Jane's Cranberry Cornbread

A cornbread that could have been served at the first Thanksgiving!

I swear I intended to have Jane represent the experience of settlers in Jamestown, but let's be honest: it's hard to ignore Plymouth as a source for early colonization and interactions between Europeans and Native communities, particularly when it comes to exchanging food. 

This corn bread is very different from the corn bread you've probably enjoyed alongside chili and fried chicken, but if you're looking for something that can pass as authentic for your Thanksgiving table, this really fits the bill. Read on to find out how to make this yourself!

Jane's Tart of Green Peas

An Elizabethan classic that makes for a fun modern side dish!

Jane has been a great addition to the blog because experimenting with Tudor and Elizabethan recipes can be a lot of fun. Sometimes, the flavor profile is just a little bit off from a modern perspective, and some recipes I'm not sure I'm brave enough to ever try myself, but a lot of the recipes I've posted about here are actually pretty tasty, as well as being interesting. 

Take this pea tart for example! I was clued into this recipe from Joyce White's A Taste of History blog, which I've shared with you guys before. Joyce is a really talented food historian and the past recipes I've tried from her arsenal have come out pretty well. This pea tart - actually a pea pie - is adapted from a 1596 cookbook by Thomas Dawson entitled Good Housewife's Jewel. It's a really easy recipe to try out in your own home, and with the exception of one key ingredient, you won't have to look high or low for most of the components. 

What's that ingredient, you ask?

First Chefs and a Seed Cake with Jane

A temporary exhibit that really brings you a sweet taste of history!

Last post, I mentioned an exhibit at the National Archives that I had missed out on years ago. Living in DC, such worries are a thing of the past, unless of course there's a cool exhibit going on at a non DMV area museum. Take the current exhibit at the Folger Shakespeare Library: First Chefs! 

First Chefs spotlights books, documents and artifacts from the library's collection, as well as a few other local institutions that help bring to life how and what people in Britain and North America ate in the late 1500's through the 1700's. The exhibit shines the spotlight on several interesting figures in culinary history, as well as showing the public that more extravagant food often meant exploiting the labor of enslaved people, women, servants, and laborers. Read on to see highlights from the exhibit and a recipe inspired by one of the personalities featured in the gallery!

Harvesting History at the Henry Whitfield House

One of the oldest homes in New England!

One of the best things about living in the DC area is that I’m not too far away from where I grew up, making going home for the holidays nice and easy. Jessi and I got to spend our first Thanksgiving together at my parent’s house, doing all the typical Thanksgiving things (including my now traditional Indian pudding!), going Toys for Tots shopping (my favorite holiday tradition!) and stopping by one of the oldest homes in America for their annual post-Thanksgiving event. 

You know, as you do when you’re a historian. Or married to one. 

Accompanying us were Jane Collier, a girl from 1614 Jamestown, Virginia who has appeared on the blog many times before, and Fear Tyler, a new friend from 1692 Salem Village (modern day Danvers), Massachusetts. As American Girl seems to be deviating from making pre-20th Century characters, I’ve started to slowly take matters into my own hands and create a couple from periods of history I find personally interesting that the company is unlikely to cover themselves. As Jane and Fear have strong connections to the early colonization of North America and the crazy Puritans, they seemed like good travel companions to check out a historic house museum that holds a special place in my heart.

Jane's Apple Pie in a Mug

Just the thing if you need a quick fall treat!

So after talking all about apples in early America in my last post, I decided to roll the clock even further back. One thing I don’t think a lot of people realize is just how few comforts of home early European settlers to the Americas actually had. It took a really long time to import and cultivate crops, and farming techniques you were familiar with back in Europe didn’t always translate to New England or Virginia. 

It also meant you had to make some tough decisions about what kind of crops you brought first. Sweet apples weren’t cultivated in early Jamestown. Instead, their bitter cousins were grown for – you guessed it – cider! So kids like Jane would have had to learn to make do without some old favorites, including apples paired with cheese. 

This very modern take on apple pie is a quick, easy way to bring a taste of a very classic pairing. Ready in minutes, it can be enjoyed year round and doesn’t involve fussing with pastry! What’s not to love?

Jane's Jamestown Tea

Bringing you a taste of history in your teacup!

Last year I picked up a neat little treat from Mount Vernon, and then promptly never got around to writing a blog post about it until over a year later. I guess that’s just my life now. Aren’t you guys going to be glad to hear the end of my complaining about never having enough time to post as frequently as I used to? 

Eastern Shore Tea Co. is a Maryland based company that produces a variety of unique tea blends, several of which are inspired by history. I’ve seen blends drawing their inspiration from the American Revolution and even Edgar Allen Poe! I was excited to see their 1607 Herbal Tea because it’s so unusual to see anything relating to Jamestown food history, especially prepackaged stuff. Read on to find out whether or not this truly would have been something enjoyed in the first permanent English colony in North America!

