A Dictionary of American Cuisines: New England (In Progress)

NEW ENGLAND:
States: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut
Influences: English, Irish, French-Canadian, Native American, Portuguese, Italian
Native American Tribes: Abenaki, Penobscot, Wampanoag, Mahican, Munsee, Mohegan, Pequot, Nipmuc, Quiripi (Mattabesic, Paugusett, Shanticoke), Naragansett, Niantic, Pocomtuc, Maliseet, Passamaquodi, Micmac

Traditional Ingredients: dairy (butter, cheese, cream, eggs, milk), fruit (apples (Rhode Island Greening), beach plums, cranberries, blueberries, oldmixon free peach (heirloom), raspberries, strawberries), grains (cornmeal, oats, rye, wheat), meat (chicken (Buckeye (heirloom)), Java (heirloom)), goose, duck (cayuga (heirloom)), pork, venison, turkey (narragansett (heirloom; a cross between native turkey's to the northeast and the Norfolk Black)), pheasant, devon cattle (brought over by the pilgrims; closest remaining population to the original cattle of the western English counties of Devonshire, Cornwall, Somerset, and Dorset), moose), lake/stream food (brook trout, striped bass), nuts/legumes (American chestnuts, walnuts), seafood (lobster, clams, haddock, cod, quahog, shad, halibut, scrod, trout, scallops, mussels, steamers, oysters, eels, bluefish, salmon, smelt), seasonings (black pepper, celery salt, honey, horseradish, maple syrup, molasses, mustard, nutmeg, parsley, sage, salt, salt-pork, spices (for mostly sweet dishes; cinnamon, cloves, ginger, mace, nutmeg), vinegar), vegetables (beans (great northern, jacob's cattle, navy, soldier, white-pea, yellow-eye), beets, cabbage, carrots, celery, cucumber, dandelion greens, fiddleheads, leeks, lettuce, maize, onions, parsnips, peas, potatoes, radishes, rhubarb, rutabaga (waldoboro green neck "turnip" (heirloom)), squash (boston marrow (heirloom), acorn, pumpkin), watercress)

Modern Additions: sugar, cocoa

Dishes: Beverages: Ale, Apple Cider, Coffee, Coffee Milk, Cranberry Juice, Hard Cider, Hot Buttered Rum (rum, sugar, butter, hot water), Hot Mulled Cider, Lager Beer, Rum, Stiwtchel (Vermont; very old recipe; a combination of spring water, molasses, ginger, and vinegar with oatmeal thrown on top that men used to drink while working in the granite quarry), Tea, Breads/Pastries/Candies: Anadama Bread (Legend has it that Anna was a lazy wife whose bread was so much like her character that her Yankee husband devised his own recipe while he muttered, "Anna, damn 'er!"; A yeast mixture is made with butter, molasses, warm water, and yeast.  flour is mixed with cornmeal and salt and blended with the yeast-molasses mixture.  It is kneaded and set to rest with melted butter brushed on top.  It is punched down and kneaded some more and formed into two loaves.  They are placed in 8-inch loaf pans and let rise again and then baked.), Apple Dumplings, Apple Pan Dowdy, Boston Brown Bread (a steamed bread sweetened with molasses and often studded with raisins), Boston Creme Doughnuts, Brownies, Bulkie Rolls, Chocolate Chip Cookies, Cornmeal Muffin, Crackers (common (round, puffed, and hollow; the most unchanged cracker), oyster (closely related to both common crackers and saltines; baking soda is used); used in chowders; descendants of hardtack and further back medieval sops and stews), Cranberry Muffin, Fudge, Gingerbread, Honey Cake, Johnny Cakes, Maple Candy (maple syrup boiled long enough to form crystals and often formed into a maple leaf shape), Maple Syrup Cornbread (Vermont), Parker House Rolls, Potato Candy (a confection of potatoes, sugar, vanilla, and coconut), Pumpkin Rolls, Sour Milk Doughnuts,

