Breakfast Foods: Early Mid-Atlantic Region

In the Mid-Atlantic colonies the early settlers were the commonsense, middle-class Dutch and Swedes, followed by English settlers, who tended to be much more moderate than their northern neighbors and more middle class than their southern counterparts. The English colonists welcomed settlers from other lands, and soon the Mid-Atlantic areas filled up with Welsh, Irish, and Germans. Like their neighbors north and south, this very practical group of people ate cornmeal mush and cornbreads washed down with beer or cider, but they also brought with them a number of new foods that became identified with American breakfasts. The best known of these foods was the Dutch waffle.