What people ate in colonial America largely depended on where they lived. Due to differences in climate, available natural resources and cultural heritage of the colonists themselves, the daily diet of a New Englander differed greatly from his counterparts in the Middle Colonies—New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware—and even more so from those in the South.
But one constant across all of the 13 colonies was that aside from imported goods such as spices, molasses and rum, people in the pre-Revolutionary War era mostly consumed food they produced themselves. They sowed corn, caught fish, hunted wild game and raised farm animals for meat, as well as milk to make their own butter and cheese. They planted vegetables in their kitchen gardens, brewed their own beer and pressed their own cider.
The 13 Colonies
Though regional, seasonal and other differences make it difficult to generalize about a typical colonial diet, the following seven foods and beverages are a small sample of what might have been found on many colonial tables.
With its multicolored white, blue, red and brown hues, flint corn—also known as 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 it and how to grind it into meal. Corn became a dietary staple across all 13 colonies, with cornmeal used in favorite recipes such as hasty pudding (corn boiled in milk) and johnnycakes, a fortifying and highly portable food similar to pancakes.
Wild Game (Including Pigeon)
An 1896 drawing of the Passenger Pigeon, which was hunted into extinction.
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 better-known (by modern standards) options, many colonists enjoyed eating passenger 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. Passenger pigeon was such a popular dish, in fact, that the birds eventually went extinct; the last known passenger pigeon died in 1914.
Like many colonial dishes, pigeon pie had British roots, and a recipe was included in Eliza Smith’s The Compleat Housewife: or Accomplished 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 likely have been found in any well-to-do household in the late colonial era, when the mid-day “dinner” could consist of three courses, with multiple dishes per course.
“They are eating high-end British food,” says Lavada Nahon, a culinary historian specializing in the Mid-Atlantic region from the 17th-19th centuries. “We’re not talking about post-industrial British cuisine here—this is the height of British food.”
Potted Meat
In an era long before refrigeration, popular 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 fat) before capping it. Potting kept meat safe for weeks or even months; cooks would then open the pot and slice off pieces to serve for a meal.
Pickles
Another common way 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 beef was commonly pickled in vinegar and brine and preserved in large wooden barrels. Colonial brines were likely flavored with salt, saltpeter and spices, but they would not have 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 sugar cookies, though far less sweet. Recipes appeared in cookbooks in England as early as 1585, and the cookies became a popular staple in the colonies. “You will find recipes for jumble cookies by the thousands,” says Nahon; even Martha Washington was said to have her own. A recipe in The Compleat Housewife calls for egg whites, flour, sugar 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-minded culture 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 gray, but that is so not true. We have a lot of richness here.”
Pepper Cake
Black pepper’s antibacterial properties make it a good preservative, and this imported spice took center stage in the pepper cake, a gingerbread-like loaf flavored with black pepper and molasses and studded with candied fruits. The classic colonial-era recipe for “pepper cakes ye will keep halfe a year” was included in The Book of Cookery, a handwritten manuscript given to Martha Washington on the occasion of her marriage to her first husband, Daniel Custis, in 1749.
Syllabub
Syllabub is a traditional English dessert made with whipped cream and alcohol.
Colonial Americans drank a lot of alcohol, and this popular drink-dessert dating to the 18th century combined sweetened whipped cream with wine or hard cider. The resulting frothy concoction was often 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.
In 1590, the settlers of Roanoke—the first English colony in the New World—were discovered to be missing. The only clues: five buried chests and the word "Croatoan," a Native American village nearby, carved on a post. Archaeologists search for answers.
Colonial cooks fried, roasted, baked, and boiled. They used many of the same foodstuffs found in today's groceries: beef, lamb, pork, chicken, fish, vegetables, and baked goods. Then as now, coffee, tea, and chocolate were popular beverages. Beyond these common roots, though, little was the same as it is today.
Colonial cooks fried, roasted, baked, and boiled. They used many of the same foodstuffs found in today's groceries: beef, lamb, pork, chicken, fish, vegetables, and baked goods. Then as now, coffee, tea, and chocolate were popular beverages. Beyond these common roots, though, little was the same as it is today.
