Mensam Mundum - World Table: New England, cuisine born in the colonies
- ESTHER OERTEL
- Posted On
New England comes to mind at this time of year when we celebrate the birth of our nation.
Though the Constitution was drafted in Philadelphia and the Bill of Rights in New York (neither of which are in New England), the beginnings of the American Revolution were forged in Boston Harbor when British tea was thrown out of the ships docked there.
And, of course, “the shot heard round the world,” the first gunfire exchange of the war, took place in Lexington, Massachusetts.
There’s another reason I think of New England: childhood vacations on Cape Cod.
Even now, I can smell the salt air and feel the excitement of traversing picturesque towns along the Cape on our way to its very tip.
Friends were generous with their small vacation home, and I spent countless summer weeks there with family from a very young age.
There were many meals made in that rustic little house, first by my mother, and then by me.
I’ll never forget the first time I saw live lobster (bought at the wharf just minutes earlier) being lowered into a large stock pot of boiling water on that kitchen stove. Horrifying, yes, but after tasting of it, lobster became a favorite of mine for decades.
As we got older, my father made sure we spent time fishing on Cape Cod Bay. True to name, cod is what we pulled out of the water.
It was with that cod that I first learned to made fish cakes, improvised and without a recipe.
On the trail through dunes from the house to the beach, shrubs filled with beach plums, sour little native fruits, were prolific.
Looking back, I wish I had made batches of jam or jelly with them as is done throughout the coast where they grow from Maine to Maryland.
Other fruits indigenous to New England are cranberries, which grow naturally in Massachusetts (and are cultivated extensively there to meet the Thanksgiving demand), and blueberries, with Maine being the U.S. state that produces the most in the wild.
European colonists brought apples to North America, and New England’s long, hot summers and crisp fall days provide a perfect environment for them.
Colonists old and young drank hard apple cider, as apples were plentiful and cider didn’t spoil like milk.
Today, for the most part, New England’s apple industry is family-owned, and farm stands and pick-your-own orchards are common.
Much of the cuisine of New England has been influenced by the food of Native Americans. Crops such as corn were mixed with the British recipes that the Pilgrims brought with them.
Prior to being taught to plant and harvest corn by Native Americans, the Pilgrims thought of it as animal fodder. It soon became an important mainstay of their diet.
Cornmeal pancakes known as Johnny (or Jonny) cakes are popular throughout New England, especially in Rhode Island, and can be traced back to the Pawtuxet tribe near Plymouth Rock.
The origin of the name is a mystery (there is no Johnny) and may have come from the term “journey cake” because of their portability.
I fell in love when I ate my first Johnny Cake at a small tearoom in Petaluma some years ago.
I’m in good company in this regard, as Benjamin Franklin was quite a fan of them and is reputed to have said they were “better than a Yorkshire muffin.”
Indian pudding, a steamed mixture of cornmeal, milk, and molasses, was once popular, but fell out of favor as packaged puddings became common. Even so, many New Englanders continue to keep this traditional dish on their Thanksgiving table.
Originally, Native Americans provided the cornmeal to settlers for these and other dishes.
As children, my brother and I always enjoyed receiving maple sugar as a treat, and I owe a debt of gratitude to the Native Americans who taught colonists to harvest the sap from maple trees.
Native Americans cut notches in the trees to access the sap, but colonists later learned to drill holes instead.
Sap was boiled down to create syrup and sugar, the latter being more popular as it was easier to store.
Another influence in New England cooking is their participation in the triangular trade between Europe, Africa, and the Americas in the 18th and 19th centuries. (Sadly, this practice often included bringing slaves from Africa to the Americas.)
From such trade, molasses and rum became common ingredients in cooking. Rum, in fact, was so popular there prior to Prohibition that some of the best rum distilleries are in New England.
Molasses is used today in such dishes as Boston baked beans and Boston brown bread.
Over time, immigrants from Ireland, Portugal, and Italy added their culinary influences to New England.
Portuguese chourico, for example, is a sausage commonly served there in sandwiches, stews, and for breakfast, and the Italian submarine sandwich is said to have originated in Maine.
Five of the six New England states border the Atlantic, so seafood is common throughout the area and a bulwark of their diet.
The quintessential New England clambake derives from a seaside cooking practice by Native American tribes from Massachusetts, Maine, and Connecticut. For more than 2000 years, clams and lobsters were cooked in sand pits; without cooking pots, the earth was their vessel.
The tradition of steaming seafood at the beach is still enjoyed. (Recipes also exist for doing a clambake at home.) Seafood such as lobsters, crab, mussels, and clams are steamed in seaweed over hot rocks and coals in the sand. Corn on the cob, potatoes, carrots, and onions, are often added to the mix.
A tradition rooted in England is still popular today: the boiled dinner. This hearty and warming cold-weather dish is made of boiled brisket with potatoes and vegetables such as turnips, carrots, beets and cabbage.
Corned beef hash was created in New England as a way to repurpose leftovers from the prior evening’s boiled dinner. It’s said, in fact, that a boiled dinner isn’t complete until hash is served the next day.
Red flannel hash is a popular version made with beets subbing for some of the potatoes and is often served with eggs on top.
New England clam chowder, thick and creamy with a milk or cream base, is the most well-known and popular variety of clam chowder. While it’s most closely associated with Massachusetts and Maine (and occasionally referred to as Boston chowder), food historians believe that French or Nova Scotian settlers introduced it to the area.