Vermont Flapjacks (sometimes eaten as dessert or for breakfast.  Paper thin and plate sized, the flapjacks are spread thickly with butter, poured with maple-syrup, and served piping hot.), Breakfast: Blueberry Griddlecakes (a traditional Vermont Sunday breakfast), Cranberry Scone, Maple Biscuit (an old fashioned breakfast treat, baked when there is easy access to maple sugar; The baking powder dough is cut in four-inch rounds, and a topping of raisins, chopped nuts, and maple sugar is pressed into the upper surface before baking.), Mush & Milk (cornmeal added to boiling salted water and stirred constantly.), Red Flannel Hash (a few slices of bacon is fried till crisp and 

broken into small bits.  about a dozen cooked beets are chopped and mixed with the bacon, two or three boiled potatoes and two chopped onions; it should

contain about 85% beet, 10% potato, 3% onion, and 2% bacon. It should be served piping hot and possibly with yellow corn-meal muffins and green tomato pickles.  For dessert, a wedge of deep-dish apple pie, a piece of old sharp cheese, and a glass of cold, creamy milk.), Cheeses: Cheddar Cheese, Chowders, Soups, Bisques: Celery Chowder, Cheddar Cheese Soup, Clam Chowder (New England and Rhode Island Varieties), Corn Chowder, Fish Chowder, Hot Pot (A favorite farm dish.  Made with lamb and beans mostly), Lobster Bisque, Lobster Stew, Moose and Rutabaga Stew (moose flank, rutabaga, butter, currant jelly, flour, carrots, cinnamon, salt and pepper; Maine), New England Baked Bean Soup, Parsnip Chowder (fat from salt pork is rendered in a skillet, onion slices are added, then everything is poured into a pot.  To this, sliced parsnips and cubed potatoes are added and immersed in water.  When the vegetables have become tender, milk and salt and pepper are added.  Cracker crumbs are tossed in before serving.), Pumpkin Soup, Samp (dried corn and beans cooked to a porridge-like consistency), Condiments: Apple butter, Apple Sauce,

Beach Plum Jelly, Cranberry Sauce, Devonshire Cream (made from the milk of Devon Cattle), Drawn Butter, Egg Sauce, Maple Butter (Blend 1/2 cup maple sugar into 1/2 stick of butter.  Serve on waffles, pancakes, or hot toast.), Piccalilli (relish of chopped vegetables with spices), Pickles (pears, peaches, apples, plums, raspberries, cucumbers, red and green tomatoes, beets, mustard pickles, lemons, pumpkin, butternuts), Spiced Currants and Horseradish Relishes (Much liked with meat), Vinegar, Entrees: American Chop Suey (a concoction of Macaroni, Beef, and other ingredients), Apizza (style of Neapolitan Pizza), Baked Chicken (chicken baked under a coating of rum and honey), Beef Bouilli (Boiled Beef), Beef Pot Pie, Boiled Dinner (originally a meal-in-one-dish of salt beef cooked on the open fire where meat and vegetable could be combined in a single pot hanging from a crane bubbling gently for hours. generally includes a corned brisket, flank, or beef rump simmered with a variety of root vegetables such as cabbage, potatoes, rutabaga, parsnip, carrot, turnip, and onion; beets are usually cooked separately; some old fashioned Maine cooks rub beef with coarse salt then cover it with water so heavily salted it will float a potato or egg.  They may take an iron doorstop to weight down the meat while it absorbs the brine for several weeks; some Yankees call for a sprinkling of cider vinegar, but the most common accents are homemade horseradish sauce or strong mustard.), Chicken curried in Savory Jelly (historic; chicken breasts are placed in a pan and sprinkled with onion salt, curry powder, salt, and pepper and placed in the fridge overnight.  Chicken broth is then poured over the breasts and poached in the oven.  The breasts are removed and the broth reserved.  Gelatin is softened in a saucepan of cold water, broth and cream are added and which is then used to glaze the breasts.  Served with pawpaw or persimmon chutney.), Connecticut Ham Loaf, Dynamites (a sloppy-joe like sandwich), Fluffernutter (a sandwich made with peanut butter and marshmallow cream), Grinders, Loin

of Pork with Apples, New York System Weiner (a weiner on a 

steamed roll with meat sauce and often onion and mustard), Pizza Strips, Pot Roast, Roast Beef Sandwiches on Onion Roll

and served with sweet BBQ sauce, Salt Pork Dinner (a combination of winter vegetable such as turnips, carrots, beets, and potatoes, sauteed sliced apples, with salt pork that has been boiled, then slowly fried until it's dusting of cinnamon scented

