Food & Drink on the Early Cumberland / National Road

A hungry traveler seeking a meal at a tavern during the early decades of the Cumberland Road would most likely find that the food was cooked in an open fireplace. Meats would turn on spits, kettles for soups and stews would be suspended over the fire and Dutch ovens buried in the coals did the baking. While the idea of meat sizzling over an open fire is appealing and the idea of cooking in a fireplace may seem romantic to our perspective, cooking in the early 1800’s was hard labor. Firewood needed to be cut, fires built and tended, water carried from a spring or well, heavy pots lifted, and any kneading, grinding and chopping was done by hand. A major advance in the reducing some of the workload in the kitchen was the cook stove. It became available to wealthy homes in the 1820’s and became more common among the population in the 1850’s. The stove was more efficient in holding heat so it required less fuel. The cook top of the stove was close to waist level eliminating some bending and lifting. A steadier heat source allowed for more elaborate cuisine. Not every home had the means to acquire a stove so kitchen fireplaces remained as a necessity for many decades more in the homes of the poor and on the frontier.

An interesting glimpse on the effects of the Road replacing the frontier way of life with something more genteel can be seen in a collection of recipes of Jane Skiles Byers who lived near the Road in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. Jane lived from 1812 to 1888 and would have seen the Cumberland Road in its heyday. Luckily these recipes were preserved and published as “Bake Slow and Sure: Heirloom Recipes of the National Road Era”. Jane’s recipes were for baked goods and pickles. The baking recipes seem more attuned to baking in an oven rather than the more robust type of baking done in the ashes of a fire. The nutritional content of some of her cakes still reflect the frontier heritage. For example, her ingredients for a fruitcake include a pound of brown sugar, a pound of flour, ¾ pound of butter, four pounds dried fruit and a dozen eggs. She had access to cloves, ginger allspice, nutmeg and cinnamon for her cooking. Whether these spices came west from Baltimore on the Road or up the river system from New Orleans then east on the road is unknown. In either case, the Road was making such luxury items more available to the interior of the country.

Fare available to the travelers on the early Pike is often described as simple and hearty. Hams, chicken, wild game, bread, butter and eggs are mentioned in histories. The statesman Henry Clay, a frequent customer to the inns along the Pike is said to have eloquently extolled the virtues of the buckwheat cakes available in the taverns along the mountainous portion of the road. As traffic and trade along the Road increased so did the menus, An English traveler staying at a hotel on the Road in Terre Haute, Indiana in 1854 reported that:

“Breakfast eating ranged across hot and cold breads of different sorts including corn bread, pancakes and fritters smothered in butter, molasses or preserves, and steak, roast beef and chicken…,At noon, steaks, roast beef, veal, mutton cutlets, boiled ham, pigeons, and chicken and veal pies were served with peas, beans, hominy, potatoes and, in summer corn and squash….Supper was a simpler meal with mostly cold cuts”

Interestingly, he also noted that this repast was served by six or seven boys ranging from eight to twelve years old who performed their duties barefoot but were otherwise neatly dressed in white jackets and aprons.

If the concept of an “official beverage” was extant during the early years of the Cumberland Road, that beverage would have to be whiskey. Beer and wine were available in large cities, but it was relatively expensive and in beer’s case, perishable. Whiskey was cheap, plentiful, and readily available in taverns, inns and hotels on the road. It was imbibed in quantities that we would find, well, staggering. Thomas Searight’s account written in 1894 detailing the life on the “Old Pike” says:

“Every old tavern had its odd shaped little bar, ornamented in many instances with fancy lattice work and well stocked with whiskey of the purest distillation, almost as cheap as water”

He also recounts that a wagoner could spend the night a stage inn for $1.75 which included grain and hay for a six horse team, a room, meals and “all the whiskey he could drink”.

Drinking alcohol in the early republic was a large part of the fabric of life. An article in the Colonial Williamsburg Journal tells us:

“In 1790, United States government figures showed that annual per-capita alcohol consumption for everybody over fifteen amounted to thirty-four gallons of beer and cider, five gallons of distilled spirits, and one gallon of wine”

Rum was the drink of choice during the colonial period, but the war with England disrupted the availability of its prime ingredient, sugar cane. To fill this void, farmers who grew grain or corn quickly took up distilling their crops, and whiskey became the “patriotic” potable. At the peak of whiskey’s popularity in 1830 an average of over seven gallons per person were consumed each year.

A major reason for large amount of alcohol consumption was the lack of safe drinking water. We now know that drinking such prodigious amounts of alcohol can take years off your life, but drinking tainted water could kill you in a matter of days. Reading any first person account of travelers in early America, and you are sure to read of those stricken with “bloody flux”, what we now call dysentery. Deaths from drinking unsafe water were quite common. The products of the brewing or distilling process were much more likely to be free of the bacteria and parasites that cause illness.

Whiskey’s popularity began to decline after the Civil War. This decline was greatly due to a government tax on the beverage. This tax, coupled with an influx of German immigrants, brought about an increase in the production and drinking of beer.

To honor this spirited history, next time you are sitting before a fire sipping a glass of whiskey, raise a toast to the “Old Pike” and those that traveled on her.

~ John Salitrik

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