SEPTEMBER 2019 81
their families. In diaries and travel
journals, the settlers dwell mostly on
daily challenges and failures, while
descriptions of food appear as if to
substitute for joy, providing the only
light-hearted moments in a narrative
of hardships.
“The soldier whom the horse kicked
died just as we reached camp,” Eliza
Griffin Johnston, artist and wife of a
Confederate general, wrote on Nov. 3,- “He left the Breaks but a week
since, in fine health and buoyant
hopes and now he is nothing but dust
and ashes.” Johnston follows six days
later with this entry: “Ellen makes
very nice rolls and between venison,
chicken’s eggs, cornbread, fresh butter,
potatoes, apples, and dried peaches,
we fare quite sumptuously.”
As pioneers put down roots and
began to build communities, Texas’ re-
gional cuisine evolved. Settlers imbued
the flavors brought from the places
they’d left behind into the ingredients
they cultivated in their new home. For
East Texans, this meant corn and pork.
Corn, a prolific crop developed by Na-
tive Americans from a wild grass, pro-
vided settlers with options: It could
be ground, soaked, boiled, baked, fer-
mented, popped, fried, and kept year-
round. It also fed hogs—in the state’s
forested areas, farmers kept hogs in
pens or turned them loose to forage. As
Ingredients, and the
meals they com-
posed, were deter-
mined by what could
be locally gathered,
raised, or hunted,
then prepared in
manners that had
been used for gen-
erations or replicated
the flavors of home.