Dinner on the Frontier

Ever wonder what the pioneers ate and how they cooked their food as they traveled westward towards the promise land of a new life and riches. Did they drag along the kitchen stove, refrigerator and microwave oven? I think not, picture a nice campfire with a bubbling pot of beans, maybe some buffalo steaks, all sitting around the warm glowing fire waiting to dine.

The early explorers in the mid-1700s found an abundants of deer, bear, squirrels, quails and other animals for food. Turkeys were a favorite dinner item and easily available. The Indians had a method of grinding corn into meal for cornbread or making porridge out of it. Indian hominy (the name comes from the Algonquian word, rockahominie)[1] became a favorite among the settlers. Hominy which is dry corn hulled and coarsely ground and boiled to make grits, even today is a favorite breakfast food especially down in the South.

For the pioneers and settlers stew was one of the main courses at mealtime. Stew could be made with about any kind of meat, deer, bear, rabbit or anything other kind of meat available. If the garden was successful, peas, beans, turnips, potatoes would be thrown into the pot to make a hardy stew. Wild greens cooked with a bit of bacon or hog jowl would make a nice side dish. If you was lucky and had flour, hot biscuits would be made to round out the meal.

Early pioneers made good use of wild fruit, such as crabapples, cherries, persimmons, grapes, plums and blackberries that they found growing throughout the new frontier. The early German settlers in Ohio had a potatoe dish called "Salzkartoffeln" or "salt" potatoes boiled in salted water, steamed dry and then dressed with melted butter and flavorful tidbits such a chopped parsley, minced onions, caraway seeds, bread crumbs or crumbled bacon[2] Hasenpfeffer, or "peppered hare", a wild rabbit stew was also a favorite at meal time.

Buffalo meat would be sliced thin and then dried either in the sun or over the smoke of a fire. This jerky would be carried by the travelers and chewed on when nothing else was available. Pemmican was another type of food made by combining shredded jerked meat, dried wild berries and buffalo tallow, formed into small cakes and stored in animal skin bags.

While the pioneers and settlers were traveling to their new homes, at the end of a long day of traveling, they would make camp and the women folk would prepare supper for the family. Cooking was done in pots and pans over an open fire, stews, beans, and wild game steaks would be the main meal with hot coffee to round out the meal. The biscuits might be made of sourdough "starter", which was a fermented mixture that produced gas bubbles, a substitute for yeast.

The mountain men that explored the Rockies and the West would carry with them sacks of coffee, sugar, flour, and corn meal for making biscuits and corncakes. Wild meat was their main food along with biscuits and coffee. For the people traveling in the wagon trains on the Oregon Trail, breakfast was usually cooked mush or johnnycake that was prepared from cornmeal. If the family was lucky, they would have a dairy cow with them for fresh milk and butter. For lunch a quick stop to fry fresh meat, and boil coffee, then off on the trail until it was time to stop for the night. The main meal of the day would be supper, since the wagon trains was stopped for the night and time could be taken to prepare a good meal, usually a stew, or bean dish, greens if available, some type of bread and of course coffee.

The life of the pioneer was very different than what we know today. No refrigerators to keep food fresh. The most common method of preserving fruits and vegetables was to dry them, and then when ready to use, they were soaked in water and put in stews and other dishes. To preserve their meat, pioneers would pickle it, meaning to soak it in heavy salt solution for a long period of time. They could also smoke and dry the meat and hang it in their root cellar for use during the winter months.

From the days of Columbus to the last wagon train, people relied upon on what they could gather from the environment, be it plants or animals to survive and feed their family. Early on life was simple and you survived on what you could grow, and hunt, as more people settled in the west and towns grew, life became better. The settlers could on rare times travel into a town and purchase what to them was very special, like spices, pepper and sugar, that is if they had a few pennies or something to trade.

In these times of modern conveniences I often wonder how we would handle the hard times that our forefathers lived through, because you know that is why we're here today, because our ancestors were willing to make the sacrifices to settle a new frontier that we call home today.

[1] Hunter's Stew and Hangtown Fry - What Pioneer America Ate and Why by Lila Perl

[2] Hunter's Stew and Hangtown Fry - What Pioneer America Ate and Why by Lila Perl