Saltwater Foodways: New Englanders and Their Food
at Sea and Ashore in the Nineteenth Century

Written by the editor of Food History News, Sandy Oliver

The winner of the 1996 Jane Grigson Award for Scholarship in the Julia Child Cookbook Awards, Saltwater Foodways is an exceptional work of regional food history.

Readers comment on Saltwater Foodways ...

"Highly recommended. There is nothing else like it—and how rare it is to come across a book of matchless scope and merit." —Alan E. Davidson, Petits Propos Culinaire

"Saltwater Foodways looks like a coffee-table book after steroid treatments...this book should be read by anyone who loves food or history—or both." —Pamela Rollins, Maine Times

"I've never seen a book that more originally combines the functions of a picture gallery, historical survey, and recipe anthology than Sandra Oliver's large beautifully produced Saltwater Foodways..." —Anne Mendleson, Gourmet

Contents by Chapter

The Buckinghams: Saltwater Farming
How one saltwater farm family provided for their sustenance and cooked it on the open hearth at the start of the 19th century.

The Greenmans: Prosperity and Plenty
The prosperous ship builders, merchants, and captain's families of New England's seaport towns cooked on stoves and established the standards for the three squares a day familiar today. Commerce and industry change seasonality, food distribution, and New England's metabolism.

The Burrows Household: Risk and Uncertainty
Who were the Temperance and health food reformers trying to change? Tippler, gambler, and storekeeper Wint Burrows gives us a chance to explore the 19th century roots of our modern concerns with drug abuse and healthy eating.

Eating Forward and Dining Aft
Aboard the deep water merchant and whaling ships of the 19th century were two strikingly different menus and eating habits. This chapter explores the foodways of the fo'cs'le and cabin.

Fishermen's Fare
The fishermen of the New England fleet were famous for their hearty appetites, well-laid mess-tables, and hard-working cooks.

The Life-Saving Service: Messroom Meals
Though, in the late 19th century, few men cooked for themselves, the life-savers patrolling New England's coast did. How did men more accustomed to wind, waves, and daring rescues cope with housekeeping and cooking chores?

Fresh and Exotic Provisions
Seafarers encountered new and strange foods at sea and in foreign ports, described as a great adventure by some sailors, by others a frustrating search for the familiar.

Meals Ashore for All Hands
From the oyster saloons of New England to a feast with a Chinese host, seafarers looked for a good place to eat the world around; their reactions to meals ashore tell us a lot about their eating habits at home.

Fourth of July: America's Day of Days
How sailors and seafaring families marked the day at sea, while the folks at home observed the national holiday with family and friends on picnics and excursions.

Thanksgiving: New England's Premier Holiday
At the start of the 19th century Thanksgiving was the great annual holiday of New Englanders; by the end of the century, Christmas was catching up in importance. This chapter explores the main elements of the day—turkey, pies, family reunions, and thoughts of those at sea.

Christmas at Sea and Ashore
New Englanders gradually accepted the December holiday and seafaring families far from home recreated holiday excitement with stockings and presents, sweets and treats.

Clambakes and Shore Dinners
Clams and lobsters steaming in a bed of hot rock-heated seaweed is the very depiction of summer fun in New England, and this chapter traces the history of this shoreside meal.

Chowders and Chowder Parties
Chowder in New England was both a centuries old dish and a common seaside recreation. Here we explore both fish and clam chowders.

Refreshments Were Served
Weddings, ship launchings, and church suppers gave coastal people an opportunity to gather and eat socially. Gallons of ice cream was churned and thousands of cakes baked to provide refreshment at church festivals and support the work of charitable societies.

Not as Nutritious as Flesh: Fish-Eating in New England
Fishing and seafood are important to New England's image, but like other North Americans even coastal Yankees resisted eating it more than once a week. This chapter tells why.

Cooking and Eating Seafood
What were New England's favorite fish in the 1800s and how were they prepared? Trace the changes from halibut napes and cod shoulders to haddock fillets.

Saltwater Foodways Companion Cookbook

Written by Sandy Oliver

Introduction to Saltwater Foodways Companion Cookbook.

"The past is a terrific source of good ideas for dinner and great tasting recipes. When Saltwater Foodways: New Englanders and their Food at Sea and Ashore in the Nineteenth Century first appeared over ten years ago, so many people commented on how good some of the old recipes tasted. With the great influx of interesting ethnic dishes and ingredients, we have become accustomed to eating Mexican on Monday, Thai on Tuesday, and anything you can imagine on Wednesday. Now we can put good old fashioned New England coastal cooking back in the schedule with this collection of primarily nineteenth-century recipes.

Most people will describe these dishes as classic comfort food. A few have been inserted because they are interesting to read, and only the most courageous cooks may wish to give them a try. They were originally incorporated in Saltwater Foodways to illustrate life in the 1800s at sea and ashore. When a historic story mentioned a particular dish, I found a recipe to match and wrote them in such a way that the reader could prepare the dish as closely as possible to the original so that a taste of the past would clearly come through. In this book, less emphasis is on strict historic authenticity and more on pleasing the modern palate. Many recipes are hardly altered, but a few contain ideas for enlivening the dish, or modifying it to please anyone in the family.

Because so many people cook recreationally in their fireplaces, certain recipes particularly suited for fireplace preparation have specific instructions for hearthside cookery attached, and a chapter with fireplace cookery basics is included now, too. Bear in mind that you can fix almost anything in a fireplace, from canned soup to grilled pizza, and historic recipes are not required to do it." S.L.O.

The Companion was created to take into the kitchen where you could splatter it all over with batter and flour, and no harm done.

Chapter 1. Cooking in a Fireplace.
A few basic how-to's with advice on equipment, firewood, and techniques.

Chapter 2. Soups and Stews.
Several classic New England chowders, lobster stew, homemade tomato soup and others.

Chapter 3. Breads, Yeasted and Quick.
How to make yeast, brown bread, rolls, New England cornbread, plus.

Chapter 4. Main Dishes.
Pot roast, veal pie, chicken salad, and a couple of lovely sauces like caper sauce.

Chapter 5. Seafood.
How to cook salt cod, Yankee and Portuguese style, poach salmon, make egg sauce and kedgeree.

Chapter 6. Vegetables.
Baked beans, succotash, corn oysters, and more.

Chapter 7. Desserts.
Queen of Pudding, Indian Pudding, Apple Dumplings, Plum Bread pudding, ice cream, and other delectables.

Chapter 8. Cakes and Cookies.
Coconut cake, gingersnaps, Election Cake, Orange Cake, jumbles, seed cakes, and others.

Chapter 9. Pie and Pastry.
The Thanksgiving classics plus Banbury Tarts, lemon pies, and fried apple pie.

Chapter 10. Preserves and Pickles.
Mincemeat, pickled cabbage and beets, candied orange peel.

Chapter 11. Sailor's Dishes.
Lobscouse, Spotted Dick, Plum Duff, Fishermen's Brewis, Dandyfunk.

Chapter 12. Confections.
Popcorn balls, nut brittles, made at sea and ashore.

Chapter 13. Beverages.
Whiskey Punch, Fish House punch, raspberry shrub, switchel.

Published by Mystic Seaport Museum, Mystic, Connecticut, 2008, ISBN 978-0-939511-24-2. paper, 224 pp. $19.95; bw drawings and photos.

Click here to order

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