Cuisine of My Ancestors: Early European American

Continued from Holiday Series: The Cuisine of My Ancestors

My early American ancestors were English and migrated to Massachusetts in the 1600s. That gives me a time period spanning some 400 years for choosing recipes. That's a long time to cover! The time period I focused on is the 1700s, because there are many good sources for recipes. Many old cookbooks are now public domain and available free online. Plus, there are a number of websites keen on preserving early American history, skills, traditions, and recipes. 

Menu

Salt Pork and Pease

"French" Bread

Ginger-bread Cakes

Ale

Salt Pork and Pease

This recipe comes from AmericanRevolution.org. The asterisks by the ingredients indicate changes I made to the recipe.

Ingredients

• 2 lbs salt pork*, rinsed and cut into small chunks
• 4 cups water (or enough to cover the pork in the pot)
• 2 cups dried peas*, soaked overnight and drained
• 4 large potatoes, *peeled and quartered
• 1 large onion, chopped
• Salt* (if needed, depending on the saltiness of the pork)
• pepper to taste

Instructions

• Put the pork in a large pot and add water until covered. 
• Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer for about 1 hour.
• Add the soaked and drained peas, potatoes, and onion. 
• Return to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until the vegetables are tender and the peas have broken down slightly (45 min to 1 hour).
• Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper.
• Serve hot.

Recipe Notes:

• I couldn't find salt pork so I used fresh pork. But I think using fresh instead of salt pork likely changed the texture of the stew, because salt pork is drier and saltier. So I'm not satisfied that our eating experience was truly "authentic." 
• I substituted split peas for whole dried peas
• I didn't peel the potatoes and chopped them to the same size as the meat chunks
• I added 2 teaspoons of salt and 1/8 tsp pepper.
• Next time I would use bone broth for the liquid instead of water. 

How did we like it? 

• It was what I'd call plain, hearty fare. Easy to make, very tasty, and very filling. Our kind of winter food.
• It's a recipe I'd like to experiment with. Maybe substitute lentils for the peas and ground pork for cut up chunks. If I can ever find salt pork, I'd like to try it with that.

"French" Bread 

I put "French" in quotes because this isn't like our modern French bread. Yet it's a very old recipe, dating back to 1665 and found in numerous 18th century cookbooks. This one comes Dr. William Salmon's 1710 The Family Dictionary: Or, Household Companion. (The link will take you to Internet Archive where you can download a free public domain PDF copy).

Why did they call it French bread? After watching the Townsend's video, Ancient Bread: 350 year old recipe, it seems it's because the ingredients and pricing of bread used to be legally set. Most of the cooking at the time was done in large fireplaces, so regular folk didn't often have ovens. Instead of baking bread, they bought it from a baker. Price controls kept the sale price of bread low, but meant the bakers had a difficult time making ends meet, so they also sold what they called French bread, to differentiate it from legal bread. As a specialty bread it wasn't subject to government pricing. 

Here's the original recipe I used, found on page 209.

And here's my adaptation of the above recipe.

Ingredients

• 4+ cups flour
• 2 teaspoons ale yeast
• 1.5 tsp salt
• 4 tbsp melted butter
• 3 eggs
• enough warm milk or water to make a soft dough

Instructions

• Make the sponge
• Stir warm water into about half the flour. The mixture should resemble pancake batter. 
• Cover with a cotton towel and set aside for 12 to 16 hours until the yeast is active and bubbly
• Dissolve the yeast in warm water and let proof.
• Add the beaten eggs and yeast to the sponge and mix well. 
• In another bowl, mix the remaining flour, butter, and salt together. 
• Add flour mixture to the sponge and mix into a soft dough. Knead minimally.
• Let rise in a covered bowl 1.5 to 2 hours or until doubled in bulk.
• Shape into rolls. 
• Let rise about half an hour
• Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
• Bake the rolls for 30-35 minutes or until they sound hollow when tapped.

Recipe Notes:

• The Townsend's video uses a slightly different recipe, but gives a good idea of dough handling and texture. It's meant to be a soft dough with minimal kneading to not develop the gluten.
• Flour. My questions was, what type of flour? Almost all modern versions of this recipe call for all-purpose or unbleached flour. They did have unbleached white flour during this time period, so I ended up using that, even though it was mostly used by the wealthier class of people (which wouldn't have been us!)
• Yeast. Originally barm was used for baking leavened breads. Barm is the yeasty foam that forms on ale and beer as it's fermenting. Ale barm is preferred for bread because beer contains hops which imparts a bitter flavor to the bread. I don't brew so I substituted ale yeast. Bread yeast could be used, but ale yeast imparts a more traditional flavor to historical breads like this one.
• Because ale yeast isn't formulated to rise bread, the rolls were heavier than typical. But they rose well enough and were perfect with the stew. Ale yeast isn't something I usually buy, so next time I'd make them with baker's yeast.
• It could have used a little more salt.

Ginger-bread Cakes

This one is from The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy published in 1796 by Hannah Glasse, page 209. (The link will take you to Internet Archive where you can download a free public domain PDF copy).

A modern version can be found at ColonialWilliamsburg.org. They halved the original recipe and I halved theirs. 

Ingredients

• 3 cups unbleached flour
• ½ cup sugar
• ½ cup. butter, softened
• 1 tbsp. ground ginger
• 1/2 tbsp. ground nutmeg
• 1/2 cup molasses
• 2 tbsp cream

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 375°F (190°C)
• In a large mixing bowl, blend dry ingredients thoroughly.
• Warm the molasses and cream together in a small saucepan, stirring to blend. 
• Work the butter into the flour mixture with your hands until evenly mixed.
• Add the molasses and cream mixture and work it up into a stiff dough. If too dry, add a little more cream to it. The dough should be stiff but not dry.
• Roll out the dough on a floured surface about ¼ inch thick and cut into whatever shape you please. 
• Bake for about 8 to 10 minutes. They should still be soft to the touch before they come from the oven, not hard.

To cut the dough into cookies, I used an old cookie cutter that was my great-grandmother's.

Yield: 35 three-inch cookies.

Recipe notes

• No leavening, not even eggs. So I was curious how the baked texture would turn out. I was pleasantly surprised. The cookies were soft and tasty.
• The ingredient amounts were perfect. The dough is very stiff. The warmed molasses made it pliable for the first batch, but I needed to add a spoonful of milk after that so the dough would be workable for rolling out.
• The flavor was just a bit different from the Ginger Cookies I usually make (recipe here). The texture was different because that recipe has eggs and baking soda. But it was also the spices. My ginger cookies contain cinnamon, ginger, and cloves. But this old-fashioned recipe used only ginger and nutmeg. Lots of nutmeg. So they were different but good!
• This would be the perfect recipe for gingerbread men. 

I have to say that it somehow seems significant that my first recipe post in this series is for early American cuisine and falls on our Thanksgiving Day. Thanksgiving first became an official holiday in 1863 and was set as the 4th Thursday in November in 1941. While my early American ancestors didn't have a set holiday or traditional meal as we think of it, they did know how to be thankful. So thankfulness is part of my heritage.

I'll close with a link to a related post from my genealogy series last year: 

Christmas Songs of My Ancestors: Early American

Next up, our Native American meal.

Cuisine of My Ancestors: Early European American

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