Oranges used to be considered a rare treat even into the twentieth century. I believe they were often given as a Christmas gift to children.
Bananas were pretty much unknown outside of the tropics until well into the 19th century.
Around the time of the Revolution, America was still pretty much all farm country with a few small towns and cities scattered around. This was one of the reasons the British had such a hard time during the war - there were no obvious targets to occupy.
Boston, for example, was one of the biggest “cities” in the colonies. But in reality it was a pretty small town of less than twenty thousand people. The biggest cities in America were Philadelphia and New York and they both had seventy thousand residents at most. Most of the two to three million people living in America lived out in the country.
I always got an orange in my stocking as a child and never understood why; as an adult I get that it was a huge treat for my dad when he was growing up (born 1931 in south Georgia.)
If you happen to run into George Washington during your Revolutionary time travels, keep in mind that they have brewed beer according to his recipe at Mt. Vernon, and by most accounts it does not taste good at all.
Why would you want to hang out exclusively in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia? Come on down for the battles of Cowpens and Guilford Courthouse and you could probably find some good barbecue, collard greens, and some aboriginal form of Brunswick stew (which is just a variant of traditional Indian stews).
Was this the show that said Benjamin Franklin ate tofu, which he preferred breaded and deep fried?
I was very surprised that Americans would have known about it.
no idea
the host of the show is German iirc
Sure, but remember that all the horrible tiny, leaky shacks and hovels would have been torn down at some point in the last 230 years. It’s only the well-built, more-or-less spacious and attractive ones that have survived.
So we can say that some nice houses existed then, but we can’t say that all or most of them were nice.
True but this is fundamentally a time travel question. I assume that the time traveler would get to pick where they go and also have some decent travel funds. You could get some decent if not excellent food back then. I know that many people were struggling to survive in poor conditions or in new territories especially in the impossibly distant areas like ‘the West’ at the time (basically the eastern Appalachians). However, the more developed areas and established farms closer to the East Coast didn’t have many food problems in the 1780’s (other non-U.S. European territories ranging from Florida to Louisiana to California didn’t either as a general rule). Vast amounts of fresh farm land combined with lots of other natural resources including wildlife is a recipe for success and not failure on that front.
Once you have cows, pigs, horses, chickens and a large vegetable, fruit and grain crop at your disposal, you already have the makings of some decent eating dependent on the cook of course. Combine that with some native resources like berries and other plants and you can have a bounty. It was extremely labor intensive to produce food but that among their top priorities and most people did just fine. The whole 'farm to table or ‘eat local’ movement isn’t anything new. It was a necessity back then and can be pulled off almost anywhere in the U.S. with some multi-generational planning and knowledge. Most people had that at the time of the Revolutionary War. Epidemics and basic medical crises including women dying from childbirth were a much bigger issue.
Americans in the colonial period ate very well compared to their sistren in Europe. One major reason was game, which was impossibly abundant to European immigrants. In European countries there was often no such thing as hunting unless you were poaching on someone else’s land. In addition, because the colonies were less densely settled, both in city and country, sanitation and disease were less of a problem. Accidents yes, and hostile Native Americans, and bad luck and I suppose people who were incompetent at hunting and or farming, these were problems. But there was no lack of food. I’m too lazy to look it up but I think the average American soldier was like four inches taller than his British counterpart, and correspondingly healthier and stronger, because of the abundance of food here.
The big problem was there was a huge drop-off in the quality of food. If you happened to be eating at harvest time or when an animal was butchered, you were eating good quality fresh food. But there was no good way to preserve food. Even tin cans were still future tech. The food preserving methods of the era were basically designed to make food so inedible that bacteria wouldn’t eat it.
True but savvy people could catch or hunt what was available year round if they really knew what they were doing. Deer and some other game were fairly easy to harvest in the Fall. You could smoke and salt the meat for long term storage. Severe northern climates had ice fishing during the winter. There were also hardy snow crops like some types of greens to provide vegetables. Potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions and some other root vegetables store fairly well for months if you dig a root cellar that maintains a constant temperature. I am not claiming that it was easy in the least but it could be done and was routinely by the hardy people that lived in those circumstances.
The Revolutionary War period would not be my personal nomination as a culinary dystopia. They had it reasonably well compared to people in the heart of the Civil War, the Great Depression, the causalities of the Dust Bowl and everyone that lived through the 1950’s - 60’s. I will take a classic New England clam boil over a 50’s style gelatin mold any day.
I haven’t read the thread so this may be a repeat. I saw on the History Channel a documentary about the invention of everyday household items. One thing it said, if I remember correctly, was that there were not any restaurants until like 10 years or so after the revolution. I don’t remember how/why they said that came about and it is hard to imagine going to the next town over and not being able to find somewhere to eat. But they definitely said at some point in the colonial or revolutionary period there were no restaurants. I’ve been wondering if that part of the documentary was accurate…
It isn’t true and it wasn’t true 100 years before that. Maybe I should qualify that so that you understand what I mean. There may not have been many if any dedicated restaurants during the Revolutionary War but there were taverns and plenty of people that sold prepared food throughout the colonies. New England taverns were multi-purpose. They were built on established trade routes and served not just as bars but also as hotels and restaurants. They also served as a community and government center. Travelers making a journey by horse or carriage could drop by and pay for any combination of food, meals, lodging or drinks. They served the same function as any hotel today.
I know that for a fact because I used to have a 1760 house and it was one of the newer ones in the neighborhood. There is still a large house (converted into apartments but still rather pristine) built in the late 1600’s that served as such a tavern and public house during that time. It is right on the old Boston Post Road which was once a major thoroughfare from Boston to New York during the late 1700’s. There are still plenty of such buildings in New England that once served a similar purpose.
It would be unusual to find tomatoes being eaten, and salads would be thought of more as a medicinal cure with the coming of spring. I would imagine that if you weren’t suffering from a touch of flux, you’d be as costive as an owl.
I heard that on a TV show years ago, but it was in reference to the French Revolution.
Allegedly, so many cooks, scullery maids and assorted flunkies serving their aristo masters at mealtime were out of jobs following the Terror, that restaurants were born. :rolleyes:
Dried beans. Dried fruit. Jams. Root cellars preserving root vegetables intact. Salt pork. “Virginia ham.” Pickling. Parched corn.
In the South, at least, winter gardens.
And of course, you could slaughter fresh meat as needed.
There were plenty of ways to eat well in the off seasons.
Blatantly wrong as tavern food has been around for so many centuries before the American Revolution. At least as far back as the Roman times. The Tabard est. in 1307 was specifically mentioned in The Canterbury Tales.
What was changing in America circa 1800 was the service style of public dining. Up to that time most taverns or eating houses would have had communal seating, offered set menus - what we would call “prix fixe” today - and all the food would be brought to the table at about the same time instead of in courses.
The Manhattan restaurant Delmonico’s, opened in 1827, was purportedly the first in America to offer an à la carte menu.
Cider more common than beer.