Southeastern New England Native Recipes

Documented Wampanoag/ Narragansett/ Massachusett Recipes from the Primary Sources

The following recipes are those that have been identified from the primary sources (Edward Winslow Good News From New England, Roger William A Key into the Language of the Americas, Thomas Morton New English Canaan, Daniel Gookin Historical Account of the Doings and Sufferings of the Christian Indians in New England in the Years 1675-1677, and John Josselyn Colonial Traveler and New England Rarities.

Narragansett, Massachusett, Wampanoag Recipes

Boiled Fish

Uppaquontup(Boiled Fish heads)

Roasted Fish

Wild Leeks (with or without fish)

Nokehick (Parched corn)

Boiled Corn Whole

Roasted Ears of Corn

Nasaump

Boiled or Roasted bread

Strawberry Bread

Roasted Lobster

Hard Eggs in Soup

Flayed (and Roasted?) Cormorant

Broiled Beaver Tail

Soup/ Pottage

Boiled Fish

Boiled Fish (Winslow 211)

Boiled Cod in September (Winslow 228)

Uppaquontup(Boiled Fish heads)

Uppaquontup Bass heads boiled. The braines and fat of it being very much, and as sweet as marrow (Williams 180)

Roasted Fish

Roasted Fish (Winslow 212)

Wild Leeks (with or without fish)

Wild leekes which the Indians use much to eat with their fish (Josselyn 1672:54)

Nokehick

Nokehick: parched corn which is a readie very wholesome food, which they eate with little water, hot or cold...with a spoonful of this meale and a spoonful of water from th brooke, have I made many a good dinner or supper

Aupummineanash the parched corn

Aupuminea-nawsaump the parched meale boiled with water at their houses,which is wholesome diet they have (Williams 100)

They make also a certain sort of meal of parched maize. This meal they call nocake. It is so sweet, toothsome, and hearty, that an Indian will travel many days with no other food but this meal, which he eateth as he needs, and after it drinketh water. And for this end, when they travel a journey, or go a hunting, they carry this nocake in a basket or bag for their use. (Gookin 1674:10)

They beat their corn to powder and put it up in bags, which they make use of when stormie weather or the like will not suffer them to look out for their food (Josselyn 93)

During the moose hunt they boil up the moose meat, the men take out their bags and take out as much Indian meal as will serve their turns...they eat their broth with spoons, and their flesh they divide into gobbets, eating now an then with it as much meal as they can hold betwixt three fingers, their drink they fetch from the spring (Josselyn 99)

Boiled Corn Whole

Msickquatash Boiled corn whole (Williams 100)

Their Indian corn and beans they boil... (Josselyn 93)

Roasted Ears of Corn

... [corn] roasted in the ear against the fire (Josselyn 93)

Nasaump

Nasaump A kind of meale pottage, unparched. From this the English call their Samp, which is Indian corn, beaten and boiled, and eaten hot or cold wth mik and butter, which are mercies beyond the Natives plaine water (Williams 100)

Sukissuog Clams: This fish and the natural liquor of it, they boile, and it makes their broth and their nasaump (which is a kind of thickened broth) and their bread seasonable and savory, in stead of salt (Williams 182)

Boiled or Roasted bread

Puttuckqunnege a cake

Puttuckqunnegunash puttuckqui Cakes or loaves round (Williams 101)

Also sometimes they beat their maize into meal, and sift it through a basket made for the purpose. With this meal they make bread, baking it in the ashes, covering the dough with leaves (Gookin 1674: 10)

Sometimes they make of their meal a small sort of cake, and boil them. (Gookin 1674: 10)

Strawberry Bread

Wuttahimneash Strawberries The Indians bruise them in a mortar, and mixe them with meale and make strawberry bread They also make great use of their strawberries havingsuch abundance of them, making strawberry bread, and having no other food for many days (Williams 169)

Sautauthig

Sautaash are these currants (hurtleberries Attitaash) dried by the Natives and so preserved all the yeare, which they beat to a powder, and mingle with their parched meale, and make a delicate dish which they call Sautauthig which is as sweet to them as plum or spice cake to the English (Williams 169)

Roasted Lobster

Lobsters were roasted (Josselyn 93)

Hard Eggs in Soup

Hard eggs boiled and made small and dryed to thicken their broth with (Josselyn 93)

Flayed (and Roasted?) Cormorant

Cormorants: Indians will eat them when they are flayed (Josselyn 73)

Broiled Beaver Tail

Beaver tails with the skin flayed off and broiled proves excedding good meat, being all fat, and as sweet as marrow (Josselyn 1672: 19)

Soup/ Pottage

Flesh of beasts they both roast and boil (Morton 56)

