- Feb 5, 2002
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From potted meat to pickles to syllabub, here are some foods and beverages that were popular in colonial America.
What people ate in colonial America largely depended on where they lived. Due to differences in climate, available natural resources and cultural heritage of the colonists themselves, the daily diet of a New Englander differed greatly from his counterparts in the Middle Colonies—New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware—and even more so from those in the South.
But one constant across all of the 13 colonies was that aside from imported goods such as spices, molasses and rum, people in the pre-Revolutionary War era mostly consumed food they produced themselves. They sowed corn, caught fish, hunted wild game and raised farm animals for meat, as well as milk to make their own butter and cheese. They planted vegetables in their kitchen gardens, brewed their own beer and pressed their own cider.
Though regional, seasonal and other differences make it difficult to generalize about a typical colonial diet, the following seven foods and beverages are a small sample of what might have been found on many colonial tables.
Continued below.
7 Common Foods Eaten in the 13 Colonies
What people ate in colonial America largely depended on where they lived. Due to differences in climate, available natural resources and cultural heritage of the colonists themselves, the daily diet of a New Englander differed greatly from his counterparts in the Middle Colonies—New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware—and even more so from those in the South.
But one constant across all of the 13 colonies was that aside from imported goods such as spices, molasses and rum, people in the pre-Revolutionary War era mostly consumed food they produced themselves. They sowed corn, caught fish, hunted wild game and raised farm animals for meat, as well as milk to make their own butter and cheese. They planted vegetables in their kitchen gardens, brewed their own beer and pressed their own cider.
Though regional, seasonal and other differences make it difficult to generalize about a typical colonial diet, the following seven foods and beverages are a small sample of what might have been found on many colonial tables.
Continued below.
7 Common Foods Eaten in the 13 Colonies
