Tag Archives: food

December 21,Forefather’s Day and Plymouth Succotash

Since the Pilgrims did not celebrate Christmas, today at Ancestors in Aprons we are celebrating Forefather’s Day instead of Christmas, with a recipe for Succotash.

Pilgrims Going to Church

Pilgrims Going to Church, watercolor painting by George Henry Broughton (1833-1905)

Boston Globe reports on the early celebrations of Forefather’s Day (long before Thanksgiving was an official holiday), when notables like John Quincy Adams and Daniel Webster gave speeches.

In 1769 the holiday organizers ate a meal that was undeniably New England, but not much like today’s Thanksgiving feast—they consumed, according to contemporary records, “a large baked Indian wortleberry pudding, a dish of sauquetach (succotash), a dish of clams, a dish of sea fowl, a dish of cod fish and eels, an apple pie, a course of cranberry tarts and cheese.”

I don’t know about you, but to me, succotash is a simple, tasty vegetable dish combining beans and corn. When in doubt what to serve for dinner, dump a can of green beans and a can of corn in a pot–maybe add a little diced onion and butter–and you’ve got succotash. That’s the way my mother did it.

The dish was understandably popular during World War II and the Great Depression, during times of food shortages because the ingredients were cheap and combining corn and beans provides complete protein.

The corn part is immutable, although lima beans are more traditional than green beans. Even though they are not correct historically, because they were not native to North America. The name comes from the Narrangassett and Massachusetts peoples–sohquttahhash— or “msickquatash” (depending on what source you believe), which meant broken corn kernels or maybe “cooked corn”.

But I was totally surprised when I was roaming through the Pilgrim Hall Museum site and discovered not only a Succotash that I did not recognize, but also a holiday that I had never heard of. Apparently I’m not alone,

In an essay accompanying the recipe, William Talbot, speaking of the Pilgrim Museum, writes,

Thanksgiving belongs to America Forefathers Day is ours. It’s so well hidden that even many Plimothians don’t know about it.They can live in the town and…still think succotash is corn and lima beans. We may deplore their ignorance, but Forefather Day has not been engulfed by the mass culture.
Unlike Williamsburg we can’t stick fancy fruit above the doors of the Pilgrim Village and decorate the Fort Meeting House with laurel and pine. The best we could do is reenact the event when Governor Bradford found some of the strangers playing a game on Christmas day and took away their ball.

For some reason the image of Governor Bradford breaking up the ball game cracks me up.  (As I’m sure you know the reference to “strangers” means those passengers on the Mayflower and other Pilgrim ships who were not members of the church, but were tolerated in Plymouth because they had needed skills.) The Pilgrims came to the new world so they could worship as they pleased without being harassed by government. But woe to anyone in the colonies who did not agree with their creed.

So why is Forefather’s Day celebrated?

Here’s William Talbot again:

We think what they did was worth doing and worth remembering too. We look at the cold waters of the harbor on Forefathers Day and think of them in an open boat heading toward land.It’s worth the effort to get together with others who care about the Pilgrims.

And HOW is it celebrated?  partly by eating succotash–much more complex than lima beans and corn, and probably close to a stew that the Pilgrim forefathers might have eaten. (Minus the food processor, of course.)

So invite one hundred of your closest friends over on December 21, the day that the Pilgrims landed, and serve up Plymouth Succotash. (Wortleberry pie and sea fowl optional.)

Plymouth Succotash

(Traditionally served on Forefathers Day)
For 100 people or 150 as a first course

  • 25 lbs. gray corned beef
  • 5 5-lb. fowl
  • 5 lbs. lean salt pork
  • 6 lbs. dry white navy beans
  • 10 lbs. boiling potatoes
  • 10 lbs. white green-top turnips
  • 20 15-oz. cans whole hominy

Put all the meats in cold water and boil until tender, then drain, reserving the
skimmed broth as stock to cook the vegetables. Bone and dice the meats, and
reserve. The beans take a long, slow cooking in some of the fat broth until they can be pureed in the food processor. The puree is then reserved, and care must
be taken to cool both beans and broth lest they sour, which is a frequent disaster with this dish. The potatoes, white turnip and hulled corn should be cooked in the broth.

Before serving, mix meat and vegetables together and add the bean puree as it is heated. Be careful it neither burns nor sours–small batches help.It reheats particularly well and can be frozen.

Recipe from Pilgrim Museum web site PDF, but apparently removed from that site.

All About Bacon and Civil War Recipe: Bacon Pudding

Bacon for Bacon Pudding Bacon seems to be the most talked about food in America right now, and the salty, fatty goodie is showing up in some very unexpected places–like maple-glazed doughnuts, or bacon-wrapped matzoh balls, bacon in ice cream–and the outrageousness goes on.

Bacon, of course, was a staple in the Civil War Soldiers diet, as well as at home on the farm, where hog butchering was a community event. Cpl. Theodore Wolbach (in “Camp and Field”) mentions that on their march to Vicksburg, the Union soldiers passed piles of Bacon left behind, and stabbed it up with their bayonets as they marched.

“Bringing home the bacon” has come to mean providing income. The origin of that phrase, however, is explained as a practice of a parish church in England by the English Breakfast Society  (yes, there is one!) . When a man could swear to the congregation that he had not quarreled with his wife for a whole year, he was rewarded with a side of bacon. That puts a different twist on the phrase–marital harmony rather than providing income, and probably is not what Helen Reddy meant in 1964 when she sang, “I can bring home the bacon and fry it up in the pan.”

