The destiny of nations depends on how they nourish themselves.(diet of American colonists and Puritans)(Brief Article)

Abundance and the variety and quality of raw ingredients have been basic to American cookery from the beginning. As early as 1630 a traveler remarked that the coast of Maine "had the smell of a garden." The vision of a land where hunger seemed to be unknown drew people of many lands and cultures to these shores, where they enriched American gastronomy.

As Arthur M. Schlesinger has written, "the very discovery of the New World was the by-product of a dietary quest" for spices to season the "monotonous fare" and preserve the meats of Europe. Columbus failed to reach the land of these spices but he and his successors made amends by uncovering a cornucopia of foods unknown in the old world: white and sweet potatoes, tomatoes, maize, more than twenty varieties of beans, pumpkins, wild turkeys, cranberries, blueberries, strawberries, crab apples, chestnuts, peanuts, and maple syrup. From the old world, settlers brought various vegetables and fruits but above all poultry, hogs, and cattle.

While the Puritans rhetorically worried about the sin of gluttony, they had few reservations about enjoying an ample dinner. Diarists noted in detail what they ate, and John Winthrop's journal, restrained about other pleasures, celebrates "fat hogs, kids, venison, poultry, geese.. .fine strawberries.. .good beer" and "rich pastry" By the mid-eighteenth century Americans were eating so well that a London visitor to a Virginia plantation wrote about it in the London Magazine of July 1746: "All over the colony full Tables.. .speak somewhat like the old Roast-beef Ages of our Forefathers." Despite substantial English breakfasts, this visitor was overwhelmed at being served first thing in the morning hashed and fricasseed meats and venison pie, and a choice of coffee, tea, ...