America Was Built on Beer, Bread, and Stolen Coffee: Food of the American Revolution (Part #2)

Nancy A. May: Hello everybody.

It's Nancy May and Sylvia France once again with another episode

of Family Tree Food and Stories.

This is part two of our four-part series this month of

July celebrating the American Revolutionary birthday of 250 years.

And if you will do us all a birthday favor, go to

podcast.familytreefoodstories, like, share, subscribe and follow us so that

you get an update on every week's release.

And as we like to say, every meal has a story and every story is a feast.

So Sylvia, what do you say we get on with the show?

go

Nancy A. May: So as everybody knows, the Boston Tea Party, December , 1773,

was all about a crowd of guys dressing up as a bunch of Indians and dumping

boatloads, literally boatloads, of British tea into the harbor

So do you know how much tea they actually dumped in?

Nancy A. May: No, I don't know

But I do.

It was actually 343 some chests.

That was nearly 46 tons of it.

In today's num- yeah, in today's number, that's between two and a half and $3

million just floating out in the tide

Nancy A. May: That's amazing.

Who would have known?

I might have wanted to stuff tea in my mattress as opposed to dollar bills.

and there's also a question that people rarely ask

Which is

Nancy A. May: Well, that question is what did they drink the morning after?

Oh, not that morning after,

I don't know.

Nancy A. May: but people woke up still wanting something hot, their tea, and

instead they had to pour something else.

So what did they pour?

That one little question opens up this whole episode because what

you poured and what you ate beside it came down almost to entirely where you lived

Nancy A. May: Oh, that's hard to believe, but it's true.

, A family up in Connecticut and a family down in the Carolinas were barely eating

the same food, yet we were all part of the same country or trying to be

Yep, . there was no such thing as a colonial meal.

What you had access to was actually on your table

Nancy A. May: You know, that's pretty funny because here we both sit, two

Floridians and are about to have a lively conversation about a New England loaf

of bread which take me back to my roots

Well,

. You're the Connecticut Yankee who moved south.

I'm the Florida girl whose people has been here since before it was a state,

and one of my Revolutionary War patriots served in North Carolina, Edmund

Spivey Sr. Between us, we've g- got the whole map of the colonies covered

Nancy A. May: Yeah, we do.

although Edmund Spivey Sr. sounds quite fancy and la-di-da.

Oh.

And here's the joke, I think.

A Connecticut Yankee and a fourth-generation Floridan

walk into a podcast, although I don't know the punchline.

But somehow it works, and here's the thing

people get wrong about this area.

They picture it gray, bland, brown, and joyless

Nancy A. May: Yeah.

I think dirty buckled shoes and sad porridge.

Those were the Pilgrims, so not true here.

This food was rich with spice, buttery, and sometimes downright fancy food.

It was hard to keep food from spoiling, but it was not a sad time to eat

After the tea party and the boycotts, drinking British tea got dangerous.

Not the tea itself, but being seen with it

Nancy A. May: Because it's British.

It's the exact thing that our neighbors just threw into the

harbor, which made it very dangerous

People started calling a cup of tea a badge of slavery.

That's really harsh words for a hot drink

Nancy A. May: I can't imagine so when you didn't have your cup

of tea what did the women do?

They did something clever they went out into their gardens and rebuilt

their whole tea shelf from scratch

ingenuity wins again.

It was raspberry leaf, mint, goldenrod, sassafras, even a native

shrub they called New Jersey tea.

One patriot swore raspberry leaf was as good as any tea and much more wholesome.

Nancy A. May: Wholesome.

love that word.

Okay.

But to be honest with you, it doesn't sound like it actually tasted like

tea, 'cause herbal tea doesn't taste much like black tea today

But actually some of it was close enough but

here's our Forklore today.

This is my favorite part of the show.

was liberty tea actually tea?

Nope, not one cup of it

Nancy A. May: So wait a sec. They still called it tea, and yet it wasn't tea?

That is absolutely correct.

Real tea comes from one single plant, Camellia sinensis.

Sip anything else, and it's technically a tannin, not tea.

The whole resistance was running on fancy hot leaf water.

Nancy A. May: I love that.

All that patriotism and the tea wasn't even tea

That is correct.

In Tallahassee, there was, a lake, and we called it Tea Lake.

