Pennsylvania Dutch Food

The largest non-British ethnic group at the time of the American Revolution was a group of German- speaking citizens who made up about 10 percent of the population of the British North American colonies, and as much as one-third of the population of Pennsylvania. The community is usually dated from the 1681 arrival of fourteen Mennonite families to found Germantown, Pennsylvania, but may include some descendents of German-speakers from the older New Netherlands colony.

The “Pennsylvania Dutch” (the name was an Anglicized version of their “Dietsch” dialect of Deutsch) came from many parts of the German-speaking world and belonged to many Protestant pietistic sects as well as mainstream Lutheran and Reformed churches. The largest groups came after 1710 from the Palatinate (Rheinpfalz) region of western Germany. They moved into inland valley farms, up and down the Appalachians, and eventually across them to Ohio and Indiana. They were joined by Moravians settling around Winston-Salem, North Carolina, as well as Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and by as many as 10,000 Hessian deserters during the American Revolution. The Pennsylvania Germans were regarded by other colonists and early Americans as thrifty and wise farmers, though sometimes caricatured for stinginess, backwardness, and their mixture of Low German and accented English speech. Their food was noted for the quality of the farm produce, dairy products, and baked goods before the American Revolution, and it still is.