Home Life in Colonial Days

by Alice Morse Earle

Perhaps the busiest month of the year was November,—called "killing time." When the chosen day arrived, oxen, cows, and swine which had been fattened for the winter's stock were slaughtered early in the morning, that the meat might be hard and cold before being put in the pickle. Sausages, rolliches, and head-cheese were made, lard tried out, and tallow saved.

A curious and quaint domestic implement or utensil found hanging on the walls of some kitchens was what was known as a sausage-gun. One here is shown with the piston detached, and also ready for use. The sausage-meat was forced out through the nozzle into the sausage-cases. A simpler form of sausage-stuffer has also been seen, much like a tube-and-piston garden-syringe; though I must add a suspicion which has always lingered in my mind that the latter utensil was really a syringe-gun, such as once was used to disable humming-birds by squirting water upon them.

Sausage-meat was thus prepared in New York farmhouses. The meat was cut coarsely into half-inch pieces and thrown into wooden boxes about three feet long and ten inches deep. Then its first chopping was by men using spades which had been ground to a sharp edge.

There were many families that found all their supply of sweetening in maple sugar and honey; but housewives of dignity and elegance desired to have some supply of sugar, certainly to offer visitors for their dish of tea. This sugar was always loaf-sugar, and truly loaf-sugar; for it was purchased ever in great loaves or cones which averaged in weight about nine to ten pounds apiece. One cone would last thrifty folk for a year. This pure clear sugar-cone always came wrapped in a deep blue-purple paper, of such unusual and beautiful tint and so color-laden that in country homes it was carefully saved and soaked, to supply a dye for a small amount of the finest wool, which was used when spun and dyed for some specially choice purpose. The cutting of this cone of sugar into lumps of equal size and regular shape was distinctly the work of the mistress and daughters of the house. It was too exact and too dainty a piece of work to be intrusted to clumsy or wasteful servants. Various simply shaped sugar-shears or sugar-cutters were used. An ordinary form is shown in the illustration. I well recall the only family in which I ever saw this solemn function of sugar-cutting take place—it was about thirty years ago. An old Boston East India merchant, one of the last to cling to a residence in what is known now as the "Burnt District," always desired (and his desire was law) to use these loaves of sugar in his household. I don't know where he got them so long after every one else had apparently ceased buying them—he may have specially imported them; at any rate he had them, and to the end of her life it was the morning duty of his wife "to cut the sugar." I can see my old cousin still in what she termed her breakfast room, dressed very handsomely, standing before a bare mahogany table on which a maid placed the considerable array of a silver salver without legs, which was set on a folded cloth and held the sugar-loaf and the sugar-cutter; and another salver with legs that bore various bowls and one beautiful silver sugar-box which was kept filled high for her husband's toddy. It seemed an interminably tedious work to me and a senseless one, as I chafingly waited for the delightful morning drive in delightful Boston. It was in this household that I encountered the sweetest thing of my whole life; I have written elsewhere its praises in full; a barrel, a small one, to be sure, but still a whole teak-wood barrel full of long strings of glistening rock-candy. I had my fill of it at will, though it was not kept as a sweetmeat, but was a kitchen store having a special use in the manufacture of rich brandy sauces for plum puddings, and of a kind of marchepane ornamentation for desserts.

All the spices used in the household were also ground at home, in spice-mortars and spice-mills. These were of various sizes, including the pepper-mills, which were set on the table at meal-times, and the tiny ornamental graters which were carried in the pocket.

The entire food of a household was the possible production of a farm. In a paper published in the American Museum in 1787 an old farmer says:—

"At this time my farm gave me and my whole family a good living on the produce of it, and left me one year with another one hundred and fifty silver dollars, for I never spent more than ten dollars a year which was for salt, nails, and the like. Nothing to eat, drink or wear was bought, as my farm provided all."

The farm food was not varied, it is true, as to-day; for articles of luxury came by importation. The products of tropical countries, such as sugar, molasses, tea, coffee, spices, found poor substitutes in home food-products. Dried pumpkin was a poor sweetening instead of molasses; maple sugar and honey were not esteemed as was sugar; tea was ill-replaced by raspberry leaves, loosestrife, hardhack, goldenrod, dittany, blackberry leaves, yeopon, sage, and a score of other herbs; coffee was better than parched rye and chestnuts; spices could not be compensated for or remotely imitated by any substitutes.

So though there was ample quantity of food, the quality, save in the town, was not such as English housewives had been accustomed to; there were many deprivations in their kitchens which tried them sorely. The better cooks they were, the more trying were the limitations. Every woman with a love for her fellow-woman must feel a thrill of keen sympathy for the goodwife of Newport, New Hampshire, who had to make her Thanksgiving mince-pies with a filling of bear's meat and dried pumpkins, sweetened with maple sugar, and her crust of corn-meal. Her husband loyally recorded that they were the best mince-pies he ever ate.

As years passed on and great wealth came to individuals, the tables of the opulent, especially in the Middle colonies, rivalled the luxury of English and French houses of wealth. It is surprising to read in Dr. Cutler's diary that when he dined with Colonel Duer in New York in 1787, there were fifteen kinds of wine served besides cider, beer, and porter.