Pinckney family crest.
Colonial American food is a combination of European bases and Native American influence. Early settlers brought over familiar plants and animals from their homelands. This included livestock like sheep, pigs, horses, and cows, as well as crops like wheat, barley, grapes, and olives. Gradually Native American ingredients and agricultural methods found their way into European customs. Settlers used Native American methods for farming, such as Squanto’s famous technique for planting a fish in every corn hill. Once farm machinery could be imported, the new methods were usually forgotten.
Similarly, Native American foods were incorporated into European dishes only when they provided an easy substitute for hard to get ingredients. Corn replaced English grains because it grew more easily in the New World. Native American beans worked just as well as fava beans, but were much cheaper because they didn’t need to be imported. As Europeans established themselves in the new land, the pressure to eat what was most easily available lessened and they could more easily pick and choose which Native American culinary traditions they wanted to keep. Native Americans couldn’t be as choosy, as they were pushed off their lands, the hunting and gathering way of life was no longer sustainable. Ironically, they had to adopt many European food traditions.
As European recipes developed an American flair, the home cook was the most involved in the transition. The matriarch of the family was in charge of this all-important job. A woman was measured by her performance in the kitchen, and how well she could feed her family (and guests) frugally and appealingly. The recipe books women kept reflected their accomplishments; the archaic term for recipes is receipts. The following documents come from the recipe books of two influential women in South Carolina’s colonial period. The first selection is from Eliza Lucas Pinckney and the second is from her daughter, Harriott Pinckney Horry. Although they were more affluent than most, the excerpts reflect a sampling of common dishes of the day.
Bibliography
Baskett, Sam S. “Eliza Lucas Pinckney: Portrait of an Eighteenth Century American.” The South Carolina Historical Magazine 72.4 (1971): 207-219. Web. 15 Apr. 2014.
Harbury, Katharine E. Colonial Virginia’s Cooking Dynasty. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2004. Print.
Hooker, Richard J. “Introduction.” Introduction, A colonial plantation cookbook: The Receipt Book of Harriott Pinckney Horry, 1770. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1984. Print.
Horry, Harriott Pinckney. A colonial plantation cookbook: The Receipt Book of Harriott Pinckney Horry, 1770. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1984. Print
Oliver, Sandra L. Food in American History: Food in Colonial and Federal America. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2005. Print
Pinckney, Eliza Lucas. The Receipt Book of Eliza Lucas Pinckney, 1756. Charleston: Charleston Lithographing Company, 1969. Print.
Swanson, Drew A. “Wormsloe’s Belly: The History of a Southern Plantation Through Food.” Southern Cultures 15.4 (2009): 50-66. Web. 15 Apr. 2014.
Tillman, Kacy Dowd. “Eliza Lucas Pinckney as Cultural Broker: Reconsidering a South Carolinian Legacy.” Southern Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of the South 18.2 (2011):49-65. Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) Web. 14 Apr. 2014.
Weir, Robert M. Colonial South Carolina: A History. New York: KTO Press, 1997. Print.
Wood, Peter H. Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina, from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996. Print.