What did the pioneers eat and drink? | Homework.Study.com (2024)

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What did the pioneers eat and drink? | Homework.Study.com? ›

Answer and Explanation:

Beans, cornmeal mush, Johnnycakes or pancakes, and coffee were the usual breakfast. Fresh milk was available from the dairy cows that some families brought along, and pioneers took advantage go the rough rides of the wagon to churn their butter. "Nooning" at midday meant stopping for rest and a meal.

The first beverages of choice were cider and beer. Both were simple to make.

(10 – 14) Bread, corn, jerked meat, beans and rice, and dried fruit were staples for pioneer family meals. (15) Dutch ovens and iron caldrons were a crucial cooking tool for open-hearth and campfire cooking on the frontier.

In a spider (frying pan), they roasted green coffee beans, ground them in a coffee grinder and then brewed them in water over the fire. If the unthinkable happened and the coffee supply ran out, the pioneers would resort to sipping corn or pea brew.

The greens they ate in colder months had been sun-dried, pickled or kept in a root cellar. In the north, cows provided milk, butter, and beef, while in the south—where cattle were less common—pork was a primary source of meat (and remained so until the 1940s), along with venison and other game.

The foods served varied, changing with the customs of each region, but in the North some common foods were chowder, beef, clam soup, baked beans, roasted pork, custards, oxen, turtles, mutton and salmon.

Human and animal waste seeped into the earth, contaminating the well and making a "good cold dipperful of well water" less than appealing. Many families had to boil their well water to kill off contaminants.

Tea is older by almost two millennia–the earliest mentions of tea are from 1,000 BCE in southwestern China, while coffee's first records are from 850 CE in eastern Africa, near modern-day Ethiopia.

Alcohol. When a town was first founded, the initial saloons were often nothing more than tents or shacks that served homemade whiskey that included such ingredients as "raw alcohol, burnt sugar and chewing tobacco".

Did pioneers eat eggs? ›

Pioneers did bring chickens along in crates tied to the backs of their wagons. Eggs were used in many pioneer recipes.

There were no plastic lunch boxes or thermoses on the homestead. This girl is carrying her lunch in a tin container called a lunch pail. Some families could afford to buy lunch pails for their children. Others saved empty lard or syrup buckets to use as lunch pails.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, sourdough bread became a staple food for the pioneers and settlers of the American West. The sourdough starter was easy to transport and could be used to make bread on the trail, without the need for commercial yeast.

Bacon and biscuits were common. Pancakes, beans and oatmeal were also options. Midday meal: Some pioneers cooked this meal ahead at breakfast so that they could rest.

Vinegar Pie

Cream-filled or custard pies became a nice treat. Custard-like vinegar pie was popular during the Great Depression for the same reasons, but pioneer cooks also made this treat on the frontiers where orchards had not yet been planted and in a time when canned goods were not readily available.

How did cowboys drink water out of streams without purification? Fresh water from streams is much better than stagnant water, and people did readily drink it without ill effects all the time. Additionally, they often collected water and later boiled it over a campfire.

They placed the meat on a layer of salt and covered it with more salt, sometimes mixed with pepper and brown sugar. Salt draws moisture out of meat and thus stops the process of rotting. Some people later stored the meat buried in shelled corn, because the corn was a good insulator.