flour is browned into the meat and all the excess fat is rendered. It is served with a gravy made by stirring flour into a little of the pork fat and blending in cream), Shaker Chicken with Apple Rings, Spiced Beef (Eaten cold for breakfast or supper.  A round of beef is salted down for a week, then washed well and black pepper and mace rubbed in, then put into a stone stewpan along with 3 or 4 onions, sliced and fried, a few cloves; covered with water and baked for 5 hours.  When cold, sliced and eaten as wanted.), Pies, Cobblers, Puddings: Apple Pie, Apple Crisp, Applesauce Cake, Blueberry Buckle (blueberries combined with a cake-flour dough; served with a nutmeg-flavored blueberry sauce.), Blueberry Cobbler, Blueberry Muffin, Blueberry Pie, Boston Creme Pie, Cider Plum Pudding (a favorite Christmas-time dish), Election Cake (a raised fruit cake, usually served in November; originally made in connection to elections in pre-revolutionary times in Hartford), Green Tomato Pie, Grunts (type of cobbler cooked on top

of the stove in an iron skillet with biscuit dough on top in the form of dumplings), Hasty Pudding, Icebox Blueberry Pie, Indian Pudding (New World equivalent of hasty pudding), Orange Cake, Peaches and Cream (peaches are diced, placed in a bowl, and drenched in vanilla and maple-syrup flavored cream), Popcorn Pudding (old colonial dish; not common anymore), Pumpkin Pie, Rhubarb Pie, Slumps (similar to grunts), Strawberry Shortcake, Tourtiere, Whoopie Pies, Yorkshire Pudding, Seafood: Baked Haddock or Cod (notched along the back and wedged with strips of salt pork), Boiled Haddock (boiled for about half an hour then garnished with crispy fried salt pork, parsley-sprinkled potatoes, and buttered beets, usually served with an egg sauce), Boiled Lobster served with drawn butter, Boxed Oysters, Codfish Balls, Cod Cheeks and Tongues (delicacy), Crab Cakes, Eel Stifle (colonial dish; diced salt pork is fried in a skillet till crisp then removed and half the fat removed and reserved.  The eel slices are seared, then removed and set aside.  Onions are sprinkled with black pepper, sauteed, covered and set on low heat.  Meanwhile, the end pieces of the eels are put in a pot and covered with salted water and brought to a boil and simmered.  The reserved salt pork fat is added to the onions and  a little flour stirred in.  Water that potatoes have been boiled in is added to the skillet to form a thin sauce. When it is smooth and creamy, the potatoes are

added as well as the eel pieces.  They are simmered for a few

minutes.  Salt and sherry are added and the diced salt pork at the

end.), Fish Cakes, Fried Clams, Haddock Sautee, Lobster Roll, Salt Salmon (boiled or broiled and served with cream or a cream sauce.), Shrimp Wiggle, Soft Shelled Crabs, Steamer Clams, Vegetable Dishes: Apples and Red Cabbage (often served as a supper dish with hot biscuits or as a vegetable for dinner), Baked Acorn Squash, Baked Beans (navy beans (or white-pea beans) slowly baked with molasses and salt pork), Bean-Hole Beans (yellow-eye beans, onion, salt pork, molasses and sometimes maple syrup, dry mustard, salt, pepper, and butter), Boiled Peas, Fiddlehead Pie (much like a quiche; traditional in Maine), Greens (dock greens and salt pork is a traditional type of spring dish with new potatoes rolled in parsley and melted butter, and a hot johnnycake on the side; 

Dandelion greens and fiddleheads are also popular; turnip tops and kale, and dandelion greens as well, may be simmered with salt pork; fiddleheads are usually just steamed to preserve their delicate flavor; when fiddleheads are dressed with melted butter, hot cream, or thin white sauce, traditional Maine cooks often serve them on fingers of toast.), Harvard Beets, Old New England Potato Salad (with hot egg dressing), Spiced tomatoes, Stewed Pumpkin (a very old dish dating back to the 1600's; heat together pumpkin or boston marrow squash, butter, apple cider vinegar, ginger, salt, and possibly some maple syrup), Succotash (lima beans, corn, salt pork), Sweet Zucchini Chips, Vegetable Hash (a supper dish.  Made with equal amounts of leftover vegetables, a bit of butter, seasoned as desired, and served with ketchup.)

