Home >
Departments > Food Services
> Food Fun > Pioneer Times
FOOD SERVICES
Fun with Food
With the recent presentation of PBS Frontier
House documenting 21st century American
families living in a time warp for 6 months in 1883 Montana
– we wondered
– could we have done that?
Can you imagine yourself and your family living under
the conditions they did for a period of time?
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/frontierhouse/frontierlife
Imagine climbing into a covered
wagon built of hickory wood and canvas. You have stocked up
your “must have” belongings which primarily consist of
tools to fix the wagon, the thinning soles on your shoes, your
clothes which you may wear months on end and wash
infrequently, and to plow a new field for a garden.
Not to mention the logging tools to build your new log
cabin. The wagon
cannot hold more then 2,000 lbs. so if you have a few people
in your family you will need to share the space.
Most
of the pioneer families started west across the nation from
the east coast. Their
ancestors came from Europe and they had been in the country
for a generation or two. As they strolled along the Atlantic beaches where summer
homes were built by the wealthy, they talked about the vast
amount of rich soil and the gold rumored to exist in the
western region. As more and more people discussed this “magical” way of
life ( imagining riches and the
abundant food and water) hundreds decided to pack up
and start a new life.
The
First Step
The first pioneer’s traveled as
far as the Appalachian Mountains in the 1760’s. By 1783
pioneer’s had continued on to the Mississippi River and by
the 1800’s they were claiming areas well beyond that point.
It wasn’t until the mid 1800’s that families
settled in the Great Plains, pacific coast and southwest areas
(Texas).
If
you were in charge of packing food for your family’s covered
wagon - what
would you pack?
You would need to consider that the
wagon is so bumpy that most of the time you would be walking
beside the wagon during the day and then sleeping in it or
under it throughout the night. You would be traveling 10 to 15 miles a day if weather
permitted. It
would take you 5 to 7 days to get to the point where it only
takes you an hour to get in the 21st century.
If you were walking this much for months, you can bet
that your family would be very hungry when they stopped to
rest and eat a mid day meal and a supper just before dark (and
don’t forget breakfast which was eaten well before 7:00
a.m.).
Frontier
Fact
(Source: PBS Frontier House)
Though
iceboxes were available beginning in the 1830’s, most
settlers did not have regular access to ice.
To chill foods such as butter, homesteaders placed them in
earthen crocks in springs or wells.
As
you think about the foods you would pack remember that you
wouldn’t have had many spices with you, maybe one or two.
Food was very bland in those days compared to what we’re
accustomed too. People
were not familiar in that era with the international fusion of
flavors and foods that we are accustom to today.
The wagon would be equipped with a
very large wooden water barrel.
You would have another wooden barrel packed with cured
meat in brine, another with dried meat.
You could pack your cast iron pot and cauldron (most
meals were made in one large pot), a meat grinder for grinding
raw meat before cooking or making sausage, and several very
sharp knives for hunting and slicing up veggies.
Your main food staple would be
corn. Pioneer’s
ate dried corn, cream corn, hull corn, dried corn mush, corn
bread and ground it up (corn meal) for flour and gravies.
Berries were picked along the trails and preserved for
jellies and jams. Dried
fruits were very popular as were fruit drinks.
Many pioneers’ would let raspberries cure overnight
in water and vinegar and then add the syrup the next day to
water or soda water. This
was a favorite summer drink.
Other popular foods were doughnuts,
bacon, eggs, dried meat, potatoes, rice, beans and crackers.
Yeast was essential for the trip – it was used often
for baking. If
you had a cow it was also taken on the journey for milk or
sometimes meat.
Frontier
Fact
(Source: PBS
Frontier House)
One popular “coffee substitute”
recipe advised settlers to roast molasses-soaked bran in the
oven until it was charred black.
The bran could then be ground like coffee beans, and
the resultant brew was
“a
very tasty drink for a number of months.”
When the pioneer’s finally
arrived to their destination they often bought large lots of
land to farm. Many
of them were farmers although doctor’s, lawyer’s, and
shopkeepers were common.
Whatever their profession – everyone needed land to
farm – even if they were their to prospect for gold!
Land was so plentiful that it was
often given away for free in land lotteries.
Homestead claims were either chosen for you or were
purchased by the families for up to $2.00 per acre, which was
very expensive at the time. Cabin sites were chosen and most of the summer and spring
months were spent preparing the ground for gardens whose crops
would have to last the families for the winter.
If it snowed in June (like it did at Frontier House)
families could nearly starve for the next couple months.
Critters from all over the territory were also an enemy
of the garden. If
cabins were not built by a stream or river then a water-well
was dug nearby.
Once the families had built their
cabins and planted their crops they could began preparing for
pickling meats or vegetables, preserving fruit, drying meats
and fruit with cheesecloth and curing meats in brine.
It was much easier to store meats during the winter
when freezing temperatures allowed the easiest storage (hang
over a wooden pole).
Frontier
Fact
(Source: PBS
Frontier House)
Prior
to the early 20th century, there were no laws
governing tampering with food products; storekeepers on the
frontier quickly discovered that it was profitable to
“stretch” their inventories.
It was not uncommon for a pound of flour purchased in
a general store to be half plaster.
Cornmeal was “plumped” with sawdust.
Coffee might contain dyed navy beans, dry-roasted
peas, or even small pebbles.
Luckily for the homesteaders, they often lived a
prohibitive distance from the nearest store, and “trips to
town” were few and far between.
Pioneer
Sites
Breakfast
Dinner and Supper, 1897 cookbook by Maud C.
Cooke
Sample
Cranberry
Water (a table drink)
Boil cranberries with half their weight
in sugar, and half their measure of water; simmer half an hour
and strain through a jelly-bag.
Cool and drink with cracked ice.
What
to serve with Meats –
Roast Beef – Grated horseradish,
Worcestershire sauce, pickles.
Roast Pork – Applesauce or cranberry
sauce;
Roast Veal – Tomatoes or mushroom
sauce.
Roast Goose – Applesauce, cranberry
sauce or current jelly
Corned Beef
- Mustard
Boiled Mutton – Caper sauce;
Boiled Chicken – Bread sauce
Boiled Turkey – Oyster Sauce;
Pioneer Doughnuts from The
Little House Cookbook http://tqjunior.thinkquest.org/6400/recipes.htm
Pioneer Cooking – 21st
Century Style, The Parent Paper
http://tanzania.northjersey.com/publications/paretpaper/page.php?page=167
School Meals
and Services | Menu and Nutrient
Analysis |
Nutrition Information & Resources
| The Fun Side of Food |
Activities | Employment
Opportunities
Pioneer Times
For
more information contact: