page_title: Cuisine of the Thirteen Colonies
section_title: Diet before the American Revolution
hierarchical_section_title: Cuisine of the Thirteen Colonies / Diet before the American Revolution
caption_attribution_description: Title Page of The Compleat Housewife
context_page_description: The cuisine of the Thirteen Colonies includes the foods, bread, eating habits, and cooking methods of the Colonial United States.
  In the period leading up to 1776, a number of events led to a drastic change in the diet of the American colonists. As they could no longer rely on British and West Indian imports, agricultural practices of the colonists began to focus on becoming completely self-sufficient.
context_section_description: When colonists arrived in America, they planted familiar crops from the Old World with varying degrees of success and raised domestic animals for meat, leather, and wool, as they had done in Britain.  The colonists faced difficulties owing to different climate and other environmental factors, but trade with Britain, continental Europe, and the West Indies allowed the American colonists to create a cuisine similar to the various regional British cuisines. Local plants and animals offered tantalizing alternatives to the Old World diet, but the colonists held on to old traditions and tended to use these items in the same fashion as they did their Old World equivalents (or even ignore them if more familiar foods were available). The American colonial diet varied depending on region, with local cuisine patterns established by the mid-18th century.
  A preference for British cooking methods is apparent in cookbooks brought to the New World.  There was a general disdain for French cookery, even among the French Huguenots in South Carolina and French Canadians. One cookbook common in the colonies, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, by Hannah Glasse, held the French style of cookery in disdain, stating "the blind folly of this age that would rather be imposed on by a French booby, than give encouragement to a good English cook!" She does add French recipes to the text but speaks out flagrantly against the dishes, "... think(ing) it an odd jumble of trash." The French and Indian War (1754–1764) reinforced anti-French sentiment in the Thirteen Colonies. The conflict strengthened an age-old distrust of the French which had been prevalent among the colonists due to the constant wars with the French, and led to events such as the forced deportation of the Acadians, who subsequently moved (among other places) to Louisiana. The Acadian French brought a profound French influence to the diet of settlers in Louisiana, but had little influence outside of that region.
caption: The Compleat Housewife was a cookbook that proliferated in the Thirteen Colonies.
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