Pioneer Food

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Pioneer Food

Pioneer foods can be defined as the emergency foods and the makeshift methods of food preparation employed by European settlers in the Americas, Africa, Australia, and other parts of the world to which European culture was transplanted en masse. While work has been done on such scattered themes as the Australian Germans (Heuzenroeder, 2001), the German settlers on the Russian steppes (Kloberdanz and Kloberdanz, 1993), and the Portuguese experience in Brazil (Camara Cascudo, 1967), research on pioneer cultures has largely concentrated on particular ethnic groups rather than looking at overall patterns and themes. This essay attempts to outline some general observations on the pioneer food culture of the continental United States. These foods have played an important role as symbols in traditional culture and as continuing images in modern mass culture. The Fort restaurant outside of Denver has become a national symbol of this genre of cookery, and its owner, Samuel Arnold, has been a keen supporter of research on this subject. Jacqueline Williams's Wagon Wheel Kitchens (1993) is especially noteworthy for its treatment of pioneer foods along the Oregon Trail.

Faced with the double problem of establishing new economic and social communities to replace the ones left behind, early American settlers were forced to make compromises on what they served on their tables. The primitive, log-cabin-in-the-clearing style of life was indeed rugged and different from later stages of more settled food production and consumption. In wooded areas fields had to be cleared before farming and gardening could commence. European methods of slash-and-burn agriculture were employed to make new ground amid the stumps of trees later removed. On the Great Plains the log cabin became the sod house, but on all frontiers the initial dependence was significantly on wild foods to supplement the diet. This included game, such as wild turkey, jackrabbit, quail, pigeon, venison, squirrel, groundhog, bear, and, of course, buffalo.

County histories are rich in stories of pioneer food-ways, especially in noting wild plant foods that are no longer consumed. Cattail flapjacks, the wapatoo or swamp potato (Sagittaria latifolia), prairie breadroot (Psoralea esculenta), the pond apple (Annona glabra) of Florida, the buffalo pea (Astragalus crassicarpus), the cabbage palm (Sabal palmetto) of the coastal South, and the miner's lettuce (Montia perfoliata) of the West Coast all carry names that allude to their substitute uses in settlers' diets. Some native plants, like miner's lettuce and Mormon tea (Ephedra viridis ), are still widely consumed in the twenty-first century, while others, like the mayhaw (Crataegus aestivalis ) of the Deep South, have become symbols of regional cooking (mayhaw jelly). Many wild food plants, like camass (Comassia quamash) of the Northwest, are grown mostly as garden ornamentals.

Aside from wild plants, the principal food source derived from the Native Americans was corn (maize), which became the primary grain raised by backwoods farmers, taking precedence over wheat and other cash crops. Corn products eaten at the pioneer table were many. Corn on the cob was a favorite summer dish once corn attained the milk stage in midsummer. It was commonly roasted in ashes downhearth rather than boiled. In fact, in the twenty-first century is still called "roasting ears" in many parts of Appalachia.

Cornmeal mush or suppawn was a common winter dish normally eaten with milk or syrup. The solidified residue was sliced and fried the next day for breakfast. Dried corn was also a winter dish, along with hominy or samp. The latter was of two kinds: large hominy hulled in lye water, then boiled and served whole; or small hominy (grits), which was ground to create several grades of texture, depending in part on the type of corn used. Small hominy is a popular dish in the South, although it was once widely eaten in other parts of the country.

Another pioneer grain, this one brought from Europe, was buckwheat, which could thrive in poor soils on hilly or mountainous land and provided bees with a local source for buckwheat honey. An English traveler through early America once referred to the ubiquitous buckwheat cake as a popular American breakfast preparation. Buckwheat was also combined with cornmeal to make various types of pork or venison scrapple known by such regional names as panhas (Pennsylvania and Ohio), poor-do (Upper South), and liver mush (Appalachia). Because of its dark color, buckwheat dishes fell out of fashion during the late nineteenth century in favor of foods made with wheat.

The prevalent method of cooking in pioneer settlements was in open fireplaces, where primitive breads, such as johnnycakes and corn dodgers, could be baked on hanging griddles or in Dutch ovens. The Dutch oven, a straight-sided iron bake kettle with a tight-fitting lid, became a symbol of frontier one-pot cooking because it could be used for baking, frying, boiling, and braising. Among the Mormon settlers of Utah, the Dutch oven represented their religious trek through the wilderness, and in the twenty-first century Dutch oven cooking remains a central feature of Mormon outdoor gatherings.

Undoubtedly the frontier diet was monotonous by any standard, especially during the winter, when greens were few. Such was the observation of the Methodist circuit rider Marmaduke Pearce, who traveled through the thinly settled areas of western New York in 1811: "O the cold houses, the snow, the mud, the sage tea, the baked beans!" (Peck, 1860).

See also Cake and Pancake; Game; Hearth Cookery; Maize.