Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1895-11-22
PURITAN COOKS DEVICES.
Getting Points From Indian Squaws
Wild Game as Dclicacies.

Getting Points From Indian Squaws
Wild Game as Dclicacies.
In the early banquets there could
not have been beef, mutton and veal,
and it was well that the hunger that
comes from rugged health and hard
work was the sauce that attended the
strange new edibles. The Pilgrim
mothers tried to keep the sentiment
of home about their teasts by counter
feltlng the accustomed dishes with
such materials as they could command.
Bannocks and flannel cakes that should
have been of whitest wheat -four,
made light with eggs, were composed
of coarse Indian meal and water.
Patient continuance in beating brought
the batter to such feathery lightness
that the eggs were hardly missed. For
a Thanksgiving dehcacv the same bat.
ter was thinned and baked over the
Goals in great cakes as large as the big
pewter platter on which they were laid
rs soon AS cooked and carefully spread
with the precious Dutch butter
brought by the occasional trading
ships. As each cake was buttered 1t
received bountiful spreading of
maple sugar, an American novelty that
much delighted the Pilgrims. When
the pile was stacked up" to a goodly
height, either the head of the family
or the next in office, cut the structure
into enormous wedge.shaped pieces,
and even when circumstances made no
other dessert possible our ancestors
felt that they had still some creature
comforts to be thankful for.
Thanks to rod, gun and traps there
was fish and game in plenty. Deer
meat and rabbits, wild-winged things,
from geese and turkeys too heavy to
fly to the tiny birds that were each
only one delicious mouthtul. The
housewives were not above learning
some new arts of cookery from the
squaws and the new settlers, who soon
began to follow the first adventurer
to the land of freedom, found them.
selves mach amazed and delighted
with the new viands.
ut is poor heart that never re.
joices, says Shakespeare, SO the tenn
perate upright feasters, who had in
those days neither tea nor caffee,
washed down their well-earned dinners
with methegljn proved from wild
honey, and Indian heer made of herbs
and roots, both potent and well
favored, The limited stock of spirits
was kept in the colony storehouse,
and given out rs need required, as a
medicine for the ailing, or restorative
for the more hardy after fatiguing ex-
petitions.
After West Indian molasses began
to be freely brought in, the distilla.
ton of rum became home industry,
and source of revenue as an export.
Unhappily, even strict efforts to con.
troll the sale of the liquor was not ct.
tectual, and the Indians, like many of
the whites, yielded too easily to its
seductions.
1t was SO long before milk and eggs
ceased to be rare and precious com
lnodities reserved for children, and
delicate adults, that many an in !
genious substitute was employed in
making desserts. An old letter from
a colonist to an English friend, speak
ing of banquet-it might have been
wedding supper or a Thanksgiving |
dinner-says: CATER the great drough
which parched all fruits of the earth,
we had small stock of sweets, made up,
but che good wife made with rich crust
tart from the paddle leafed sorel,
which with a good sweetening of wild
honey was not unlike a CONNECTION OF
lemons"