Because when you go in your bathing suit, you would come

out and it would be all black.

Nancy A. May: Oh, okay.

and it was the tannins, just like we drink in tea.

So, down south , there was a twist.

There's a native plant with real caffeine in it.

It's called yaupon holly.

We see it all the time, and people don't realize it's caffeinated

Nancy A. May: Go look for one of those in my backyard, but

I don't think I've got it.

But caffeine growing wild?

I'll have to check into that one

Yep, the only caffeinated plant that is native to North America.

The British felt so threatened that a royal botanist gave it a scientific name

that basically means the vomit plant.

Ugh.

Nancy A. May: That is one sneaky marketing scare tactic as far as I'm concerned

just to kill off the competition

It was actually a hit job in Latin.

It doesn't make you sick at all, and honestly, I've tried Yapon Chai

myself, and it's actually really good

Nancy A. May: So this was a sneaky little trick of King George, who

smeared the perfectly nice cup of tea just to make sure nobody drank it

250 years of bad PR over something I'd happily order again

Nancy A. May: Hmm.

Meanwhile, back up north, our neighbors were watching you like a hawk to make sure

that you were not drinking the British tea

Oh, please tell me how they were watching

Nancy A. May: Okay.

There were these communities kind of like, oh, I would call it the HOA

spy network down here in Florida,

I know them well

Nancy A. May: right?

And they'd peek in your window and even go through your trash to find if you had

the real tea leaves or the herbal ones.

did you ever watch Bewitched as a kid?

Oh, absolutely

Nancy A. May: Remember Alice Kravitz who peered through the window?

Well, this was the Alice Kravitz of the day, and if they found that you

were drinking the real tea, guess what?

What?

Nancy A. May: They would put your name in the paper, kind of like

page six of the New York Post.

Not a good place to show up

So you'd be canceled in 1775 over a cup of tea?

Nancy A. May: Yep, all over a cup of tea, and that's how we

became a coffee-drinking country.

We stayed off tea so long that we just never went back

And the loyalists, plenty of them kept drinking the real

British stuff quietly with the curtains closed so they wouldn't be caught.

Nancy A. May: I don't wanna know what else happened behind those curtains.

But your cup told the whole street which side of the battle you were on

So here's the first thing to take home today.

. The cup you poured wasn't only breakfast, it was a vote for the rebellion or not.

And you can still pour it.

Mint on your windowsill, hot water.

That's real liberty tea

Nancy A. May: Okay, here's one quick caring note, because this is important

and something you might wanna check with your doctor just in case.

Raspberry leaf and rose hips, if they show up in the old recipes and

even the new recipes, you better not drink it if you are pregnant or

you have some other malady where the medication might interact with the tea.

Just check with your doctor first

That's very good advice, Nancy.

Okay, let's set the table going forward So if there was no single colonial meal,

let's actually set three tables, Nancy.

You're New England.

Go

Nancy A. May: So yeah, we've got a couple of different tables to deal with here.

Because New England has rocky soil, so wheat barely grows at all.

Everyday bread was a thing called rye and Indian bread.

Rye flour and cornmeal was mashed together to make bread

So I wanna make sure I understand.

Does Indian mean corn-based?

Nancy A. May: Well, yes it does.

And listen to this.

Because one loaf could weigh up to eight pounds and feed

an entire family for a week

That eight pounds of bread, that's not a loaf.

That's a dumbbell or a doorstop.

Nancy A. May: Right.

Or a lead belly, as they could say, right?

And salt cod off the Atlantic, well, that's a New England tradition.

And baked beans sweetened with maple syrup, that's your week

Salt cod again and again.

We talked about the problem with monotony last episode

Nancy A. May: I know, right?

Shoot me.

You'd soak it overnight just to pull the salt out, and then you

would bake it into everything.

And you learn to love it.

Either that or sorry, you went hungry

I guess it's like the one bite, no thank you rule, that

if you didn't eat it

Nancy A. May: Right?

So I'm just curious, what did they wash it down with?

Nancy A. May: Well, it is New England, so mostly cider.

They pressed their own by the barrel.

I've even pressed cider myself.

and a small beer was even given to the kids because the

water wasn't safe at the time

Are you telling me children drink beer?

