What did people eat in the 1800's?

Great question, OP, I've wondered about that myself. Also, how did they cook using wood stoves? Must have been difficult to maintain the temperature.

Possum Stew!

Baking powder didn't come into use until the mid-1800s.

Much more grains and vegetables, and much less meat, dairy and processed foods.

Back then only rich people got fat because they ate rich foods (meat, dairy and baked trats with lots of sugar and oil) on a meal-to-meal basis. They were typically the only ones who got fat, gout, heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

Middle class people today eat and drink like only kings used to.

If I had to guess, I'd say a lot of soups, eggs and apples.

Lots of stews, because they would keep for days. There would be a big pot of stew on the stove, and the household would just help themselves.

Mutton stew

No prosciutto wrapped in melon, or dry-aged beef, R6?

Oh, the humanity!

"1950's and 1970's, but what about the 1800's? What did people eat then?"

An abundant crop of ripe misused apostrophes.

Salt pork and corn mush

Beans

Eggs were a luxury. You had to keep chickens to get eggs and if they didn't lay you did without.

We depended on Pellegrino Artusi.

All foods were natural. No preservatives and their life expectancy was 40.

What did people eat in China, France and Italy in the 1800's?

R13, see r11 for Italian cooking in the 19th century.

Eating then was about survival not pleasure

[quote] What did people eat in China, France and Italy in the 1800's?

France: Rabbit, vegetables, stews, duck, veal, etc.

Italy: Pasta, meatballs, tomato sauce, veal, pork, chicken

China: Noodles, soups, pork, dumplings

Rich Anglo-Americans ate a lot of stuff in aspic, formed in elaborate molds.

Chicken fricassee was a popular 19th century dish that has disappeared. It was one of Abe Lincoln's favorites. This recipe is from The American Frugal Housewife,1832.

3 lb whole chicken, or parts

Large onion

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons flour

1 ½ cups hot water or broth

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon pepper

½ teaspoon mace

1 tablespoon sage or marjoram

2 egg yolks

¼ cup cream

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

Juice of ½ a lemon

“The chickens are cut to pieces, and covered with warm water, to draw out the blood. Then put into a stew-pan, with three quarters of a pint of water, or veal broth, salt, pepper, flour, butter, mace, sweet herbs pounded and sifted; boil in half an hour. If it is too fat, skim it a little. Just before it is done, mix the yolk of two eggs with a gill of cream, grate in a little nutmeg, stir it up till it is thick and smooth, squeeze in half a lemon. If you like onions, stew some slices with the other ingredients.”

That recipe sounds a recipe for disaster.

There is a book called The Little House Cookbook. It has recipes for dishes mentioned in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books, as well as background information.

None of the recipes are anything I would want to eat, but it’s an interesting read.

Some history about how the use of wheat and sugar evolved in the US.

It wasn’t *all* terrible...

When Coke was coke.....

And, commencing in 1869...

R20 I might check that out. Little House was the first thing I thought of when I clicked on this thread interestingly enough.

Christmas dinner menu for Union soldiers.

It looks like they had most everything we have today but it was much harder to make or get.

R26 Nice try. Although it looks authentic, the typesetting and layout reeks of someone who works in graphic design.

It was a very basic diet. Meat, bread, and potatoes. There were no hot peppers or garlic. Tomatoes were only eaten in the summer and considered a fruit instead of a vegetable. In the Little House books they ate tomatoes with cream and sugar.

There's no green bean casserole on that Christmas menu. Fake!

I can buy the apple pie and cranberry sauce from R26, but chow-chow?

I thought that was a modern "Southern" invention?

Couldn't they just order something from Uber Eats?

Northern chow-chow is made from a combination of pickled vegetables.

Thanksgiving dinner is another "tradition" which has been significantly altered, over the past 400 years.

From Wiki:

[quote] "The First Thanksgiving," the 1621 feast between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag at Plymouth Colony contained waterfowl, venison, ham, lobster, clams, berries, fruit, pumpkin, and squash. William Bradford noted that, "besides waterfowl, there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many." Many of the foods that were included in the first feast (except, notably, the seafood) have since gone on to become staples of the modern Thanksgiving dinner. Early feasts of the Order of Good Cheer, a French Canadian predecessor to the modern Thanksgiving, featured a potluck dinner with freshly-hunted fowl, game, and fish, hunted and shared by both French Canadians and local natives.

R33 That just looks like diarrhea to me

Chow chow is basically like relish, R35. The type you would put on hot dogs.

Lesbianism ran rampant in those days. Everyone just ate pussy.

Chow-chow was influenced by curry which became popular in Britain in the 19th century. It was brought to the US via Canada.

My grandmother, who lived about 20 mi north of the Mason-Dixon line, made her chow chow with a mixture of whatever firm vegetable scraps she had left over from canning, and could include peppers, cauliflower, carrots, zucchini, onions, cucumbers. She packed them in jars, covered with pickling brine, and canned them. She made both sweet and sour versions.