Jane's Gingerbread Men

A cookie we've been enjoying eating for centuries!

Happy holidays, everyone! Unlike past Christmases, I didn't have a lot of time this year to do a ton of new holidays recipes, which on the one hand, isn't such a bad thing. Over the last three years, I've managed to feature a recipe from almost every character's time period and culinary perspective, so we've got a pretty good baseline for how Christmas, Hanukkah and Twelfth Night were celebrated over the decades.

But there's one character who I haven't featured yet, and I found the perfect thing to share with all of you this holiday season! It's from a pretty entertaining source too, which I'm very excited to bring to everyone's attention. Read on to find out more!

Jane's Pease Pottage & The Great Doll Blog Award

Something to eat when you're singing "it's glory, God and gold and the Virginia Company!"

Four hundred and nine years ago, a group of English settlers ended their long, long journey across the Atlantic ocean and founded the first permanent English settlement in the New World: Jamestown, Virginia. I know I talk about my enthusiasm for World War II all the time, but Jamestown is definitely my second favorite topic to study... closely followed by almost everything else. What can I say, I have a very wide range of interests.

Although I'm sure the members of the Virginia Company were excited to get off their ships and start working on digging for nonexistent mineral riches, they didn't have a lot of options when it came to treating themselves food wise when they began constructing their fort. No cakes, no ice cream, no fancy ribbon cutting ceremonies, probably just a hearty serving of this classic English dish enjoyed - or at least consumed... - by people for centuries.

It might not look like much, but it turns out, this actually isn't that bad. Might not be something I'd like to eat every day, but after months of hardtack and gruel (Pocahontas reference #2), I'd probably be very happy to see it.

But before we get to that, Nonna from Mommy's Doll Club nominated me for The Great Doll Blog Award!

Jane's Cheesecake

What the Pilgrims wanted to eat on the First Thanksgiving!

Wait, what? Gwen, you've got to be kidding us. This can't be a historical recipe. There's no way cheesecake dates back to the 17th century, right?

Well, surprise! It totally does. And it actually has a much, much longer history than that, which is actually pretty well documented compared to some of the other desserts I've shared with you all. The one I made this weekend might not be the New York style cheesecake you're familiar with, but it's still cheesecake, and we might not have the cheesecake we know and enjoy today without this one.

(Might, because who knows. Someone else could've had the idea at some point.)

I know a 17th century cheesecake might sound like a hard sell to some of my readers, but trust me. This one might surprise you!

Jane's Indian Pudding

A colonial classic that's become a bit hard to find!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Although Thanksgiving isn't usually my favorite holiday, I have a special extra long post for you today, featuring the comeback of a traditional family holiday dish and a trip to none other than Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, Massachusetts! Hosting the post today will be Jane, my custom character from the 17th century.

Again, Jane is actually from Jamestown in about 1614, so she predates the Pilgrims by six years and probably would never have even thought to visit New England. But since I live here, I've been having a lot of fun going to different historical sites that celebrate and educate people about the very early days of European colonization of North America. And while we've got a lot of different places to visit, one of the best is Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Plimoth Plantation is much like Colonial Williamsburg and other living history museums, with costumed interpreters and regular staff members happy to tell you all about the early days of the Pilgrims and Wampanoag. I hadn't been since I was very small, and honestly all I really remember of it was speaking to a Pilgrim about... something in their garden, and being miserably, miserably hot. Needless to say, I was excited to see it from an adult perspective.

Of course, part of this trip was also to do a little bit of research into Indian pudding, a Thanksgiving staple of my mom's family that has, for whatever reason, fallen out of favor. But more on that in a little bit! First, we're taking a trip back in time...

Jane's Cranberry Crumble

A taste of New England!

This post has a bit of an eclectic theme. I'm introducing you to a new character for the Peek into the Pantry gang, taking you on a quick field trip and cooking something that's so New England themed, it's almost painful. Bear with me, I promise it'll be fun. Or at least interesting? I hope?

Fall is my favorite season, October is my favorite month, and Halloween is my favorite holiday. You all know by now that I have a lot of love for my  home region of New England, and I think it's safe to say for a fact that we really know how to do fall up here. People from all over come up to take a look at our leaves and get into the spirit with us. But the place that people flock to during October specifically is Salem, Massachusetts. The whole town dresses itself up for the Halloween season, playing up the history of the Salem Witch Trials with costume contests, haunted houses and ghost tours. It can be a bit of a zoo, but it's something most people say you should try to go see at least once.

When I was going to school in Boston, every year, people would talk about going to Salem to celebrate Halloween and every year, my plans to do it would fall through. This year, I finally managed to get myself out there, and I dragged Jane and my grandparents along with me.

Who exactly is Jane, you ask?