During the Mayflower's
voyage, the Pilgrims main diet would have consisted primarily of hard
biscuit, salt pork, dried meats including cow tongue, various pickled
foods, oatmeal and other cereal grains, and fish. The primary
beverage for everyone, including children, was beer. Wine may also
have been drunk, as was aqua-vitae--a more potent alcohol. The
occasional juice from a lemon was also taken, to prevent scurvy.
The
Pilgrims believed (and rightly so) that water was often contaminated and
made people sick. The brewing and fermenting processes killed most
of the parasites that caused these diseases.
Once the Pilgrims had settled
themselves in Plymouth, they slowly began to learn about other food
sources. The bay was full of fish, although the Pilgrims had
poorly equipped themselves for fishing. There were clams, mussels,
and other shellfish that could be gathered, and the bay was also full of
lobster. Waterfowl such as ducks and geese were hunted, as were
wild turkeys and other birds, and even the occasional deer. The
Pilgrims had also brought seeds with them, to plant English vegetable
and herb gardens, as well as larger crops such as barley, peas, and
wheat. And while exploring Cape Cod, they managed to "borrow"
large baskets full of Indian corn they had found buried in the ground on
a hill they named Corn Hill.
After they made contact with
their Wampanoag neighbors, through the assistance of "Squanto"
(Tisquantum), the Pilgrims learned the Indian techniques for planting
and growing corn (which involved manuring the ground with shad caught in
Town Brooke), and learned how to catch eel in the muddy riverbeds.
Each house had a prominent fire
pit and chimney, where the cooking was normally done by the women and
girls. Several "recipe books" from the period
exist,
that provide some interesting insights into cooking at the time.
Perhaps the most famous of these is Gervase Markham's The English
Housewife, first published in 1615. A recipe for cooking a
young turkey or chicken reads:
"If you will boil chickens, young
turkeys, peahens, or any house fowl daintily, you shall, after you have
trimmed them, drawn them, trussed them, and washed them, fill their
bellies as full of parsley as they can hold; then boil them with salt
and water only till they be enough: then take a dish and put into it
verjuice [the juice of sour crab-apples] and butter, and salt, and when
the butter is melted, take the parsley out of the chicken's bellies, and
mince it very small, and put it to the verjuice and butter, and stir it
well together; then lay in the chickens, and trim the dish with sippets
[fried or toasted slices of bread], and so serve it forth."
For roasting venison [deer], the
another recipe says:
"[A]fter you have washed it, and
cleansed all the blood from it, you shall stick it with cloves all over
on the outside; and if it be lean you shall lard it either with mutton
lard, or pork lard, but mutton is the best: then spit it [put it on a
spit that can be hand-rotated over the fire] and roast it by a soaking
fire [a slow-roasting fire], then take vinegar, bread crumbs, and some
of the gravy which comes from the venison, and boil them well in a dish;
then season it with sugar, cinnamon, ginger and salt, and serve the
venison forth upon the sauce when it is roasted enough."
For sauce for a turkey, another
recipe says:
"Take fair water, and set it over
the fire, then slice good store of onions and put into it, and also
pepper and salt, and good store of the gravy that comes from the turkey,
and boil them very well together: then put to it a few fine crumbs of
grated bread to thicken it; a very little sugar and some vinegar, and so
serve it up with the turkey: or otherwise, take grated white bread and
boil it in white wine till it be thick as a galantine [a sauce made from
blood], and in the boiling put in good store of sugar and cinnamon, and
then with a little turnsole [a plant used to as red food coloring] make
it of a high murrey color, and so serve it in saucers with the turkey in
the manner of a galantine."

An assortment of
wooden trenchers (plates); earthen pots, bowls, porrigers, tygs, and
jugs, and pewter platters.
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Page
Photographs on this page were taken on site at the Plimoth
Plantation Museum and Mayflower II by Caleb Johnson, © 2003. They are used with
permission of the Plimoth Plantation Museum.
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