Chowchow, a slightly tangy Southern vegetable relish, is terrific with everything from hot dogs to corn bread and is a perfect way to preserve summer produce like bell peppers and green tomatoes.

How to Make It:

Step 1: In a very large bowl, toss the bell peppers, tomatoes, onions and cabbage with the salt; cover and refrigerate overnight.

Step 2: Drain the vegetables, discarding the liquid. In a large, heavy pot, bring the sugar, vinegar and water to a boil. Add the mustard seeds, dry mustard, crushed red pepper, celery seeds, ginger and turmeric and stir well. Add the drained vegetables and bring to a boil. Simmer over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until the relish is thick and saucy, about 1 hour. Pack the chowchow into 6 hot 1-quart canning jars, leaving 1/2 inch of space at the top, and close with the lids and rings.

Step 3: To process, simmer the jars at 180° for 30 minutes and monitor the water temperature with a thermometer. Store the jars in a cool, dark place for at least 2 weeks before serving, to allow the flavors to meld; store unopened for up to 1 year. Refrigerate after opening.

r24, I'll keep Underwood's in mind for my next yachting trip.

In France at least, the 19th century was the golden age of gastronomy! Escoffier and his ilk were blooming, and BTW Escoffier cookbooks showing how to do grande haute cuisine right are still commercially available, and here's a .pdf of his recipes (which I have not vetted or anything).

In England and America... it wasn't a golden age of gastronomy. People ate what was put in front of them.

Exactly, R42.

The French were creating dishes like this...

Try the Townsends.

People kept a jar of bacon fat on their counters and added it to vegetables and gravy for flavor. Ugh rancid bacon fat.

R37 🤣

China was lucky, they had take-out.

People still do that R45. Well, a lot of people were still doing it in the 70’s and 80’s, I assume some still do. Bacon fat doesn’t go rancid very quickly.

My mother told me that her maternal grandparents, who were old Yankees born in the 1890s, kept a jar of bacon fat on the stove and used it for cooking, like frying up hamburgers or chicken. It was a staple of their diet, which they did almost daily. They both miraculously lived to old age, in spite of this.

R49 good genes. Everything comes down to genetics in most cases but no one will admit this.

R12 they lived normal lifespans of roughly 80 years if they made it to 25. It was much more common to die young so the average age is sort of artificially deflated.

Whatever they could grow in their gardens. They canned like crazy to make it through the winter.

Slightly off topic, but about 20-25 years ago there was a PBS show called Pioneer or Frontier something and it was a less low brow Survivor-type show. Several couples / families were supposed to replicate American pioneer conditions, but I guess the budget wasn’t great and they had some distracting inconsistencies (contestants were in walking distance to modern homes and they weren’t allowed to hunt). Anyway, the breakout star (in my opinion and my opinion only) was the Irish wife of a rich guy from LA. She’d grown up in rural Ireland before the Celtic tiger era and knew how to cook with the 1800’s era ingredients they had access to. She was AWESOME. Everyone else was eating burned bread that hadn’t risen and gruel and she was making relatively normal food.

[quote]They canned like crazy

Jarred, more like.

Most people didn't have a factory in which to can things.

From Little House on the Prairie cookbook mentioned previously,

Corn dodgers which are like hush puppies using cornmeal, water, and whatever ingredients are on hand like milk, eggs, bacon grease, onions.

Birds' Nests which is a variation of apple & fresh cranberry pie made with whole green apples and topped with milk or cream.

Russian and Eastern Europeans ate a lot of potatoes, cabbage, turnips in stews. Food wasn't meant to be exciting.

People on those shows that R53 is referring to are always so squeamish. Real pioneers had to kill animals and eat every part.

I remember chow chow in Amish country PA.

We ate corn, although it took it’s sweet time working its way through the digestive system.

r54 I meant jarring. In my neck of the woods it's called canning, no matter what type of container is used.

Indian pudding. It looks like bum barf or maybe an in-flight entree, but it's good.

Indian pudding might not be pretty, but few New England desserts can rival its claim to fame as the most comprehensive of our regional sweet dishes. It evolved out of an initial British culinary tradition, which was then enhanced by Native American influenced necessity, and finally, flavored with the fruits of New England commerce.

I know, I know: serial cultural appropriation.

Nobody calls it jarring. R54 is being an asshole.

Well, we know what SOME of them ate.

R54 - you are able to can over any open flame. Pressure cookers were invented in the mid 1600s.

[quote]I remember chow chow in Amish country PA.

Rut roh

Spotted Dick

The topic is too large for a Datalounge thread. In the 1800s you had the pioneers of the Old West eating corn meal mush while the Tsar of Russia ate haute cuisine in his Frenchified court and the Brits of the Raj ate kedgeree prepared by their Indian cooks. Worldwide, the diet of the 19th century was probably more varied than that of the 21st century population, because now almost everyone on Earth eats the same vegetables flown from South America and horrible processed foods, while in previous centuries people ate what grew locally.

