Cuisine of The Thirteen Colonies - Regional Cuisines - Delaware Valley and Mid-Atlantic Region

Delaware Valley and Mid-Atlantic Region

The Quakers emigrated to the New World from the Northern English Midlands during the 17th century, and eventually settled primarily in the Delaware Valley. They were similar to the Puritans in the strictness that they applied to everyday life, though their religious teachings were far more egalitarian. The food was plain and simple. Excessive consumption was discouraged and failure to eat or drink moderately was punished with public acts of self-criticism. William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania and an important figure in the development of the Quaker movement encouraged frugality in his followers with advice such as "If thou rise with an appetite thou are sure never to sit down without one". Just like the Puritans, the Quakers encountered an abundance of food in the New World; forests rich with game and berries, streams teeming with fish, and flocks of birds so abundant that they would sometimes block the sun for several hours. Still the asceticism persevered. Many Quakers avoided eating butter as a form of self-mortification, and the most eccentric followers would avoid tea and meat. The idealist and pacifist ideas of the Quakers also encouraged many to boycott products that were considered to be tainted by sin. This included salt, due to its role in raising war taxes, and sugar, because it was produced by slave labor. Eating habits were more egalitarian than either that of the Puritans or the Virginian Anglicans. At meals, entire households would dine at the same table, including children and servants.

The most typical cooking method of the Quakers was boiling, a method brought from ancestral northern England. Boiled breakfast and dinner were standard fare, as well as "pop-robbins", balls of batter made from flour and eggs boiled in milk. Boiled dumplings and puddings were so common in Quaker homes that they were referred to by outsiders as "Quakers' food". Travelers noted apple dumplings as an almost daily dish in the Delaware Valley and cook books specialized in puddings and dumplings. Food was mostly preserved through boiling, simmering or standing. A popular genre of dishes made from this favored method of food preparation was "cheese" (or "butter"), a generic term for dishes prepared by slow boiling or pressing. It could be made from ingredients as varying as apples (i.e., apple butter), plums and walnuts. Cream cheese had its origins in Quaker cooking, but was in colonial times not true cheese made with rennet or curds, but rather cream that was warmed gently and then allowed to stand between cloth until it became semi-solid. Dried beef was widely popular in the Delaware Valley and was eaten along with puddings and dumplings to add flavor. The use of dried beef was so widespread that it was often called "Quaker gravy" in the 18th century. Though the Quaker influence from the Northern Midlands was the most dominant, there was some influence from German immigrants during the 18th century. Scrapple, a pot pudding made from meat scraps and grain, became a staple of the regional cuisine for many generations.