Traditional Eateries: Bars/Pubs/Taverns, Seafood Shacks

Social Gatherings Involving Traditional Foods: Clam Bakes, Lobster Bakes (Maine), Bean-Hole-Suppers (beans cooked in a pot overnight which is placed in a fire pit in the ground), 4th of July (traditionally Maine salmon is served with a creamy sauce containing hard-boiled eggs and a side of green peas), May Breakfast (May Day; Cold boiled ham, mashed turnips, creamed potatoes, pickles, pies, doughnuts, fruit, and coffee, and sometimes clam cakes.), Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, New Year

Notable Restaurants: Boston's Parker House/Omni Parker House (1855-present), Moody's Diner (1930-present; Waldoboro, Maine)

Menu's:

"A Three-day Wedding Feast
In Stonington, Connecticut, in 1726, Temperance Tealleys was wed to the Reverend William Worthington from Saybrook. Because of the large number of guests expected, a two-day celebration was planned. Elaborate advance preparations commenced for the feast. Chairs, tables, dishes, and utensils were borrowed from the neighbors. Folloing the marriage ceremony...tankards of spiced hard [alcoholic] cider were passed...The main course was family-style and consisted of fish or clam chowder, stewed oysters, roasted pig, venison, duck, potatoes, baked rye bread, Indian cornbread and probably pumpkin casserole. A dessert of Indian pudding studded with dried plums and served with a sauce made from West Indian molasses, butter, and vinegar followed. And they did have coffee. The tablecloths were removed and trays of nutmeats and broken blocks of candy made from maple sugar, butter, and hickory nuts...Outside the front door stood a gigantic punch bowl, hollowed out from a boulder, filled with hard cider combined with West Indian products such as sugar, lemons, and limes...After the dignitaries and most honored guests were served on the first day, and after the bride and groom left on horseback for Saybrook, there was a second day of feasting for the second-rated guests. The third day of feasting was a surprise, for some friendly Mohawks and Pequot Indians appeared...and more chowder and roast pig were served to them. (Information courtesy of the Stonington Historical Society.)"
---The Thirteen Colonies Cookbook, Mary Donovan [Praeger:New York] 1975 (p. 69)

Quotes: 

Henry David Thoreau: "When chestnuts were ripe I laid up half a bushel for winter.  It was very exciting at that season to roam the then boundless chestnut woods...with a bag on my shoulder, and a stick to open burs in my hand...amid the rustling of the leaves and the loud reproofs of the red squirrels and the jays, whose half-consumed nuts I sometimes stole...These nuts, as far as they went, were a good substitute for bread."

Captain Bill:

"There's nothing to me in foreign lands like the stuff that grows in Cape Cod sands; There's nothing in sailing the foreign seas equal to getting down on your knees and pulling the pizen ivy out; I guess I knew what I was about when I put by chart and glass and took to growing cranberry sass."

A man born in the late-1800's:

"My grandmother was celebrated for her homemade sausage meat, her root and spruce and ginger beer, her mead and her currant, grape and gooseberry wines, made according to recipes of her mother, my great-granmother." - American Food: What We've Cooked, How We've Cooked It, And the Way's We've Eaten in America Through the Centuries 

Roaldus Richmond (America Eats: Eating in Vermont)

"Griddle cakes and sausage constitute a typical Vermont breakfast." - The Food of a Younger Land, put together by Mark Kurlansky

Misc. Facts: 

Renewing America's Food Traditions:

1. "A Yankee is a New Englander of English descent.  In the hills and mountains of the northeastern United States and eastern Canada, an enduring tradition based on small-scale orchard and vegetable crop production, dairy livestock pasturing, and forest product extraction has evolved over the centuries.  Drawing on Algonquian, English, Quebecois, and French Acadian traditions, the inland Yankees and other ethnic enclaves have shaped a distinctive cuisine from cheeses, dry beans, root crops, smoked meats, and maple syrup.  Maple syrup is the signature flavor of this region."

Sources: my head, American Food: What We've Cooked, How We've Cooked It, and the Ways We've Eaten in America Through the Centuries, America the Beautiful Cookbook: Authentic Recipes from the United States of America, Renewing America's Food Traditions: Saving and Savoring the Continent's Most Endangered Foods, The Food of a Younger Land, www.wikipedia.org, www.lifeintheusa.com, http://berksweb.com/pam/, www.foodtimeline.org, www.native-languages.org/states.htm, http://www.visit-maine.com/current_category.2617/current_advcategory.2423/companies_list.html, 

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/bean_lovers/77100,http://www.steakperfection.com/delmonico/History.html, http://www.kurtsaxon.com/foods011.ht