People ate whatever they could grow in their gardens and whatever they could catch in the woods or in the water.

If I went back, I'd think I would miss cheese, ketchup, and mayonnaise the most.

Most people ate the same thing, day after day. There was very little variety.

[quote] because now almost everyone on Earth eats the same vegetables flown from South America and horrible processed foods,

Yes everyone on earth basically lives and eats like a middle class American. It's that kind of perspective that made America great and will keep us great!

R69, you think they didn't have cheese in the 1800s?

Everyone ate Datalounge's favorite disgusting food: congee!

Oh, they had cheese, ketchup, and mayonnaise in the 69th century, R69, although you didn't get them at the supermarket. The ketchup and mayonnaise were made in your own kitchen, if you had a decent cook, and the cheese came from a local farm.

Labor costs were very low back then, particularly the labor of unskilled women and girls, and everyone who wasn't dirt poor had a cook or a maid of all work to help out in the kitchen, or lived in rooming houses where meals were included in the rent. Even out on the American frontier, everyone above the level of hardscrabble dirt farmer had a "hired girl" to help out in the kitchen. Cooking was much more labor-intensive in the 19th century, and cooking for a multi-person household was basically a full-time job, that was the days when the great houses of the wealthy had kitchen staffs of dozens, and even the houses of the poor-ish might have an orphant girl who was paid in gruel slaving away in the kitchen. So elaborate or labor-intensive dishes were more common than some of you seem to think, and in a well-to-do house there'd be a cook drizzling oil into egg yolks so you could have mayonnaise on your salmon that night.

Same as I eat now. Nothing.

[quote]R12 All foods were natural. No preservatives

But there was no official oversight on product quality, ingredients, freshness, etc, for a long time, either ... so you might buy flour mixed with wood shavings or plaster, or something.

r45 my dad did that when I was growing up. I always thought that shit was nasty. He has blocked arteries now.

R13 For the most lavish banquet in the 18th-century China, see Manchu Han Imperial Feast. Some of its cuisines now join in James Corden's "Spill Your Guts" food list, which disgusted Americans at the first sight.

And for the poor Chinese coolies, they ate chop suey, which literally means "mixed bits of garbage," which fed Americans for centuries.

Gruel & Meade & Squirrel 🐿

Here's a clue:

Pease porrige hot

Pease porridge cold

Pease porridge in the pot

Nine days old!

R78, all I have to say about that, is WHY?????

[quote] It is said that there were "Thirty-Two Delicacies", referring to the more exotic ingredients used for the banquet. The "Eight Mountain Delicacies" includes such dishes as camel's hump, bear's paws, monkey's brains, ape's lips, leopard fetuses, rhinoceros tails and deer tendons. The "Eight Land Delicacies" includes several precious fowls and mushrooms, and the "Eight Sea Delicacies" includes dried sea cucumbers, shark's fin, bird's nest and others.

"[R12] All foods were natural. No preservatives"

"But there was no official oversight on product quality, ingredients, freshness, etc, for a long time, either"

In general, 19th century country people ate better food than city people... those that could afford food, anyway. Much of the food sold to not-rich city dwellers was adulterated or unsafe to eat, while country people could produce their own organic fresh food or acquire it from safe sources. In fact, once trains became common, one of the ways rich people got high-quality food to their city houses was to have it sent in from the kitchen gardens of their country estates.

My grandfather was a cowboy, born in 1899, so he qualifies as 1800s. Typical cowboy fare: biscuits and gravy, bacon, dried beans prepared ranch style (onions, bacon, simmered for 24 hours). Eggs and bacon. Pancakes. Vegetables rarely - mostly corn. Died of colon cancer at age 80.

Irish grandmother, born 1890 - potatoes, milk, soda bread. One animal a year was slaughtered, so fresh meat was had for a few days, and afterwards, sausages and salted meat until it ran out. Root vegetables of every kind. Rutabagas, parsnips, turnips, carrots.

People who took the Oregon trail listed their food cargo. Huge barrels of flour, beans and rice, dried meat and salted bacon, dried fruit, hardtack or crackers (hard dried bread which had to be softened in water to eat). I'm sure that if they were able to kill and slaughter a buffalo or two on route, that was also part of the menu. Maybe some potatoes until they got too soft or sprouty. Wild onions and other greens they recognized en route. Probably cornmeal too. Probably traded some stuff for Indian food too.

PBS had a series called A Taste of History where a chef would cook 18th Century dishes in the fireplace.

[quote]But there was no official oversight on product quality, ingredients, freshness, etc, for a long time, either ... so you might buy flour mixed with wood shavings or plaster, or something.

And Trump is killing all our current regulations. Good luck with that bout of e-coli!

Watch Lords & Ladles on Netflix to see what the British upper class ate in their stately homes.