Nancy A. May: Yeah, they did drink beer, but a much weaker

variety of it, and here's why.

because the town wells, were too close to the outhouses and many of the

animal pens, so the water could make you sick, and sometimes deadly sick

So you're telling me that beer wasn't an indulgence?

It, the water was actually the gamble

Nancy A. May: Well, beer was a necessity actually.

Brewing and fermentation killed off what was in the water so that

the mug and a small beer were safe choices even for the kids

So did they have white bread?

Nancy A. May: Well, not exactly Wonder Bread, that was a luxury.

There was some of it, but most families almost never saw it.

And there's a New England story that I love the most because this one

revolves around election, and they had something called election cake

Cake for an election?

That sounds like a story to me, but it could sound sweet, too

Nancy A. May: I guess it depends on what side of the election you're on.

So if you were in Connecticut, men could vote for their own

governor as far back as the 1660s.

There was no polling places in town, so you had to travel either half a day

or even more on horseback or on foot just to reach the capital in Hartford

That's a really long trip.

That's not like popping to your local neighborhood polling

place as a school or a church

Nancy A. May: Nope, not today.

In fact, if you were in Greenwich going on foot, well, that would take days.

But they also had taverns where speeches and military drills and all sorts of

fireworks along the way just to make it a little bit more of an adventure.

And a hungry crowd gathered at every local spot, and you had to feed those guys

It sounds like a, an excuse for a party to me and and

let me guess, which I already know the answer, who did the feeding?

Nancy A. May: The feeding, well, or the baking, it was us, the women

Of course they did

Nancy A. May: unfortunately we couldn't cast a vote.

until 1919.

But they did run the kitchen, or we ran the kitchen, baking enormous cakes

for every man who made that trip.

, and the vote was his, but the feast was ours

. Sylvia France: A hearty cake built for democracy and empty stomachs too

Nancy A. May: Absolutely.

So let's slide on down the map to the middle colonies.

We're talking mid-Atlantic, New York, Southern New York,

Pennsylvania, and New Jersey

Well, I understand there's better soil down there, so actual wheat

plus cabbage, squash, apples, and a big German influence in the kitchen

Nancy A. May: And you know, they actually called New Jersey the Garden

State, but that meant that what was on your plate was a little different

I know these will sound familiar to you.

Pancakes, waffles, donuts, pot pies.

Honestly, it sounds like brunch to me

Nancy A. May: brunch.

They were ahead of all of us.

I can't imagine.

Let me bring my champagne along the

Where's my mimosa?

Nancy A. May: Right?

Do they have anything sweet, too?

Oh, absolutely.

A cookie called a jumble that was flavored with rose water because the

Dutch ran this wide open trade culture and they brought the world to America

Nancy A. May: and there's one thing that breaks my heart just

a little bit on this whole story it's called passenger pigeon pie

What?

Pigeon pie?

I've sung the song of Four and Twenty Blackbirds Baked

in a Pie since I was a kid

. Nancy A. May: Yes, passenger pigeon pie.

Wild passenger pigeons in flocks were so huge that they darkened the sky for hours.

People figured the supply was endless, so they baked them

into pies by the thousands.

I'd hate to be underneath that flock of birds

I hope you had an umbrella if you did.

And I understand it wasn't endless

Nancy A. May: They hunted them clean to extinction and the one last

passenger pigeon died in the zoo.

pies will never taste the same

That is such a sad story.

But, yeah, but it did show up in the first cookbook ever printed in the colonies.

That was in 1742.

Somebody loved it enough to write it down

Nancy A. May: okay, so it's your turn, Sylvia.

what's happening further down south?

All right, my table.

Corn is king, hominy grits, hoe cakes, and a warm cornmeal mush they called pudding.

Basically, the granddaddy of grits

Nancy A. May: So pudding actually sounds like a comfort food

It smelled like smoke and warm milk by the hearth.

Poor families ate it plain.

If you had a little more, you stirred in butter, cream, and

drizzled molasses or honey

Nancy A. May: That's opposite of that gray and joyless food

that we talked about earlier.

Those were the pilgrims.

We had things like succotash, corn beans together, which came

straight from native communities long before any settler showed up

, Nancy A. May: So a lot of the American table is really indigenous food

Yes, both in the North and the South.

That's the second thing to take home, honestly.

