New England Regional Cookery: Nineteenth Century

The era between 1840 and 1890s saw both change and continuity in New England foodways. The change was less in kind than in the source and production of food. New Englanders continued to prefer beef, pork, and mutton. They ate beans, succotash, molasses-sweetened dishes, and pumpkin and apple pies, and fish once a week. By the mid-nineteenth century in urban New England, beef increasingly came from the West, and by century’s end, the beans and succotash may have come from cans. One substantial change was the shift from the old rye-and-Indian bread back to wheat bread. Another was the dramatic turn to nonalcoholic beverages by many middle-class households.