On the northeast US coast, seafood was plentiful and free for the taking. Lobster was considered a poor man's food.

I dream of an America that treats its food sources like the Bay Area or France. I know it’s insane, but Michelle Obama and her WH garden was a decent start. We need to have Victory Gardens again!!! Why not?!?!?

Believe it or not, my half-sister is a professional food historian.

There is a youtube channel I've been following for the last several months giving you directions for frontier era cooking. I've not tried to cook any of these but many of the dishes look quite interesting.

potatoes, potatoes, potatoes

Lots of pork. Pig pens didn’t take up a lot of space, and hogs happily ate garbage. The meat could be preserved by curing or smoking, and the bones were used for soup.

What’s garbage?

Pigs were used to clean up garbage in cities. In NYC in the 19th century, there were pigs running wild in the streets to eat garbage. It was an attempt at "sanitation."

OP my family roots go back 300 years settling in Lancaster County Pennsylvania and being Pennsylvania Dutch, which of course means German, who came originally from Switzerland. They created their own culture and cuisine centered around their agrarian life. While not all items listed here date to the 1800s or older, this gives you an idea of usual fare for meals. For the most part it was stripped down fare straight from the fields. To this day a traditional meal we still have is farmer’s dinner, which is fresh corn off the cob, raw onion and cooked green beans sprinkled with vinegar. And there are always red beet eggs too. As mentioned above chow chow is a very PA Dutch food, pickling was one of the best ways to preserve food and formed the cornerstone of many meals.

Peter Rose is an amazing food historian I’ve worked with in the past and I recommend you check out her works if you are interested in exploring your topic further.

If I remember correctly from my childhood, we had lots of porridge. And bread. And beer. It was great!

Bring back home canning!

[quote]No prosciutto wrapped in melon,

How do you do that?

Christopher Kimball and the staff of America's Test Kitchen did an interesting documentary called "Fannie's Last Supper." a number of years ago. They used only equipment, ingredients and appliances available in the 1800s to construct what would have been a gourmet meal for those times. Used to be on youtube but I guess they took it down.

[quote]r83 People who took the Oregon trail listed their food cargo.

And bugs. They got in the stores of flour etc. or swarmed on the batter when it was cooked outside. In one letter a westward ho wagontrain-er said you eventually just had to accept it - there was no real way to keep them out : (

Don't forget the cake!

[quote] What did people eat in the 1800's?

Rarely ass.

[quote]Little House was the first thing I thought of when I clicked on this thread interestingly enough.

So true.

Game.

[quote]Jarred, more like.

As has already been pointed out, "canned" refers to anything preserved for later use. In any case, I think the word you're looking for is "bottled," not "jarred." "Jarred" means to jolt or shake.

Souce, head cheese ( not what you think), brains.

Preserved foods were more popular then than now. As primitive ice-based refrigeration was just becoming mainstream, people preserved foods by canning, pickling, curing, drying, or baking them into pastry. "Soused" meats were actually pickled, something that isn't done today that I know of, and my Napoleonic-era cookbook has recipes for pickled salmon, which sounds delicious and which I must try some day.

In the Old West, people who weren't farmers or who didn't have their own gardens ate a horrible diet of easily preservable foods. Cowboys ate beans, dried meats, flour biscuits, canned vegetables, hard cheese, coffee made over open fires, dried fruits if they got lucky, and fresh meat whenever a cow got unlucky. The last was probably the only thing that stood between them and scurvy.

For those of us who read 19th century English novels I'd suggest that mutton was their primary diet. Whenever I read a novel by Anthony Trollope, an episode of Jerry Springer's tv series comes to mind when he wraps a piece of mutton in his napkin at a family dinner.

[quote]Whenever I read a novel by Anthony Trollope, an episode of Jerry Springer's tv series comes to mind when he wraps a piece of mutton in his napkin at a family dinner.

Umm…don't you mean Jerry Seinfeld?

Yes. Got my Springers and Seinfelds confused.

R108, You could get pickled lamb tongue in a deli in Baltimore in the 1970s. I found pickled pig tongue in Montreal supermarkets a few years ago. (The Quebecois!) And pickled fish, lox, herring is popular in New York. We ate pickled herring frequently in the Baltimore in my youth. (Spellcheck tried to change every pickled to picked.)

A modern person who ate the cowboy's diet would be shitting their brains out 24/7.

[Quote]A modern person who ate the cowboy's diet would be shitting their brains out 24/7.

Either that or horribly constipated. Poor cowboys either way.

Yay! Another DL TOPIC FAVE! Let the rustling of the caftans continue!

Pickled salmon just takes a few minutes to make. Get a skinless salmon filet and cut it into about 1 1/2 inch pieces

Boil some water.

