This delightful 450-page book by Alice Morse Earle was a warm-fuzzy bookstore find. By the by, it's still available via Amazon.
The entire book was a fascinating read but I'll share this with you from the chapter titled, Meat and Drink.
"Potatoes were known to New Englanders but were rare and when referred to were probably sweet potatoes...but they were not immediately liked. A fashionable way of cooking them was with butter, sugar and grape juice, then mixed with dates, lemons and mace; then seasoned with cinnamon, nutmeg and pepper....and then frosted with sugar."
"Apple Pie is used through the whole year and when fresh apples are no longer to be had, dried ones are used. It is the evening meal of children. House-pie, in country places, is made of apples neither peeled nor freed from their cores, and its crust is not broken if a wagon wheel goes over it."
"Milk became a very important part of the food of families in the 18th century. The usual breakfast and supper was bread and milk. As the family prospered, milk and hasty pudding, milk and stewed pumpkin, milk and baked apples, milk and berries were variations. It was said that children were usually very fond it this."
"Housewives pickled samphire (asparagus like), fennel, purple cabbage, nasturtium buds, green walnuts, lemons, radish pods, barberries, parsley, mushrooms, asparagus, and many kinds of fish and fruit. They candied fruits and nuts and made many marmalades and a vast number of fruit wines and cordials."
"They collared and potted many kinds of fish and game. Salted meat was eaten and very little fresh meat for there was no means of keeping meat after it was killed. Every well-to-do family had a "powdering-tub" which was a tub in which meat was salted and pickled. Many families had a smoke house in which beef, ham and bacon were smoked."
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