Corn was the great equalizer, and most of what we call American

food started with native crops.

And then there's the stew every family still makes and commonly serves in

restaurants around the Atlanta metro area.

It's Brunswick stew.

There's actually a city in the south part of Georgia called Brunswick.

Except the 1776 version was a bit wilder

Nancy A. May: So Wilder, I'm afraid to ask what that means

Well, that's the South.

Just think roadkill.

So whatever was running through the woods that week, squirrel,

rabbit, raccoon, possum, simmered down with corn and lima beans

Nancy A. May: That reminds me of a story that my dad used to tell me

about when they were kids in Brooklyn, that they used to eat squirrel pie.

My dad said that his dad used to go out and shoot squirrels in

the backyard, and his mom would skin them and make them into pie.

Now, this is Brooklyn, New York, and they still had dirt roads back then.

It sounds like it's Brooklyn, Georgia to me.

Nancy A. May: Right?

See, this stuff is closer than people think.

And oh, the towns.

Turtle soup was a fancy treat.

I do admit liking snapper turtle soup from Bookbinders in

Philadelphia when I went there once.

But down here we had our own version.

I like the name cooter soup.

It's fun to

Nancy A. May: soup?

I am not going there.

I'm not touching that one with a 10-foot pole, Sylvia.

I know, but it's fun to say.

Cooter, it's a freshwater turtle, I promise.

But when you say cooter soup to a room, watch every single face turn

in your direction and start laughing.

What the heck came out of your mouth?

Nancy A. May: Yeah.

You're supposed to be a good Southern girl.

I have too many questions, and I am not going any further with those

Well, that's another episode.

And there's my story.

It's called Hoppin' John.

It's black-eyed peas, onions, and rice.

I've eaten it every single New Year's Day as long as I can remember

Nancy A. May: So every single New Year's?

What's the story there?

. Sylvia France: Every year, we don't skip it because it's guaranteed good luck.

It's a New Year's Eve tradition.

Black-eyed peas represent coins, collard or sauerkraut represent money, they're

green, and cornbread represents gold

Nancy A. May: Hmm.

And I honestly have never had it, not once in my life, but I

might dip into some of that gold.

We all will.

So I've decided I'm finally feeding you Hoppin' John next time I visit and . You

turned your nose when I said collards when I told you about it, but you've

not had mine with a ham hock and onions.

same country, but we had three completely different suppers

Nancy A. May: Hemlocks, onions, and collards.

it doesn't sound great to me, but I will give it a try.

And that's the big one on the whole thing that we're talking about.

Because the colonial meal, we're talking about the average citizens now, not the

soldiers, not the gentry, just us average folks, you and me, out there having

a different meal in the same country

And I have a question for you to chew on.

Was it rye, wheat, or corn?

Which is your family's table?

Nancy A. May: So we'd love to get your input on that one.

We'll put a question in the Facebook group.

It's Family Tree Food Stories in Facebook, and we'll put a,

link in the show notes as well.

It's the kinda question that turns into a whole new episode if we want it to

It seems like every time we say something, it's a whole new

episode, so we'll be busy for a while

Nancy A. May: Okay, here's something I generally wanna know.

- I know we're generally talking about food here, but you gotta

have food on a plate or something.

What were these folks eating off of?

Well, it was actually mostly wood.

They call it a trencher.

It's a carved wooden plate or bowl, and you can actually

find that in medieval times.

And it was interesting, s- sometimes two people shared just one.

Less dishes.

Nancy A. May: Yeah, less dishes, but a shared place.

I'm not sure if that's romantic or, well, depending upon your marriage,

whether it's a, a time for divorce

Depends on how they eat and if they ate yours.

If you had a little money, you stepped up to pewter and forks

Nancy A. May: Let me guess, we talked about forks before.

These were the fancy kind of forks

Oh, of course, a a fork was a snobby luxury even to the commoners.

Regular folks ate with spoon, knife, and the hands that God gave them

Nancy A. May: You in the South, God gave you hands.

So the fork was also a show-off at the table the entire time.

I get it and there was one shared cup, as I understand, which

also sounds rather disgusting

Well, just think communion.

. You had one tankard of cider or beer passed around the whole table.

You wiped the rim on your sleeve and handed it on

Nancy A. May: that's a new definition of sharing for me.