Add a good amount of salt and sugar and some black pepper

Add distilled white vinegar

Add a good amount of sweet onions

Let it simmer for about 30 minutes

Add the cut up salmon and let it simmer for about 8 - 10 minutes, depending on how thick it is

Take it off the heat. Let it sit for about an hour, or better in the fridge over night, covered tightly.

You'll have delicious, sweet and sour, pickled salmon. You can make it the same way with chunks of lox too.

I would have been skinny as hell if I were alive then. No fucking way would I be eating chow chow.

Goodness, R108; they'd either get the shits or be constipated for days!

Upper class meal in the 18 century linked, actors in appropriate dress for the time period.

We love chow chow in the clink.

I've always been intrigued by references in 19th century novels to meat being boiled (not broiled). Given that roasted meat was also served why would boiling be considered as a reasonable alternative ? Does anyone boil meat now ?

In [italic]It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia,[/italic] we learned that Charlie's favorite meal is "milk steak," which is steak boiled in milk. I cannot imagine…

I've heard of boiled beef even in my lifetime. I'm not sure what it is but it exists and of course boiled chicken, like to make soup. So I'm not surprised it was around then too. Isn't most stew boiled or simmered on the stove, unless it's finished in the oven?

Goat guts and clabber was a Sunday staple.

Turtle was the lobster of its day.

Boiled Beef and Carrots

1852 menu for The Irving House in New York. The rich could gorge themselves on meat and booze.

from that menu, Calf's head brain sauce.

I wonder if Mad Cow disease was a thing back in 1852.

Believe it or not calves brains and scrambled eggs was a very popular dish in the 1800s and well into the 1900s.

Men and women often ate in separate dining rooms with different menus. Ladies were offered a lighter bill of fare.

Meanwhile in Mexico, we had all the flavor.

I've heard boiled beef is still big in Austria, it's a traditional dish there. The beef is boiled, and the resulting broth is served as a soup for a first course. But in the US, the only boiled red meat dish I've ever heard of is corned beef. Supposedly there's such a thing as a "New England boiled dinner" where corned beef is served with boiled cabbage and root vegetables, but I've also heard New Englanders say they never saw that served within the borders of New England.

In 19th century households with limited resources, stewing was more common than boiling. It's a much easier way to cook with a primitive kitchen, it tenderizes tough cheap cuts of meat, and it's a way to make a small amount of meat feed a lot of people. To make a proper dish of boiled mutton or beef, you have to start with a nice big expensive cut of something.

Pickled meat is still eaten in the south. I use pickled pork shoulder in my red beans to give it some tang. Supermarkets have jars of pickled pig feet, lips, and tails proudly arranged in displays. Not sure who's eating that, though.

My grandmother always made a boiled dinner on St. Patrick’s Day and that’s also the only time I remember seeing it at restaurants.

Sometimes it was just called corned beef and cabbage, but it was always the same — corned beef, potatoes, carrots, wedges of cabbage, mustard on the side; occasionally parsnips and other root vegetables. The leftovers were chopped up to make hash.

I had it at a friend’s house once and his mother added beets, rendering the whole meal fuchsia.

When I was a kid in the 70’s my mom had a cookbook with the favorite recipes of all the presidents. As best I can remember. the earlier president’s recipes were not standard 70’s fare, but not bizarre. We made an apricot torte once and it was fantastic, but my standards then were based on 70’s cooking. Non-ethnic 1970’s food in the US was disgusting. Rice a Roni was the only thing that didn’t suck. Nixon’s cookbook contribution was meatloaf.

And his one of his favorite snacks, R135, was allegedly cottage cheese with ketchup.

I love cottage cheese and ketchup as weird as it sounds.

I wonder what Abe Lincoln liked. Did the book go back that far? I'll bet G. Washington liked soft and mushy foods because he had no teeth. My grandmother lost her teeth early in life and never got used to dentures. She would kind of mash up chicken. I kid you not. It wasn't chicken salad. It was boiled chicken breast somehow mashed up like potatoes. I was too young to know how she did it. I just remember her eating it. She ate very little and was tiny, so what she did eat kind of stood out.

Washington and Lincoln both preferred simple foods. Washington loved fish and nuts. He rarely indulged in dessert. Lincoln gave little thought to food. He would eat a biscuit with milk and fruit for lunch. He was fond of oyster stew and chicken fricassee.

[quote] calves brains and scrambled eggs was a very popular dish in the 1800s and well into the 1900s.

This can still be found in many Oklahoma diners. The people there actually love it.

[quote]Supposedly there's such a thing as a "New England boiled dinner" where corned beef is served with boiled cabbage and root vegetables, but I've also heard New Englanders say they never saw that served within the borders of New England.

I'm a native New Englander and I've seen that occasionally, it's usually favored by older people.

BTW if you're not familiar with boiled cabbage, it STINKS. It literally smells like shit.

Speaking of George Washington's teeth, here's a very informative article and video. His dentures were lead plates which held a combination of horse's teeth, cow's teeth, and actual human teeth. It looked incredibly painful.

