Breakfast Foods: Early New England

As the colonies took hold and grew richer, the diets of the colonists improved and expanded. In New England, cornmeal mush—known as hasty pudding—was still popular, served with maple syrup or, later, with molasses. But with prosperity, the colonists added coffee and tea to their breakfasts. Breads, meat, and fruit pies became part of the breakfast menu as well. The breads were often cornmeal mixed with other grains, such as “rye ‘n’ injun” (hearth-baked corn-and-rye bread) or brown bread (steamed bread made with rye, corn, and wheat). The meat was likely to be salt pork. Exactly why fruit pies came to be such popular breakfast items in early American life has never been studied, but the answers are not difficult to guess: a pie made the day before could sit overnight without spoiling and was readily available to eat upon demand in the morning, with no further cooking. It was filling and relatively nutritious—containing fruit, sweetener, fat, and grain—and it tasted good. Breakfast in New England was typically an early affair, partaken of when the farmers rose to begin their chores.