The History of American Food

Listen to "065 Cream & Pudding & Cake that is Not a Lie" on Spreaker. Link to the Episode:  Episode 65 Pudding & Cream & Cake that is Not a Lie 18th Century, pre-revolutionary cake was generally a heavy dense thing compared to our modern, airy baking powder assisted cakes.  The only leavening was yeast and eggs.  And sugar?  Expensive.  Cakes were definitely less sweet.  If you were not wealthy, or it wasn't a wedding, birth or a death,  molasses and maple syrup (more generally known as "maple molasses" in the 18th century) would stand in.  And these too would tend to make your cake more dense as well. It was also common for cakes to be only slightly sweetened and then studded with dried or sugared fruit - think fruit cake.  Either the dense bricky stuff of English descent - or the new Italian star of the modern American winter holiday scene, panettone 18th century cake American cakes were largely thick, moist things that wer...

Listen to "064 Milk & Butter Money" on Spreaker. Link to the Episode: Episode 64 Milk & Butter Money The Dairy Maid arrives on the scene.  Unlike so many depictions of this or that type of colonial person or other, which tend to be overly idealized depictions, the representation of Dairy Maids is not too far off. She's going to be seen in a colonial dress (don't forget the cap or head wrap), and apron and carrying pails, hanging out with cows, or seated at a churn.  The main place they miss is giving her slim forearms and shoulders.  Between the milking,  the carrying and the churning, she would be a first pick for any arm-wrestling team.   Colonial Williamsburg did lots of the heavy lifting for me - and has excellent photographs of 18th century dairymaid dress , and the dairy out buildings - as well as longer explanations of how they functioned. Dairy House in Colonial Williamsburg Long eaves and slats - but no windows.  And a stone foundation...

Listen to "063 Beef - It's American Food Now" on Spreaker. Link to the Episode: Episode 63 Beef - It's American Food Now Beef - it's tossing off its "food only for royalty and knights".  Sure it's still a food for the rich man, but more men, especially in the colonies are rich enough. But first, don't we all deserve an escape into childhood, with a few Bugs Bunny Highjinx? Slim-hipped and long horn bulls - here we go: Bully for Bugs Take a left turn at Albuquerque (Incidentally - another connection to de Oñate) Coronado - on the search for the 7 cities of gold.  Well, it was a grand if failed adventure, and seeded the area with Spanish Oxen (and horses and pigs and goats) de Oñate - largely a pretty brutal dude.  But he also brought a bunch of cattle that changed the fate of Texas to be. Oh - and since somehow it's all New Mexico humor all the time, can't leave out the Simpsons: Whoa, Whoa! Slow down there maestro. There's a New Mex...

Listen to "062 Rice - In the Carolina Kitchen" on Spreaker.  Link to the Episode: Episode 62 Rice - In the Carolina Kitchen You say to yourself - I'll keep the range small.  But when it comes to rice only the grains are small, the history is huge.  So no matter how small a range in space or time you chose, it's going to be a dive.  And what makes it worse is that the research on the travel of rice around the world is both vague, and there seems to be a lot of pride tied to it.  So even the way rice is going to be officially explained is stymied by different collections of what "everybody knows". But this week was a look at the food history of the 18th century colonial rice.  Rice was (eventually) chosen because it could turn a profit - and it worked in the climate. The worst part is that making it an export cash crop created some of the cruelest and deadliest conditions for enslaved workers in the colonies outside sugar.  The wetland rice fields requi...

Listen to "061 18th Century North American Rice - A History" on Spreaker.  Link to the Episode: Episode 61 Rice has Arrived & It is Boiled Rice comes to America at least three separate times.  The first time is in the end of the 17th and the start of the 18th century, when it becomes an economic force in South Carolina - and later Georgia. Unlike later rice, this rice is came most recently from Africa.  The export rice that will build family fortunes is an Oryza sativa  or Asian sourced variety, but it was a variety that was grown previously in Africa - by Africans.   But there was also Oryza glaberrima a rice of entirely African extraction.  Unlike the O. sativa  rice, it grows more like other cereal - simply in the dirt, instead of in rice paddies that must be transplanted, flooded and drained. Navigational Alchemy View the world like a compass and astrolabe only sailor.  As someone who recently felt proud of herself for being able to...

Listen to "060 Cider - The Drink of Liberty! Only Royalists Drink Beer" on Spreaker.   Link to the Episode: Episode 60 Cider! The Drink of Liberty - Beer is for Royalists I might be some leather stocking woodland ruffian - but at least I'm drinking the drink of the good and the just - Cider!  At least in the increasingly heated beverage judging of the 18th century, that's how cider could come out.  OK - that's an exaggeration, most people just drank their non-water beverages and enjoyed them.  But like last week, there was an element of good or bad, better or best to one's choice in tipple as the political environment was getting het-up in the middle of the 18th century.  Now that there were several choices in drink. While cider and dessert apples were imports from (mainly) England - the cider and pie became symbols of America - despite their foreign origins. In the 18th century, they were simply a big part of food and drink due to their cooperative nature. ...