Customs and Fashions in Old New England
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This must be a very good "sauce," and a very good receipt when once it is clear to your mind which of them—the housewives or the pompions—sink and are to fill and be filled in a pot, and stirred and stewed and put liquor to. In an old book which I own, which was used by many generations of New England cooks, I find this "singular good" rule to make a "Pumpion Pye:" "Take about halfe a pound of Pumpion and slice it, a handful of Tyme, a little Rosemary, Parsley and Sweet Marjoram slipped off the stalkes, and chop them smal, then take Cinamon, Nutmeg, Pepper, and six Cloves and beat them, take ten Eggs and beat them, then mix them, and beat them altogether, and put in as much Sugar as you think fit, then fry them like a froiz, after it is fryed, let it stand til it be cold, then fill your Pye, take sliced Apples thinne rounde-wayes, and lay a row of the Froiz and layer of Apples with Currans betwixt the layer while your Pye is fitted, and put in a good deal of sweet butter before you close it, when the pye is baked take six yelks of Eggs, some White-wine or Vergis, and make a Caudle of this, but not too thicke, cut up the Lid and put it in, stir them wel together whilst the Eggs and Pompions be not perceived and so serve it up."
I am sure there would be no trouble about the pompions being perceived, and I can fancy the modest half-pound of country vegetable blushing a deeper orange to find its name given to this ambitious and compound-sentenced concoction which helped to form part of the "simple diet of the good old times." I have found no modern cook bold enough to "prove" (as the book says) this pumpion pie; but hope, if any one understands it, she will attempt it. Potatoes were on the list of seeds, fruits, and vegetables that were furnished to the Massachusetts Bay colonists in 1628, and fifteen tons (which were probably sweet potatoes) were imported from Bermuda in 1636 and sold in Boston at twopence a pound. Winthrop wrote of "potatose" in 1683. Their cultivation was rare. There is a tradition that the Irish settlers at Londonderry, N. H., began the first systematic planting of potatoes. At the Harvard Commencement dinner, in 1708, potatoes were on the list of supplies. A crop of eight bushels, which one Hadley farmer had in 1763, was large-too large, since "if a man ate them every day he could not live beyond seven years." Indeed, the "gallant root of potatoes" was regarded as a sort of for-bidden fruit-a root more than suspected of being an over-active aphrodisiac, and withal so wholly abandoned as not to have been mentioned in the Bible ; and when Parson Jonathan Hubbard, of Sheffield, raised twenty bushels in one year, it is said he came very near being dealt with by his church for his wicked hardihood. In more than one town the settlers fancied the balls were the edible portion, and "did not much desire them." Nor were fashionable methods of cooking them much more to be desired. In "The Accomplisht Cook," used about the year 1700, potatoes were ordered to be boiled and blanched; seasoned with nutmeg, cinnamon, and These pages are © Laurel O'Donnell, 2005, all rights reserved
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