But

Sharing is caring.

Nancy A. May: right, sharing is caring food itself looked different

because nothing stayed fresh, and there was no refrigeration

None.

So they had to get very clever.

So you had salting, drying, smoking, pickling, and my favorite something

called potting, and it wasn't flowers

Nancy A. May: I'll have to ask what that one is because I have never heard of that

So they took the meat and they packed it in a tight jar, then

they sealed the top with a layer of fat.

It keeps for months.

You just , took a slice of what you needed

. Nancy A. May: So that doesn't sound too appealing.

But they served it also, what I understand, with the head and feet smushed

into that jar and can with the fat, which is also pretty disgusting in my book

Often, yes.

But it was actually proof of what you're eating and nothing

went to waste, not a single scrap

Nancy A. May: Oh, that I understand, not going to waste.

however how well you ate actually also came right down

to your wallet not unlike today

Yes.

The poorest families lived on potatoes, bread, and cheese working folks got

meat maybe twice a week and the middle class ate three solid meals a day

Nancy A. May: And nobody's eating a fresh garden salad unless you happen

to be a French soldier in the woods

Those weed and frogs again.

raw fruit and vegetables were thought of unappetizing, even unhealthy so they

boiled the vegetables soft and poured sugar on the fruit to make it nice

Nancy A. May: And well, they'd actually faint at our crudité board here today.

but there's also food as a medicine angle, I think somewhere in this, isn't there?

Of course there is.

They baked a pepper cake, and a black pepper actually helps

to keep food a little longer.

The kitchen knew the trick before anyone had heard the word antibacterial

Nancy A. May: So that's pretty interesting.

And here's the city flip that always gets people.

In 1776, oysters and eels were poor people's food

Are you talking the cheap stuff?

Nancy A. May: Yeah, back then maybe.

… But New York Harbor was so packed with them back then, you used to be able to

take a bucket and scoop them up into the bucket, and trash food of 1776 is now

worth $40 for an appetizer on your plate.

Oh, and I gotta tell you about Bob's eel story, because that has

to do with New York Harbor, too.

- When he was a kid, he told me that he and his dad would go down to the harbor

under the bridge and fish for eels.

Well, his dad would fish for eels, and his kids probably did something else.

his dad take the bucket home, and his mom would peel the eels and

make some sort of dish out of it.

It wasn't till we were on a date one day and he said, "Hmm, this sushi eel somehow

tastes like the tuna fish that my mom said she was giving us on Wednesday nights."

So I guess New York eel is also your local neighborhood tuna fish, or could be

I love Bob's stories.

Keep 'em coming.

So times changed.

What about the day itself?

What time did they actually eat?

Nancy A. May: Well, the big meal was midday.

That was dinner, the main event.

Supper was at night, or at least that's what they called it, which

we call our dinner, and it was usually leftovers or something sparse

My family actually calls it supper.

And this is the wild one, plenty of folks in town started the

morning off with a cup of beer.

Yes, again, because the water would make you sick

Nancy A. May: Beer for breakfast.

I think that's a little too much for me unless you've got a mimosa

on the side, but not every night.

And the 1776 Homefront was just vibes

And for the real celebration, syllabub.

That was whipped cream with wine or cider.

A boozy holiday milkshake, basically.

Sounds good to me.

Nancy A. May: Does sound good for me.

I'll take that order.

We might have to try that on our recreations.

I'm up for the experiment.

. Nancy A. May: And here's the thing.

They preserved everything and wasted almost nothing.

. Now, one more thing the home front did that nobody teaches you.

They rioted over food

They don't put that in the history books.

Nancy A. May: No, right?

Game how often?

Nancy A. May: Well, it was more than 30 times in a few years,

and women led most of them.

We are troublemakers at times, even back then.

and the best one actually happened in Boston in 1777

Tell me more about it

Nancy A. May: So here's what happened.

A merchant, a coffee merchant of course, a troublemaking guy, was sitting on a stash

of coffee waiting for the price to go up.

looking at price gouging, and hundreds of women showed up to

demand the keys to his stash.

And he said, "No way."

That sounds like really big trouble to tell a woman no.

Nancy A. May: So one of them grabs him by the neck and drops him into

this cart that they happen to have and they open the warehouse, haul the

coffee out themselves, and drove off.

