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| MATTERS OF TASTE |
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DUTCH FOODWAYS TRANSPLANTED IN THE NEW WORLD |
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Introduction: The Founding of New Netherland In the autumn of 1609, Henry Hudson traveled north from Manhattan towards present-day Albany, on the waterway that would eventually be named for him. Information gathered during the expedition suggested that beavers were abundant in the region—and Dutch merchants quickly turned their interest to this promising economic opportunity, claiming tracts of land on the Hudson, Connecticut, and Delaware rivers. Here, near the confluence of the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers, a fort was established in 1624. Called Fort Orange, it would eventually carry the name Beverwijck.
During the seventeenth century, beaver pelts were at the center of a lucrative web of trade. The pelts were first sent to Russia, where they were valued for their shiny outside fur. Russian customers would eventually sell the furs back into the trade, when—worn, dirty and sufficiently greasy to be properly felted—they were converted into hats, and resold in Spain and other regions of Europe.
The beaver-rich New World territory—eventually named New Netherland—came under the jurisdiction of the Dutch West India Company in 1621, as per the conditions of the Company’s charter.
Though New Netherland was primarily considered a trade—rather than a residential—venture, Dutch West India Company officials understood that the territory would require permanent settlements in order to maintain its trading posts. The Company first responded to this need in 1629, with the issue of the The Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions. Allowing for the establishment of patroonships, the charter granted private companies and individuals large tracts of territory in return for the settlement of at least fifty people on the land. With the notable exception of Rensselaerswijck, the majority of these ventures had failed by 1638.
The Dutch West India Company made another attempt at increasing population in the North American colony during the 1650s, creating and disseminating promotional literature throughout the Netherlands. This effort was largely unsuccessful, as the relative prosperity and tolerance of the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic left potential settlers with little incentive to undertake an arduous journey to a new and largely unknown territory.
After the Dutch West India Company lost its claim to Brazil in 1654, however, it devoted greater attention to New Netherland. The first substantial efforts were made to settle colonists outside of the patroonship system, and many former employees of the South American colony moved to the North American territory. Dutch West India Company officials also drew on recent refugees to the Dutch Republic, and by the mid-seventeenth century, New Netherland had become a “melting pot” in which Dutch, British, French, Germanic, Scandinavian, Irish, Spanish, Portuguese and Slavic peoples co-existed.
Despite these efforts, New York’s population lagged significantly behind that of New England; by 1660, its population was only 5000 strong, while New England’s had reached 33,600. As a result of this weakness, the Dutch West India Company had been forced to relinquish the western half of Connecticut during the 1650s, and it would give up its remaining property during the 1660s for largely the same reasons. As scholar Christopher Brown succinctly phrases it, “New Netherland, the only significant non-English enclave among the North American colonies, was too valuable, too fertile, too strategic, and too enticingly weak to long remain outside the power of the British.”
Despite the shift to British rule, the Dutch influence remained strong in New York, and remains strong even today, in large and small ways—from the separation of church and state, to the ready availability of doughnuts.
Dutch Culinary Traditions in the New World Dutch colonists in the New World had access to many of the foodstuffs that they would have enjoyed at home.
Although the traditional guild system never took hold in New Netherland, bakers continued to produce their wares, and bread remained a staple of the Dutch diet. However, occasional conflict arose as bread shortages resulted from the New Netherland baker’s tendency to trade sweet breads, pretzels, and other delicacies with Native Americans, depleting precious grain supplies on these greedy ventures.
In order to obtain fruit and vegetables, New World settlers cultivated orchards, successfully growing the apples and pears that were popular in the Netherlands. Meanwhile, gardens produced the lettuce, cabbage, parsnips, carrots, beets and assorted herbs that appeared in traditional Dutch salads and stews.
Though they were expensive, farm animals—including horses, pigs, and cows—were imported from the Netherlands and were available for purchase. Fish and wild turkeys, however, were cheaper and more readily available sources of protein for New World colonists.
As further evidence that Dutch foodways were largely preserved in the New World, records demonstrate that the Dutch West India Company supplied settlers in New Netherland with the kitchen tools that they had typically used at home, including frying pans for pancakes and waffle irons for waffles and wafers.
Intersecting Culinary Traditions: Pumpkin Pancakes and Sapaen Though Dutch culinary traditions remained largely unchanged between the Old World and the New, exposure to Native American cooking techniques led to the adaptation of some traditional European recipes. Dutch settlers, for example, added New World pumpkin and cranberries to Old World pancakes and olie-koecken, respectively. Sapaen—Native American cornmeal mush—was also readily accepted by settlers, who altered the standard recipe only slightly with the addition of milk. |
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