Lyddie: Voices from the Field - Chapter 08 Food in New England

Food in Early Nineteenth-Century New England

Many scenes in Lyddie involve food and cooking—the bear knocking over a jar of apple butter; Lyddie and Ezekial sharing birch tea; Willie, the servant boy, stealing bread; and the miller’s wife preparing a bubbling stew over an open fire. Would you like to eat like an early nineteenth-century New Englander? Bread was scarce because wheat didn’t grow well in the region, and the chocolate candy and layer cakes we enjoy today were not yet invented.

Before innovations in farming and transportation brought a variety of foods at lower prices to New England—something that happened after the Civil War—most people ate a monotonous diet. Dinner, served around midday, was a stew of salt pork and beans, with cornmeal and a few hardy vegetables like turnips or cabbage added to thicken the broth. The daily brown bread was a dense loaf, also called Rye and Indian for its two grains (corn was then called “Indian corn,” or simply “Indian”). Breakfast was a bowl of hasty pudding made with cornmeal, oats, or rye, mixed with water. If the family could afford it, some milk, molasses, or maple syrup might be poured on top. Hearth-baked flatbreads, such as Johnny cakes and flapjacks, rounded out the day’s food.

Brick bake ovens were found in wealthy homes and taverns (Cutler’s Tavern had one), but into the 1800s many families lacked them. They carried their brown bread and pots of beans to the local tavern each week to be baked. Cast iron cook stoves were manufactured in the 1820s and 1830s, but at first only prosperous households and large establishments like Lyddie’s Lowell boardinghouse installed them. Some people, like Triphena at the tavern, thought that food cooked in cast iron didn’t taste as good as food cooked over an open fire. Eventually stoves caught on, though, because the cook could stand rather than stoop over the fire while preparing meals and could use lighter-weight pots.

At the Lowell boardinghouse, Lyddie sees an enormous iron stove for the first time, and she eats a wider array of foods than she had on the farm, or even at the tavern—heaping plates of pork and beans, codfish, apple pie, baked Indian pudding, plum cake (fruitcake), and more. But when the textile mill’s profits decline and there’s a speedup among the factory workers, the boardinghouse fare also suffers—the meat is “off” (tainted), and the potatoes are moldy.

Without refrigeration or canned goods—advances that came later in the century—most families preserved their own food. It took days to salt and smoke meat, pickle vegetables, and conserve batches of fruit and berries. Apples, which thrived in New England, were pressed for cider, kept in barrels, or dried for pies. Milk was churned into longer-keeping cheese and butter. On northern farms, maple trees were tapped and the sap boiled down into syrup and sugar, an early spring job that took weeks. Farm products like lard (pork fat), butter, and eggs were more expensive for urban dwellers than for those living in country districts. Imported tea, coffee, drinking chocolate, spices, and tropical fruits were sold in city markets, but they were pleasures for the rich only.

In Lyddie’s tale, food is used to show the changes that were happening for New Englanders, as many people moved from farms to factory towns like Lowell in search of work. Urban workers often had more food choices, and sometimes more money and greater opportunity, but at the cost of a cherished farm life.

About the Author

Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald are experts in New England and American food history and the authors of United Tastes: The Making of the First American Cookbook (University of Massachusetts Press, 2017); Northern Hospitality: Cooking by the Book in New England (University of Massachusetts Press, 2011); and America's Founding Food: The Story of New England Cooking (University of North Carolina Press, 2004.)