used for future cooking and baking. She does not make any reference to pearl ash, which is a leavening agent developed in the mid 1700's. In addition, potasium bitartrate had been known and used in baking for thousands of years as a leavening agent. Known more commonly as Cream of Tartar, a bi product of making wine. It is the prime leavening ingredient in my wife's favorite cookies, Snicker doodles. And as I recall the leavening agent in a New England specialty calledcCream biscuits..

So you have Sodium Carbonate, Soda Ash, in the last decade of the 18th century. It may have been known in crude forms before that. This is likely the "soda" in Mary Randolph's recipe.

Pearl Ash is Potassium Carbonate. It also seems to first make appearance as a known ingredient in the 1790's but was used earlier. The very first patent of any kind, issued in 1790 in The United States was for a process to Samuel Hopkins for a refined method of making peal ash, and potash.

Cream of tartar appears to not be known to the English nor American colonists as a leavening agent, or at least it isn't mentioned in cooking books or confectionry and pastery books. It is interesting as it tends to react when eggs are present due to action with the egg proteins.

Sodium Bicarbonate, and Baking powder -sodium bicarbonate with potassium bitartrate, are both 19th century products.

LD

 

[Brokennock]

Growing up my mother made rice pudding fairly often. With the raisins and cinnamon, she probably used nutmeg too. It was very tasty. I never here of it anymore.

I see it around here from time to time. Occasionally as a desert "special" at certain restaurants. They were even serving it now and then in the cafeteria at one of the last two hospitals I worked at, and I seem to recall seeing it on the patient menu there and at one other hospital.

I don't mind it, not a favorite, but I'll eat it if it's part of a meal being served, thus I haven't made it myself.
Can't be that hard can it?
Why not make some and surprise the wife with desert after one of your meals?

 

[Packrat]

My granddaughter makes her own pasta

 

[Billy Boy]

Hello all I hope all is well! What are some modern recipes that existed as a very, VERY similar/identical dish in Colonial America? I can list a few, mostly from my New England. Off the top of my head I can think of Johnny cakes, boiled dinners, and clam chowder for New England. Potato pancakes/sauerkraut, and scrapple for the middle colonies. It doesn't matter whether the recipes are for the lowliest farmer or a rich plantation owner. I am just interested in some cooking ideas where I can create the modern equivalent of a dish that I already enjoy today. Only interested in stuff from the 1600s-1700s in America. All of this is the same for sides/additions such as pickles or "salets" Thanks all!

All kinds if smoked meat and fish..

 

[nkbj]

Fricassees were common with any meat (or fowl) and whatever veggies (and sometimes fruits) were available. Fry the meat and flour in the dutch oven, add any liquids, the veggies and spices, cover and cook. Still an excellent way to make dinner.