Thomas Jefferson was quite the foodie. He enjoyed discovering new dishes and foods and took great pains to provide dinner guests with a satisfying culinary experience. The dinner with Alexander Hamilton and James Madison that was credited to have saved the union included the following:

Capon stuffed with Virginia ham and chestnut puree, artichoke bottoms and truffles with a bit of cream, white wine and chicken stock added. It was served with a calvados sauce made with the great apple brandy of Normandy.

Here's a sampling of what one might have found on Jefferson's dinner table:

Meats:

• Capon with clear gravy • Chicken, fricasseed, or with white or brown butter sauce

Vegetables:

• String beans with sweet herbs or with white sauce • Peas, with sugar, or with hearts of lettuce • Turnips with butter sauce • Carrots with butter sauce • Potatoes, fried, without their jackets, cut in small slices and served with various sauces • Artichokes with brown sauce and onions (or cauliflower with brown sauce and onions)

Desserts:

• Small pastries of puff paste in various shapes, garnished with jelly, gooseberries or apples • Little pots of custard • Rice pudding • Small meringues with cream. • Custard glazed with a hot poker • Wine Jelly • Blanc mange with almonds • Compote of apple, whole or in pieces (or pears, cherries, strawberries or oranges • Sponge cake in cases • Macaroons • Burnt almonds

[quote]Capon stuffed with Virginia ham and chestnut puree, artichoke bottoms and truffles with a bit of cream, white wine and chicken stock added. It was served with a calvados sauce made with the great apple brandy of Normandy.

That sounds delicious!

R141 what the article doesn’t say is that Washington actually purchased human teeth from his slaves.

It doesn't matter what kind of teeth he got. How did he make them stick to his gums enough to eat? My guess is he only kept the teeth in for appearances and took them out to eat at home. Besides, the though of using another person's teeth is really disgusting.

During the Napoleonic wars people would pull the teeth from the dead soldiers for use in dentures. Sorry for diverging off topic.

I can't find a source to link to right now, but I read that Confederate soldiers were eating canned tamales. Tamales made their way to the US after the Mexican-American war, and became popular in Texas and among African-Americans in the Mississippi delta. Most Americans don't think of tamales as an African-American food.

[quote] "Soused" meats were actually pickled, something that isn't done today that I know of, and my Napoleonic-era cookbook has recipes for pickled salmon, which sounds delicious and which I must try some day.

Souse is popular in the south. Its delicious on a saltine cracker.

Creamed chip beef on toast or as it is lovingly known as Shit On A Shingle.

Creamed chipped beef on toast (SOS) seems like it was a 1950's staple, rather than one in the 1850's.

Scrapple

OP loses points for not beginning his post with "Eldergays, ... "

Pigeon pie!

A brief article on food preparation in rural areas in the 1880s. It was WORK, honey.

We don't even realize how easy we have it today as far as food preparation and acquiring food goes. And it's only recently in our history that this has been the case. For most of human history, acquiring and preparing food was extremely time-consuming and labor-intensive. And of course the options of what you could eat were extremely limited.

Mush & Scrapple

Liver Pudding, best made using rice

In Gold Rush era California, most white people ate the horrible cowboy diet of beans, biscuits, jerky, and coffee made over an open fire. If a person found a mother lode and made their pile, the big thing was to go to San Francisco or some other town large enough to support restaurants and get... a "Hangtown Fry".

Which is basically an oyster omelette, oysters were the most expensive food in mid-19th-century California and were considered the height of luxury, and when you wanted to show off your wealth you ordered this a dish which could both be made by the awful cooks of the era, and which contained a shit-ton of expensive oysters. I understand that the Hangtown Fry has made a bit of a gourmet comeback and is available in a few places, but I've never seen one on a restaurant menu.

Creamed finnan haddie. Cold-smoked haddock in a thick cream sauce, sometimes accompanied by quartered hard-boiled eggs or topped with a slice of cheese melted under the broiler. Its origin is Scottish from the early 1800's.

Speaking of eating, Ethel Merman is said to have told Mary Martin to lift her eyes heavenward when she sang this line from My Heart Belongs to Daddy in the show "Leave It to Me" because it was also code for the clitoris and other parts of the vag. In the show she's doing a striptease out of mink coat in a Siberian railroad station in 1938 (perfectly plausible, no?) as she sings and allegedly it brought down the house every night.

[italic]If I invite a boy some night to dine on my fine finnan haddie

I just adore his asking for more, but my heart belongs to daddy[/italic]

Salt cod was a method of preserving fish by air-drying salted fish filets on outdoor wooden racks. The fish could then be cooked in water or other liquid to rehydrate it.

Liver Nips or Liver Dumpling

Old Southern, Delicious.

Egg & potato breakfast scramble. Add some onion, yum!

Fried salted Mackerel

Shrimp & grits; S.C. Coastal, Low Country

So basically that song was about a woman wanting to have her father perform oral sex on her?

