Imperialists Taste Test Colonial Food

Salted meat produced a lot of waste because of "rust," over-salted parts, and over-cooked portions. In the nineteenth century bone marrow was considered a delicacy. Other palatable foods of the age included not only bone marrow but calve’s and pig’s brains, offal, and the nether ends of animals. 

Common arable crops were wheat, rye, barley, oats, beans, peas, buckwheat, vetches, and lentils. Whenever housewives brewed ale, they passed on yeast to neighbors.  “Barm”= a yeast consisting of the froth that forms on fermenting malt liquors of ale or beer. 

The first puddings were mixtures of suet, currants, and oatmeal. As pudding was very much an English phenomenon, hostesses would make a point of serving one as a mark of patriotism. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "dick" was a 19th-century colloquial term meaning pudding. In the 19th century recipes for bread pudding were often included in cookbooks under the heading "Invalid cookery."

Curry (from the Tamil word kari) used to refer to any number of thin, soup-like spiced sauces and dressings for meats and vegetables.​ The Portuguese popularized curry (since they reached India first), but the British brought the spice to the rest of the world. The first curry recipe in English was published in 1747 by Hannah Glasse.

About the Food

 

We had to do a lot of research about the food we were cooking. Some of what we found out made our motuhs water....most of us made us wonder how people survived back then.