One aspect of life that remains constant throughout time is the necessity of food. Since 96% of the colonial American population was poor, you can't truly study food history of the 18th century without looking into lower class cooking. To study the cuisine of the poor, you must first look into their day to day lives outside of the kitchen.
Today we hear about the 1% of people who live significantly better than everyone else. In the 18th century, you had the 4%. These 4% controlled almost every aspect of life, from government to the arts. Their hand could be seen in all of day to day life. While the other 96% of the population lived quietly in the background making up the workforce for the upper classes. The lower class were primarily made up of slaves and farmers, with servants, sailors, and apprentice also falling in that same category.
With our romantic view of the past, we sometimes fail to see the grittier, realistic side of history. When we think of the 18th century, we probably think life was like a scene from Duke of Gloucester St. in the City of Williamsburg. However, this represents the lifestyle of the upper 4% or as we would put it today the "rich and famous". Reality paints a much more gruesome picture. The majority of people had a one room home, with a possible second story or loft. For the people who lived in this house, lives were centered around the hearth. This is where the family came after working all day, to talk and share stories, but most importantly they came together to eat a meal.
This family meal was completely cooked by the woman of the house. It most likely consisted of a stew, bread and beer. The stew would have been made with the cheapest cuts of meat, vegetables from the garden, and whatever else could have been put together. It would have been made in one of the few, if not the only cooking device the family owned. The iron pot was arguably the best thing to happen to American cuisine. If you think about it, a lot of popular American cuisine is a one pot meal. The iron pot was the main cooking device for all poor or lower class people in the 18th century. Another important cooking device would have been the frying pan. This would have the next purchase after an iron pot.
Inventory of Peter Drewry
August 17, 1767:
"2 iron pots, 1 pair pot hooks, 1 frying pan"
Inventory of Anne Dumford
August 21, 1780:
"1 Trivet Skillet, Pothooks, 2 pots"
( For more information on stew see my first blog entitled Hodge-Podge)
Homemade bread would have been served with the stew. If you could afford it, you would have had an oven built at your home. You would use this oven to bake bread with whole wheat flour or corn meal. If you could not afford an oven at home, you would have boiled a dumpling in your iron pot, or made a cake in your frying pan or on a hoe.
Finally the beer would have been very easily available for the poor as their meal time beverage. If you could not afford barley to make your beer, you would have used molasses or corn stalks to brew a beer like beverage. This would have been the standard meal for the poor people of the 18th century for their entire lifetime.
No matter how hard the life of the poor in the colonies were, it was nothing compared to that of the poor in England. In England the poor were relegated to "poor houses" or to the streets and gutters of major cities. So in the colonies, the poor were somewhat better off. In the colonies, they had the ability to own land, have a home, and a meal to have every night.
That I believe, is the lesson in this blog. No matter how hard times were for the 18th century poor class, having a meal with family somehow lifted their spirits. And I believe that is still true that, food and fellowship can heal the soul in a way, that not many other things can.