No, R162, she slowly takes off her furs as she sings of her flirtations, but insists "My Heart Belongs to Daddy", referring to her "sweet millionaire" sugar-daddy.

LOL, I guess I was a little off there. Thanks for the info R163.

Salt cod fritters, yum

[quote] LOL, I guess I was a little off there

Don't feel bad. I too was going "huh?".

Most of this dishes revolt me, I cannot lie. Absolutely disgusting. But it is fascinating nonetheless.

the best the Harmonia Gardens could serve

Arkansas Squirrel Dinner

Wonder if the Huckabees have dined of this?

Looking at that plate, all I can think of is the line from Lindsay Lohan's version of "Frankie and Johnny" from the Prairie Home Companion movie:

[italic]And he died from eating squirrel so they laid him in the sod.[/italic]

If it only could happen to a Huckabee.

So just because the Huckabees are from Arkansas you automatically assume they'd eat something as disgusting as squirrel and dumplings? How insulting.

The fry it in a popcorn popper, like civilized people.

r26 That menu says Philadelphia but Petroleum Centre in Venango county is clear over on the other side of the state approx., 350 miles away

Mrs. Dr. M.C. Egbert of Petroleum Centre hosted the dinner for soldiers in Philadelphia.

They ate the children, OP!

[quote]r142 Here's a sampling of what one might have found on Jefferson's dinner table .... Custard glazed with a hot poker

Utterly filthy, in word and deed!

We refuse.

r173 s she traveled all the way to Philly to host the dinner?

My grandfather occasionally ate calves brains and scrambled eggs. I tried to one time with him. It disgusted me.

I might add that my grandfather held that only "low class people " are pigs brains and scrambled eggs.

Well, I have had squirrel, and I thought it was pretty good, to be honest. Growing up, our neighbors were from some holler down in Kentucky, and they would go squirrel hunting most weekends. The mom made squirrel for the youngest son's birthday, and my brother and I were invited. She sure knew how to cook squirrel. Squirrel meat was a traditional ingredient in Brunswick stew, although chicken is usually used now. Back in 1862, the Squirrel Hunters were called into service to defend Cincinnati from a Confederate invasion. 15,766 men from all over brought their antiquated weapons and reported to duty, enough to intimidate the Confederate forces into withdrawing from Kentucky. General Lew Wallace (who later wrote 'Ben Hur') was in charge of the Squirrel Hunters.

Resolved by the Senate and the House of Representatives of the State of Ohio, That

the Governor is hereby authorized and directed to appropriate out of his contingent

fund, a sufficient sum to pay for printing and lithographing discharges to the

patriotic men of the State, who responded to the call of the Governor, and went to

the southern border to repel the invader, and who will be known in history as the

SQUIRREL HUNTERS.

Louisiana Gumbo

Like chocolate and sweet?

Mississippi Mud Pie

Aren't squirrels rodents? Wouldn't that be like eating rat?

We made johnnycake in second grade, which was supposed to be from colonial times. It was pretty good.

About 25 years ago I had rabbit at some hotel on or near 44th street in Manhattan. It might have been the Royalton. I was at a business lunch and didn’t normally eat anywhere expensive, so I wanted to try something special. It was gross. I told my dad and he said, “Well, you ate a rodent. You might as well have had a rat.” My dad was smart.

That said, I think it’s funny that we sneer at squirrel and dumplings, but I suspect people would hesitate to flat out say, “that’s gross” in reference to an unfamiliar Asian or African dish. Well, I would hesitate. But I’d think it.

We like what we are used to. Given time, I’m sure I could get used to squirrel. If I was truly hungry, I would probably need very little time.

Pennsylvania Groundhog Stew

You seem like a good person R184. A person who puts himself in other people's shoes and has compassion. Kudos on your post.

Rabbits used to be classified as rodents, but now they're in a separate order: Lagomorphs.

I’ve got a digital copy of a 1887 White House cookbook. I’d post some pics from it but don’t know how on this site.

"[R142] Here's a sampling of what one might have found on Jefferson's dinner table .... Custard glazed with a hot poker"

Nowadays, we call custard glazed with a hot poker "crème brulee", and pay $12 for a serving at good restaurants.

FYI those little kitchen blowtorches weren't always around, before they were invented crème brulee was either glazed by using a "salamander" (top-heated broiler oven), or by heating a poker up to red hot and wafting it above sugar-topped custard until the sugar turned brown and bubbly. I've never tried this, but I've heard the method described in historical novels. It also works for baked Alaska and cheese toast, if you happen to have a red-hot poker and the nerve.

I happen to have a recipe for rats cooked in onion sauce in a cookbook I own.

