Lecture 25: Colonial Cookery in North America
What these people drank is equally as interesting. They drank
wine if they could afford to import it. They drank port and sherry
especially after the English placed trade restrictions on French wine
and lowered taxes on Spanish and Portuguese wines. Beer was
made, but it spoiled very easily in the summer heat, and the yeast
died in the cold winters, so it wasn’t the most popular drink. Vast quantities of rum were imported from the Caribbean, and it
was put into all sorts of bizarre punch and toddy concoctions. There
was also a unique American invention, sour mash whiskey, which
is distilled from corn. Today, the best sour mash whiskey is called
bourbon from Kentucky. They also distilled whiskey from rye,
and as you move northward into the mid-Atlantic states, distilled
apple cider, or applejack, was the drink of choice—but it was also
distilled in the South. The reason hard alcohol caught on to such
an extent has to do with transport; it was easier to carry into the
hinterland than beer or wine and into stores much more easily.New England
Virginia kept in close economic and intellectual contact with
England, and the wealthiest plantation owners threw elaborate
feasts on the same scale as their European counterparts. Pretty much
the opposite is the case with New England. The people who came
were socially very different; they were to a large extent middle-
class mercantile-oriented people from East Anglia. They were also
highly literate and had a long tradition of religious nonconformity.
In other words, they didn’t suddenly become Puritans overnight. There were some noblemen among the New Englanders, but in
general, nearly everyone engaged in commerce, trade, farming,
or fi shing to supply the market. What that means is the wealth is
distributed much more evenly among New Englanders. Their tastes
are comparatively simple and austere, given their Puritan heritage,
but they nonetheless grow very wealthy. New Englanders also tend
to be very reserved and take themselves very seriously.