New England Regional Cookery: The Colonial and Federal Eras

New Englanders developed their regional cuisine over the two hundred years of initial settlement through the Revolution and into the early nineteenth century. The process was hardly uniform throughout the region or the society. Urban foodways close to the southern and eastern coasts of New England in the early eighteenth century were different from those on the newly settled frontiers to the west and north. Market forces always had an effect, and truly self-sufficient subsistence was rare. Even the earliest settlers were supported in part by shipments of food from England, and they turned to producing marketable products, including the famous salt cod, to pay for the imports. The New England gentry ate and drank differently from the tradespeople and poorer farmers, even within a few years of settlement.