You see, the cookbook contains recipes from the era of the Napoleonic wars, with an emphasis on naval and shipboard cuisine, because it was written by a couple of fans of Patrick O'Brian's wonderful books about the British navy of that era. And in the British navy in the pre-refrigeration era... well, the sailors usually ran out of fresh food fairly quickly, and spent the bulk of their voyage living on casks of horrible salt-dried meat boiled into borderline edibility, hardtack, dried peas, etc. And since the ships had a lot of rats, and the sailors both wanted to get rid of the rats and enjoy some fresh meat for once... well. It makes for the funniest and most interesting cookbook I've ever seen.

R182, I suppose in theory. There are a LOT of different kinds of rodents, and many of them are eaten all over the world. Guinea Pigs were domesticated by the Indians in the Andes for use as food, and they're still eaten in South America. I think there's a vast difference between eating a squirrel that's been living in the treetops eating nuts and berries versus a rat that's been living in a sewer with human waste, feeding on garbage. Either way, I wouldn't risk eating squirrel now, since there is at least one case of a man dying from a prior disease he picked up from eating squirrel. Granted, it was the squirrel's brain, but i wouldn't risk it, any more than I would risk eating deer, which now are also carrying some kind of prion disease. In Britain, though, they've been encouraging people to hunt and east grey squirrels, which are an invasive species in Britain.

But, certainly in the 19th century, in rural areas, subsistence hunting provided an important part of the diet, to the point where, in the earlier part of the 20th century, deer and Canada geese had actually become rare, and had to be reintroduced by various states' natural resources departments.

The Christmas dinner was held in the hospital for wounded soldiers. You expect wounded soldiers to travel all the way to Petroleum Centre?

President Lincoln sent me a personal note of thanks. Jealous bitches?

Mrs. Beeton's "sick nursing" recipes are always good for a quick dry-heave.

[quote]TOAST WATER. Ingredients.—1 crust of bread, 1 pint of cold water. Method.—Toast the bread very brown and hard, but do not burn it, or it will impart a disagreeable flavour to the water. Put it into a jug, pour over it the cold water, let it soak for 1 hour, then strain and use.

[quote]BEEF TEA AND EGG. Ingredients.—¼ of a pint of beef tea, 1 yolk of egg, salt, toasted bread. Method.—Beef tea, veal tea, mutton tea, or diluted beef essence may be employed in this preparation. Beat the yolk of egg in a teacup, season lightly with salt, and if allowed, add a little pepper. Heat the beef tea, but do not allow it to boil, and pour it over the yolk of egg, stirring briskly meanwhile. Serve with thin strips of toast.

[quote]MUTTON, ESSENCE OF. Ingredients.—1 lb. of lean mutton, 1 gill of water, salt and pepper. Method.—Cut away every particle of fat, shred the meat finely, and place it in a jar with the cold water. Cover closely, place the jar in a saucepan of boiling water or in a cool oven, and cook gently for at least 2 hours. Strain and press all the liquid from the meat, and add salt and pepper to taste. This preparation being highly concentrated, should be administered in small quantities.

[quote]RAW BEEF SANDWICHES. Ingredients.—2 or 3 ozs. of raw juicy steak, thin slices of bread and butter, salt and pepper. Method.—Scrape the meat finely, rub it through a wire sieve, and season lightly with salt and pepper. Spread it on thin bread and butter, and place another piece on the top. Cut into dainty squares and serve. If preferred, the pepper and salt may be omitted, and the preparation, when spread on the bread, plentifully dredged with castor sugar. This entirely masks the flavour of the meat.

The beef and egg tea might be really tasty, there are still recipes where you stir an egg into not-but-not-boiling broth, and the results are incredibly rich and tasty.

The others, R194... eurgh.

r192 I would understand if she funded it but she hosted it. It would have taken her weeks to just get there. I know there was lots of money in Petroleum Centre because the oil boom was just starting but surely there were rich people in Philly. I was just surprised that someone on the other side of the state did that.

It didn't take weeks to get to Philly. She just took a train.

r189=Shirley MacLaine

[Quote]What did people eat in China, France and Italy in the 1800's?

Each other.

Actually in poorer cultures rats were considered to be a perfectly acceptable food source. You eat what is there to eat, and that included rats.

Potatoes, bugs, and pine needles.

So let me ask, if you bring say something diseased, like a rat, up to a high enough temperature it will be safe to eat? What about when rats carried the plague, could they cook that out of them? I'm not trying to be funny or sarcastic. I really wonder.

Heating up something to "done" temperature will kill most bacteria and parasites, R202.

About the only pathenogenic microbe that can survive the cooking process is a prion (protein molecule with dangerous effects), and any prion diseases happened during the 19th century nobody recorded it because knew they were possible.

Emmy makes beef extract.

bump

Lafcadio Hearn's 1885 "Creole Cookbook" is available free online, I think.

All of the food was fucking disgusting then! It all tasted like shit.

There’s a YouTube channel for this. It’s very popular I’m just too lazy to go looking for it you can probably find it easily just in case you want to make some hard tack or pemmican

Lobster, lobster, and more lobster.