PURITAN NEW ENGLAND.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 40, 16 February 1929, Page 13 (Supplement)

PURITAN NEW ENGLAND.

LAWS AGAINST "FEASTEING."

NOT ALWAYS OBSERVED.

THE HUNDRED-LEGGED TABLE

•Teasteing and rlevilish mirth" -were prohibited, undrr the same law which forbade the observance of Christmas, in nearly a!l the early colonies of New England. Even amonfr the Puritans, however, there we;e fun-loving "pirnicious jades and fellows'* who impudently risked the five-shilling fine for the enjoyment of a rollicking holiday. Escaping, by one ruse or another, the scrupulous solicitude of the tattle-tale tithingnian, these Colonial scofFlawg delighted in opulent pleasures which even the modern gourmet might well envy. So icy are the blasts which blow down the great chimney that, as Cotton Mather noted in 1G97, the "Juices forced out at the ends of billets of wood by the heate of the flame, yet freeze into ice on their coming out." He records at another time that it is difficult to keep the kettle from freezing on the very fire.

On the "table Cloth wrought with refl" are chafing dishes, chargers, trencher?, cups (without saucers), salt eel larp. knives and spoons. The seventeenthcentury Puritans possessed neither plates nor forks. He ate with a spoon, or with a knife, from a trencher, which was simply a square block of wood whittled out by hand. It was the fashion for two persons —sisteis, brothers or a man and wife—to eat from a single trencher. This incidentally, was the mode of 'dining for generations at Harvard University. A Preface of Punch.

The dinner is prefaced (as wa3 dinnsr every day among all prospering Puritans) by the punch-bowl. Along th* table it is passed, each diner placing his or her lips to the brim and quaffing as much of the inspiriting potion as can be comfortably contained. The punch was made of water, sugar, lemon or orange juice, rum and nutmeg, and was always consumed in vast quantities. An ancient tavern-keeper's bill shows that the Kev. Thomas McKean, who gave a dinner following his ordination in Beverly, Mass., paid on that occasion fo'•"4 bowles of Punch, 28 bottles of wine, eight bowles of Brandy and six cups of tea." It is followed by a still more enticing delicacy, "coil'd Eels boil'd in Palm •■ Wine." For this dish we are given the following recipe: "Boile them in halt water half wine with the bottom of a manchet, a fagot of Parsley and a little Winter Savory, when they are boil'd they take them out and break the bread in the broth and put in two or three spoonfuls of yest and a piece of sweet butter, pour to the Eels laid upo-i sippets." Then come roasted doves, one for every diner. So plentiful were these birds, one early colonist wrote to England, that they obscured the sunlight. It is recorded that they sold in the Boston markets for as little as a penny a dozen.

The piece de resistance is, of course, the turkey, a "wilde foule of size unbelievable." "Beside waterfoule," Bradford wrote in 1621, "ther was great store of wilde Turkies." They appeared in flocks of hundreds, and, Josselyn tella us, often weighed as much as sixty pounds. Colonial diarists all agree that they were far superior in taste and tenderness to "domestik turkies."

Meanwhile the cider tankard goes from hand to hand up and down the table. It was a lusty drink in those days, and being very cheap—three shillings a barrel—it became the common beverage of every household. The Secret "Pye." There are beans, baked in earthen pots, in a fashion learned from the Indians (and famous to this day by the name of "Boston-baked"). There are cranberries (so plentiful that they were exported to England) and honey, conserves, "marmalets and quiddonies." Besides "green pease and sukquattah-hash" there is a "Secret Pye." Here is the formula for that esoteric delight, taken from the Cooke." "Take Potatose, peele, boile »nd blanche, seasone with Nutmeg, Cinamon and Pepper, mix with Eryngo roots, Dates, Lemons and whole Mace, cover with butter, sugar and Grape Verjuice with pastry, frost with Rose water and sugar, any "Yclept a Secret Pye." After various candied fruits and candied marigolds, the well-filled guest struggles to do his best with the mince •nd pumpkin pies, which are not such simple things as one might imagine in this prosaic day. Try concentrating a few minutes on this recipe for "Pumpion Pye" :—

"Take about half a pound of Pumpkin and slice it, a handful of Tyme, » little Rosemary, Parsley and Sweet Marjoram slipped off the stalks, and chop them smal, and then take Cinamon, Nutmeg, Pepper, and six Cloves »nd beat them, take ten Eggs and beat them, then mix them and beat them altogether, and put in as much sugar »s you think fit, then fry them like a froiz, after it is fryed let it stand til it be cold, then fil your Pye, take sliced •Apples thinne rounde-ways, and lay a row of the froiz and layer of Apples with currans twixt the layer while the Pye is fitted, and put in a good deal «f sweet butter before you close it, when the pye is baked take »ix yolks •f eggs, some White-wine or Vegris,and make a Caudle of this, but not too thick, and cut up the lid and put it in, stir them wel together whilst the Eggs and Pumpion be not perceived, *nd so serve up." If any reader decides to make thi« fumpion Pve" I shall be very gratetul for a taste of it.

The dinner is over. The diner* »re 'eplete. Away from the fire, to stand <W its hindred le?a in a dim-lit corner » the long-table moved. There is much jovial drinking, many jocund jests. ™><i, after a languorous interval, there » light-heeled and light-hearted tribute to the heathen goddess Terpsichore. Hose to the hearth, their laughter a tinkling echo to the wild wind's road, •« grouped the children, delighting in we unwonted luxury of "candyM Eryngo roots, sugar'd Corrinder seeds and Angelica." They share, too, in the Punch and i n the flip. The later drink, a very popular one *»s made in this manner: Four pounds 01 sugar, four eggs and one pint ol "earn were mixed and left itanding •wo days; when the drink wil desired * bowl nearlv filled with beer, to rkl Ch wa9 arl,lp(l a bit * f molasses, a ,ID «ral dash of rum and four greal ■Poonfuls of tlie creamy componnd; ~J° >nto tliis was thrust a red-hot J° ker - It was. colonial chroniclers ■Mure us> a vp| . v warming and very satisfying '-computation."