Despite the current day interest in bacon pastries, I was surprised to encounter one of those “nothing new under the sun” moments, when I was perusing some Civil War recipes and found a recipe for Bacon Roll Pudding. The recipe was printed in 1864 in Godey’s Lady’s Book , and included in that wonderful cookbook I recently downloaded to my Kindle–Civil War Recipes: Receipts from the Pages of Godey’s Lady’s Book edited by Lilly May Spaulding and John Spaulding.

Bacon Pudding

British Bacon Pudding demonstration

Bacon Roll Pudding Boil a pound of fat bacon for half an hour, and then cut it up into slices.  Peel six apples and one onion, and cut them in slices.  Make two pounds of flour into a stiff dough, roll it out thin; first lay the slices of bacon out all over this, and then upon the slices of bacon spread out the slices of apples and the slices of onion; roll up the paste so as to secure the bacon, etc., in it; place the bolster pudding in a cloth, tied at each end, and let it boil for two hours in a two-gallon pot, with plenty of water.

A few translations:
Two pounds of flour = about 3 1/3 cups

Make into a stiff dough= Mix the flour with 1/2-1 Cup butter and a little water, adding the water by the spoonful and working with hands until it adheres, but is still very stiff.  It will be hard to roll out, but will hold the ingredients better than a thinner dough.

Paste=pastry

Bolster=roll

Cloth= Cheesecloth or light muslin–tie with clean white string.

Bacon Pudding

Bacon Pudding Technique. (The bright color you see is because this cook used carrots instead of apples.) http://www.gamesandmusic.co.uk/bacon_pudding.html

The method of boiling puddings in a cloth was very common, and derived from the American’s English ancestors.   Pudding could mean either dessert (plum pudding, which is boiled) or a sidedish (Yorkshire pudding, which is baked).

The word pudding includes a wide variety of things that we call by other names, but I did not expect to find an apple-onion-bacon pudding among them. (More about puddings)

100th Post and a Roots Stew Recipe

Today we celebrate our 100th article at Ancestors in Aprons, (unbelievable!). If you are just getting started at Ancestors in Aprons, I suggest you start the page called All About Food and Family.

For this week’s Civil War era recipe, I am going to tell you about a dish Erasmus could have made in the field. Since we have a grocery store nearby and a kitchen to cook in, we have the luxury of upgrading it with a bit of an East Indian flavor but either way it is a Roots Stew recipe.

Ingredients for Roots Stew recipe

Ham hock, potatoes, carrots, turnip and parsnips

Yes, this is the 100th article in this website that makes a “roots stew” of searching for family roots and thinking about ancestor’s connection to food. We’ll celebrate by cooking up a roots stew recipe–because root vegetables were dependably under the ground as the troops marched south from Ohio. Despite the fact that the troops were forbidden to go foraging (otherwise known as pillaging) we know that it would be difficult to pass up a field of turnips or parsnips. Cpl. Wolbach has some very amusing stories about these forays into field and orchard.

I became closely acquainted with potatoes as I related when I gave you a scalloped potato recipe, but turnips and parsnips are not a regular on my dinner table. After looking at their nutritional benefits, I may add them more frequently, along with rutabagas, that I already put in soups whenever possible. They are very high in vitamin C, high in potassium and manganese and fiber and low in calories.  That’s a big thumbs’ up for humble root vegetables.

root stew recipe in pan

Stew vegetables in pan

If Erasmus were going to make this roots stew recipe, he and some of his friends could just put a hunk of their ration of salt pork in the pot, maybe first cutting off some of the fat to grease the pot, then add whatever root vegetables the soldiers had been able to gather and pour in some water.  

He would probably have some salt left from his weekly rations and could add that, and if any of the men had a knowledge of the wild herbs that grew in the woods, they might season the stew with some wild garlic, or some Judas’ ear mushrooms, some wild mustard seeds, or other free for the picking seasonings still available in the fall south of the Ohio River. (Once they get out of that snow he was complaining about in the last letter we read.)

 

Roots Stew Updated

Serves 6-8
Prep time 20 minutes
Cook time 35 minutes
Total time 55 minutes
Dietary Gluten Free
Meal type Lunch, Side Dish
Misc Child Friendly, Serve Hot

Ingredients

  • 3 tablespoons olive oil or bacon grease
  • Hamhock or fatty pork
  • 2 parsnips cut in 1/2 inch slices
  • 2 medium potatoes, 1 1/2 to 2 inch chunks
  • 1 turnip, 1 1/2 to 2 inch chunks
  • 3 large carrots, 2 inch long chunks
  • 1 tablespoon curry powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon tumeric
  • garlic salt
  • 1 teaspoon ginger
  • 1 can chicken broth or vegetable broth
  • 1/2 can coconut milk

Directions

1. peel or scrape vegetables and cut in pieces
2. Saute ham hock and vegetables in oil until just starting to brown
3. Add rest of ingredients except coconut milk and simmer until tender.
4. If using ham hock, remove. (Save to reuse in another soup or discard). Stir in coconut milk, warm, serve.

Note

Can be made vegetarian or vegan by using olive oil and vegetable broth instead of bacon grease and chicken broth and eliminating ham hock.

Notes:

The Holmes County Republican series entitled “Camp and Field” written b Cpl. Theodore D. Wolbach and published from February 1881 to August 1882 is available in image and transcription at the official 16th O.V.I. site.

I am indebted to the cookbook Wild Foods Field Guide and Cookbook by Billy Joe Tatum for suggestions on using wild plants.  For this and more cookbooks, see my food books page.