Well, not in a car but they drove off in their wagons

So to really believe this, please tell me that somebody wrote it down

Nancy A. May: I know.

It wasn't folklore and no, it wasn't just passed down by telephone Abigail

Adams actually did write this down in a letter and she watched her neighbors

doing it from outside her window

And here's the part I want people to sit with.

It wasn't Emergent having a tantrum, it was math

Nancy A. May: So what do you mean by math?

I'm lost there

Well, in Roman time, soldiers were actually paid in salt.

That's why you get the word salary that we have today.

Most of the salt, especially up north, was imported, and the blockade choked it off.

No salt means the meat was, could not be put up for the winter, and it would rot.

So no salt meant a hungry February.

At least here in Florida we had the Gulf, so they could evaporate their salt

Nancy A. May: Oh, it sounds like a cold February too so she's not raging.

She's actually doing arithmetic for survival and then stealing the coffee.

While both armies are walking off with her

livestock, she was just correct

Nancy A. May: And she wasn't alone because from Boston to the Carolinas, women were

the ones holding the lines at the market

The home front had a face, and most of it was

hers and beautiful like ours.

Nancy A. May: Yes, for sure.

Okay.

. In 1796, in Hartford, Connecticut, a small book called American Cookery went on sale.

It was just 47 pages.

The first cookbook written by an American for American kitchens

Nancy A. May: That sounds pretty interesting.

and it was the first to put recipes for Johnny cake, Indian pudding, and what

we now call pumpkin pie down on paper.

In addition, it was the first time that cranberry and turkey were paired

together, not just the Pilgrims.

it didn't happen back in Plymouth.

… it was also the first time that the word cookery was printed into a book

And we know how much you love vintage cookbooks.

Nancy A. May: I do

You have a stash.

I love to hear your stories about where you find them in unusual places.

So it pulled the three tables into one book, New England's corn, Mid-Atlantic's

wheat, and the Southern hearth, the very beginning of a single American cuisine

Nancy A. May: And the author, we almost know nothing about her.

She signed it only Amelia Simmons, an American orphan.

Oh, so sad.

I have to find that book.

and it hinted that she could barely read and had worked in other people's

kitchens and houses just to survive

So it was- A woman with no family, no schooling, and

no last word on her life, and she wrote the book that taught a brand

new country how to feed itself

. Nancy A. May: But she survives here on this podcast.

She gets her name read out loud, Amelia Simmons, and that's the last

thing to carry home in this show.

So before we let you go, there are five things that we want you

to carry out here, and something you can actually do with each one

One, there's no colonial meal.

Your region was your menu, so find your family's table and cook the

dish your own line descends from

Nancy A. May: Yeah, we've got a book on that one.

Two, that homegrown cup of tea after the tea party was actually a political act.

a dry little mint on a windowsill that you brewed yourself was called liberty tea.

You can do that today, too

I think they sell that at Publix.

And three, corn was a great equalizer.

A lot of American food is really indigenous food.

Cook one of those dishes this week and say where it actually came from

. Nancy A. May: Four, they preserved everything and wasted almost nothing.

So you can keep a scrap bag in the freezer, run one pot all week, - and

stop tossing that stale bread.

You can turn it into croutons

Or actually thicken your stew.

And five, the cooks and the orphan who wrote them all down

got left out of the story, so when you make it, say their names.

We just put them back in.

Amelia Simmons

Nancy A. May: The Declaration of Independence 250 years

ago named the dream.

, Kitchens like yours, three different tables, one stubborn

country that fed it all into being

So we want to thank you for being here today

and pulling up your chair with us.

We are so grateful you're listening

Nancy A. May: Yep.

so next time we're heading up the road to the big house, as we call it down

here in the South, the gentry table.

, That's where Martha Washington was serving up her meals

So it was the fine wine, the imported delicacies, the food many

commoners never dreamed of that's a whole different world, and that's next

Nancy A. May: So please remember, go to podcast.familytreefoodstories,

share, like, . And drop us a note with your food stories and ideas.

We'd love to hear every one of them.

Because we'd love to have you back at our table too.

And remember, every meal has a story and every story is a feast

Happy cooking and happy experimenting

Nancy A. May: Bye-bye.