Boston’s Union Oyster House, the oldest continuously operating restaurant in the United States, has been serving it since 1836.
While the six New England states share a common culinary background, each has foods and traditions that set them apart.
Maine
Lobster (and lobster roll sandwiches) can be found throughout New England; however, Maine’s lobster industry is the most prominent, having been in existence for more than 400 years. Now a delicacy, lobster was once cheap due to their abundance along the Maine coast.
The whoopie pie is Maine’s official state treat. The origin of these large cake-like chocolate cookies filled with marshmallow cream is in dispute, with Pennsylvania and Maine both claiming the honor.
As mentioned before, wild blueberries are prolific here, so it’s no surprise that blueberry pie is Maine’s official state pie.
New Hampshire
New Hampshire has a small but productive coastline in its southeast corner, so fish and shellfish are quite popular there.
New England is known for clam chowder, but corn chowder is king in the Granite State. Various recipes for this soup abound, and an annual corn chowder festival in Portsmouth has a contest for the best one.
Vermont
Vermont produces much of the world’s maple syrup, second only to Quebec, Canada.
Since they share a significant border, the influence of French Canada can be seen in the state. Two Canadian dishes, poutine (French fries and cheese curds topped with brown gravy) and tourtierre (a Canadian meat pie), are enjoyed here.
Vermont is known for its dairy farms, and ice cream is popular. (It’s probably no coincidence that Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream is located there.)
“Creemee” is the moniker for soft serve ice cream in Vermont and can be found in almost every town.
Vermont has been a leader in the farm-to-table movement, with small farms supplying food to local restaurants long before it was a national trend.
Massachusetts
Massachusetts was once known for its cod; sadly, the fish that my brother and I pulled out of Cape Cod Bay decades ago is now scarce. Restaurants that have cod dishes on their menu often serve imported Icelandic cod.
Boston baked beans, dry beans slow cooked with molasses and bacon (salt pork in Colonial times), is a dish traced back to Native Americans, who cooked dry beans with molasses and bear fat in pits in the earth. Traditionally this bean dish is baked in a ceramic bean pot, but it can be made in a slow cooker.
Boston brown bread is a steamed dark bread traditionally cooked in a coffee can. Among its ingredients are molasses and rye flour.
Another traditional bread from Massachusetts is Anadama bread, which has cornmeal and molasses added to a traditional bread recipe. Strangely, it’s said that the name derives from a Gloucester fisherman’s curse on this wife, Anna.
Boston cream pie was created in 1956 for the opening of Parker’s Restaurant, which is also the birthplace of the Parker roll.
And lastly, marshmallow crème, a sandwich spread, was made popular by Paul Revere’s great-great-great granddaughter, Emma Curtis. Curtis published a recipe for a peanut butter and marshmallow crème sandwich during World War I. Dubbed the Liberty Sandwich, it was renamed the fluffernutter in 1960, and in recent years it became the Massachusetts state sandwich.
Connecticut
With its location between New York and Boston, Connecticut offers a blend of northeast culinary traditions, from New York pizza to New England seafood.
A Connecticut spin on pizza is to omit the mozzarella cheese and lightly sprinkle Romano cheese over red sauce. The New Haven inventor of this version was also reportedly the first to put littleneck clams on pizza.
Louis’ Lunch in New Haven, in business since 1895, was recognized by the Library of Congress as the 1900 birthplace of the hamburger sandwich.
Rhode Island
Rhode Island has its own version of clam chowder. Unlike the New England style soup, quahog clams (also known as hard clams) are used. The chowder has thin, clear broth rather than cream, so the taste of the clams comes through. For this reason, it’s called a “seafood lover’s chowder.”
The official state drink is coffee milk, which consists of milk mixed with a sweet coffee syrup.
Johnny cakes are especially popular here.
As you now know, Johnny cakes are also especially popular with me, and therefore will be the subject of today’s recipe. This recipe is from cookbook author Diana Rattay and is published on The Spruce Eats website.
Before I delve into that, however, I’d like to share with you a funny little fact.
I’ve been in two hurricanes in my life. They occurred 15 years apart, both while I was at the same Cape Cod vacation house.
The first, Hurricane Esther (my first name), was when I was four years old. While glued to the radio for information, my family thought it was funny when things such as “Esther is five miles from the coast” were announced.
I was in the second hurricane at age 19. Oddly, it was Hurricane Belle, which is my middle name.
I’m thankful that both ended up bringing nothing more than heavy wind and rain when passing over the little white cottage in Truro, Massachusetts.
And now, the recipe.
Cornmeal Johnnycakes
1 ¼ cups milk
1 tablespoon butter
½ cup flour
1 cup cornmeal
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg, lightly beaten
Heat the milk with the butter until the mixture begins to simmer.
Combine the dry ingredients and whisk to blend.
Add the hot milk mixture to the dry ingredients and mix to blend.
Whisk in the beaten egg.
Drop onto a hot, greased griddle or an iron skillet and fry until golden brown on both sides.
Serve hot with butter and syrup as with pancakes or serve them as bread with butter.
Esther Oertel is a writer and passionate home cook from a family of chefs. She grew up in a restaurant, where she began creating recipes from a young age. She’s taught culinary classes in a variety of venues in Lake County and previously wrote “The Veggie Girl” column for Lake County News. Most recently she’s taught culinary classes at Sur La Table in Santa Rosa, Calif. She lives in Middletown, Calif.