Those animals settled in the colonies along with the people and became a source of food. After a time people started hunting for deer, turkey, ducks and geese. They also were able to fish for cod and flounder and catch lobster and clams. Farmers grew corn, wheat, rice, barley, oats, squash, pumpkins and beans.
Deer, turkeys, ducks, partridges, and quail were frequently hunted, and freshwater fish supplemented the colonial diet. Beekeeping was also an established practice, which provided a local supply of honey. People in the middle colonies also seasoned their food with herbs that were both cultivated and harvested wild.
Colonists also harvested wild animals from hunting and fishing to supplement their diet with important protein. These included rabbit, squirrel, possum, raccoon, deer, bear, and fowl as well as many types of fish and shellfish.
Many colonists ate seafood such as a fish called Sturgeon and Sea Turtles. They also ate food that was imported from Britain. The colonists had to even eat their livestock and snakes during the winters when there was minimal food! The everyday people wore sim- ple, hand-stitched clothes made out of linen and wool.
Europeans transplanted old favorites — quinces, apples and peaches — to the New World. They enjoyed new varieties of fruits — strawberries, cherries, and grapes — in America that had closely related cousins in England and Europe. Then, they added to their diet fruits naturally indigenous to the Americas.
See venison, turkey and other game roast over an open fire, while stews of corn, beans and squash cook in clay pots. Learn the importance of corn to the Powhatan Indians and the variety of dishes in which it was used, including corncakes and corn dumplings.
Chestnuts and pecans were foraged and eaten out of hand, as were wild plums and blackberries. Along the coast, the waters teemed with shrimp and the mudflats were rife with oysters. On the Georgia frontier, deer and bear, along with smaller game like squirrels and rabbits, were the primary meats.
Introduced staple food crops, such as wheat, rice, rye, and barley, also prospered in the Americas. Some of these grains—rye, for example—grew well in climates too cold for corn, so the new crops helped to expand the spatial footprint of farming in both North and South America.
Now colonists ate a remarkably rich and varied diet of European and American grains and vegetables. They had livestock, poultry and wild game, as well as exotic foods like chocolate, rum, spices and sugar from the West Indies and tea and spices from East Asia.
The rural poor often hunted and ate squirrel, opossum, rabbit, and other woodland animals. Salted or smoked pork often supplemented the vegetable diet. Those on the "rice coast" ate ample amounts of rice, while the southern poor and slaves used cornmeal in breads and porridges.
The Roanoke colonization episode lasted from 1585 until 1590, and during that time, around 100 settlers scrounged to survive until finally disappearing. During the first winter of 1585-1586, the colonists were able to get sufficient corn, venison, oysters, and fish from local Native American groups to feed themselves.
The earliest colonists found a bounty of foods in their new land, including peaches, figs, muscadines, pumpkins, squash, game, fish, nuts, and corn. Africans made enormous contributions to the culinary traditions—okra, field peas, eggplant, peanuts, and yams came from Africa.
Colonists had plenty of meat – pigs ran wild, almost anyone could hunt, chickens and rabbits were cheap – and grew almost every vegetable that we do on the same soil today. Most colonists (some 95%) lived in farming communities and food was plentiful.
Now colonists ate a remarkably rich and varied diet of European and American grains and vegetables. They had livestock, poultry and wild game, as well as exotic foods like chocolate, rum, spices and sugar from the West Indies and tea and spices from East Asia.
A typical comfortably fixed family in the late 1700s probably served two courses for dinner. The first course included several meats plus meat puddings and/or deep meat pies containing fruits and spices, pancakes and fritters, and the ever-present side dishes of sauces, pickles and catsups...
The Roanoke colonization episode lasted from 1585 until 1590, and during that time, around 100 settlers scrounged to survive until finally disappearing. During the first winter of 1585-1586, the colonists were able to get sufficient corn, venison, oysters, and fish from local Native American groups to feed themselves.
A “rough sort” of the tens of thousands of bones suggests the colonists ate horses, rats, and venomous snakes during the Starving Time. Cattle bones were scarce in the years before 1610, when meat was shipped from England in barrels, but became more common after live cattle arrived in Virginia in 1610 or 1611.
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