Colonial days in old New York

by Alice Morse Earle

There is no doubt that the Dutch colonists were very valiant trenchermen; more avid, perhaps, of quantity and frequency in their food than exacting of variety. Cardinal Bentivoglio (the diplomatist and historian) writing at the time of the first emigration to New Netherland, says that the greatest pleasures of the Hollanders were those of the table. This love of eating made them provident and lavish of food-stores in emigration; and the accounts of scant supplies, poor fare, and dire starvation which are recorded of other colonies, never have been told of the vol-gevoedt Dutch. Then, too, they landed on a generous shore,—no rock-bound coast,—Hendrick Hudson said the finest soil for cultivation that he ever set foot on. The welcoming fields richly nourished and multiplied the Hollanders’ store of seeds and roots and grafts. The rye quickly grew so tall that a man could bind the ears together above his head. Van der Donck saw a field of barley in New Netherland in which the barley stems were seven feet high. Domine Megapolensis stated that a Rensselaerwyck schepen raised fine crops of wheat on the same field eleven years in succession. Two ripe crops of peas or of buckwheat could be raised on the same land in one season. The soil seemed inexhaustible; and fields and woods also offered to the settlers a rich native larder. Among these American food supplies came first and ever the native Indian corn, or “Turkie-wheat.” The Dutch (fond of all cereal foods) took to their liking and their kitchens with speed the various forms of corn-food.

Samp and samp porridge were soon their favorite dishes. Samp is Indian corn pounded to a coarsely ground powder in a mortar. Like nearly all the foods made of the various forms of Indian corn, its name is of Indian derivation, and usually its method of preparation and cooking. Roger Williams wrote of it:—

“Nawsamp is a kind of meal pottage unparched. From this the English call their samp; which is the Indian corn beaten and boiled.”

Samp porridge was a derivative of Indian and Dutch parentage. It was samp cooked in Dutch fashion, like a hutespot, or hodgepot, with salt beef or pork and potatoes and other roots, such as carrots and turnips. These were boiled together in a vast kettle, usually in large quantity, as the porridge was better liked after several days’ cooking. A week’s supply for a family was often cooked at one time. After much boiling a strong crust was formed next the pot, and sometimes toward the end of the boiling the porridge was lifted out of the pot bodily—so to speak—by the crust and served crust and all. Samp was pounded in a primitive and picturesque Indian mortar made of a hollowed block of wood, or the stump of a tree. The pestle was a heavy block of wood shaped like the interior of the mortar and fitted with a handle attached to one side. This block was fastened to the top of a growing sapling which gave it the required spring back after being pounded down on the corn. Pounding samp was slow work, often done in later years by unskilled negroes and hence disparagingly termed “niggering” corn. After those simple mortars were abandoned elsewhere they were used on Long Island; and it was jestingly told that skippers in a fog could always get their bearings off the Long Island coast because they could hear the pounding of the samp-mortars.

Suppawn, another favorite of the settlers in New York, was an Indian dish made from Indian corn; it was a thick corn-meal and milk porridge. It soon was seen on every Dutch table, and is spoken of by all travellers in early New York.

From the gossiping pages of the Labadist preachers we find hints of good fare in Brooklyn in 1679:—

“Then was thrown upon the fire, to be roasted, a pail full of Gowanes oysters which are the best in the country. They are fully as good as those of England, better than those we eat at Falmouth. I had to try some of them raw. They are large and full, some of them not less than a foot long. Others are young and small. In consequence of the great quantities of them everybody keeps the shells for the burning of lime. They pickle the oysters in small casks and send them to Barbados. We had for supper a roasted haunch of venison which he had bought of the Indians for three guilders and a half of sea-want, that is fifteen stivers of Dutch money (fifteen cents), and which weighed thirty pounds. The meat was exceedingly tender and good and also quite fat. It had a slight aromatic flavor. We were also served with wild turkey, which was also fat and of a good flavor, and a wild goose, but that was rather dry. We saw here lying in a heap a whole hill of watermelons which were as large as pumpkins.”

De Vries tells of an abundant supply of game in the colony; deer (as fat as any Holland deer can be); great wild turkeys, beautiful birds of golden bronze (one that he shot weighed thirty pounds); partridges and pigeons (in such great flocks that the sky was darkened). Domine Megapolensis says the plentiful wild turkeys and deer came to the hogpens of the Albany colonists to feed; fat Dutch swine and graceful red deer must have seemed strange trough companions. A stag was sold readily by an Indian for a jack-knife. In 1695 Rev. Mr. Miller said a quarter of venison could be bought “at your door” for ninepence. Wild swan came in plenty, “so that the bays and shores where they resort appear as if they were dressed in white drapery.” Down the river swam hundreds of gray and white-headed geese nearly as stately as the swan; Van der Donck knew a gunner (and gives his name, Henry de Backer) who killed eleven gray geese with one shot from his gun. Gray ducks and pelicans were plentiful and cheap. Gone forever from the waters of New York are the beautiful gray ducks, white swan, gray geese, and pelican; anent these can we sigh for the good old times. The Earl of Strafford’s letters and despatches, telling of the “Commodities of the Island called Maniti ore Long Ile wch is in the Continent of Virgenea,” confirms all these reports and even tells of “fayre Turkees far greater than here, five hundred in a flocke,”—which must have proved a noble sight.

The river was full of fish, and the bay; their plenty inspired the first poet of New Netherland to rhyming enumeration; among them were sturgeon—despised of Christians; and terrapin—not despised. “Some persons,” wrote Van der Donck in 1656, “prepare delicious dishes from the water terrapin, which is luscious food.” Two centuries and a half of appreciation pay equally warm tribute to the terrapin’s reputation.

Patriarchal lobsters five and six feet long were in the bay. Van der Donck says “those a foot long are better for serving at table.” Truly a lobster six feet long would seem a little awkward to serve. W. Eddis, in his “Letters from America” written in 1792, says these vast lobsters were caught in New York waters until Revolutionary days when “since the late incessant cannonading, they have entirely forsaken the coast; not one having been taken or seen since the commencement of hostilities.” Crabs, too, were large, and some were “altogether soft.” Van der Donck corroborates the foot-long oysters seen by the Labadists. He says the “large oysters roasted or stewed make a good bite,”—a very good bite, it would seem.