Their food is generally boiled maize or Indian corn, mixed with kidney-beans, or sometimes without. Also they frequently boil in this pottage fish and flesh of all sorts, either taken fresh or newly dried. These they cut in pieces, bones and all, and boil them in the aforesaid pottage. I have wondered many times that they were not in danger of being choked with fish bones; but they are so dexterious to separate the bones from the fish i the eating thereof, that they are in no hazard. Also they boil in this furmenty all sorts of flesh they take in hunting; as venison, beaver, bear's flesh, moose, otters, racoons, or any kind that they take in hunting; cutting this flesh in small pieces, and boiling as aforesaid. Also they mix with the said pottage several sorts of roots; Jerusalem artichokes, and ground nuts, and other roots, and pompions, and squashes, and also severall sorts of nuts or masts, as oak acorns, chestnuts, walnuts; these husked and dried, and powdered, they thicken their pottage therewith. (Gookin 1674: 10)

Iroquois Recipes

The following Iroquois recipes were taken from Parker on the Iroquois (Arthur Caswell Parker, Handsome Lake, William Nelson Fenton). While the Iroquois are a separate culture and language family from the Wampanoag, Narragansett and Massachusetts, their plant use and recipes appear similar to known Wampanoag, Narragansett, and Massachusetts ones and a selective review of them seems applicable. The recipes collected by Parker et al are more elaborate than the mentions made by the New England authors and so add another possible dimension to the understanding of 17^th century and pre-Contact Period foodways for the people in eastern and southeastern New England.

Leaf Bread

Green corn scraped from the cob and beaten to a milky paste, wrapped in corn leaves and boiled in water about 45 minutes, eaten with bear grease or sunflower oil. Cooked beans can be mixed with them, without beans they can be dried for winter use. Very sweet, mashed corn placed in leaves with ladles, no hands. (Parker 1968: 66)

Baked Green Corn

Green corn scraped from the cob and beaten to a paste. Kettle is lined with basswood leaves and the corn is added to 2/3 the depth of the vessel. Top is smoothed down, cold (hardwood) ashes to a finger's depth are put over the leaves and smoothed down. Small fire is built under he kettle. Glowing coals are placed on top, fire is kept going and the coals on top are renewed three times. Left over night, ashes and leaves removed and baked corn dumped out. Can be dried for winter by slicing it and drying it in the sun. Boiled up when used. (Parker 1968: 67)

Boiled Green Corn

Boiled on cob and either eaten on the cob or scraped off (Parker 1968: 67)

Succotash (Missuccotash)

Green corn scraped from cob and thrown in pot where beans mostly cooked and cooked together, grease can be added (Parker 1968: 68)

Baked Cob-Corn in the Husk

Ashes brushed away in fire and layer of green corn laid on hot stones or ground. Embers heaped over and hot fire built on top (Parker 1968: 68)

Baked Scraped Corn

Green corn scraped off cob and pounded in mortar or mashed in a bowl with small stone, patted into cakes and sprinkled with dry meal, wrapped in husk and covered with ashes. Embers heaped over and hot fire built (Parker 1968: 68)

Cracked Undried Corn

Ripened but not dry corn shelled from cob and mashed kernal by kernal on a flat stone with a stone muller. Mixed with harvested beans and boiled for nearly 3 hours, deer or bear meat added (Parker 1968: 69)

Boiled Corn Bread

Boil dry corn for 15-30 minutes in weak hard wood ash lye (should be consistency to bite tongue when tasted). When it is puffed up and the hulls are loosened, place it in a hulling basket and rinse it in a brook. Corn drained, thrown in a mortar and mashed. Meal sifted to fine and coarse. Fine meal mixed with boiling water and made into a flat 8" diameter and 3" thick cake. The maker's hands are plunged into cold water and rubbed over the surface to give it a glossy texture. Cake was plunged into boiling water and boiled for about one hour. When it floats it is done. Sometimes a loaf is baked instead of boiled for journeys. Ashes washed off and it is sliced. If kept dry it will keep for hunting and war parties. Liquid from boiled bread is drunk as a "tea". Cooked cranberry beans or berries can be added "Journey cakes" (Parker 1968: 69)

Early Bread

before the corn was thoroughly ripe it was harvested and beaten in a mortar with water into a paste. Loaves were molded from the paste and boiled (Parker 1968: 72)

Early Corn Pudding

Paste from the mortar was drained, sifted and tossed into a wet meal. Then thrown into boiling water and boiled down to a pudding (Parker 1968: 72)

Dumplings

Moisten a mass of corn meal with boiling water and quickly mold into cakes in a closed hand moistened with cold water. Drop these into boiling water and cook for ½ hour. These were often cooked with boiling meats such as game birds. They were fished out with sharpened sticks and bone splinters. (Parker 1968: 73)

Hominy

A quart of corn was thrown into a mortar and moistened with a ladleful (4 tablespoons) of water. A teaspoon of white ash was added. The pounding proceeds slowly at first to loosen the hulls, when they begin to come off the pounding is quickened until the corn is broken up coarsly. It is then sifted, the hominy passing through and the uncracked corn is placed back in the mortar and repounded. After the second sifting the uncracked kernals are thrown to the birds. The cracked corn is then winnowed in a tossing basket. The hulls and chit are thrown out by hand or by the use of a bird wing fan. The hominy is then cooked in a proportion of one part meal to eight parts water and boiled for two hours, bear meat can be added as well as beans for flavoring. (Parker 1968: 73)

Hulled Corn

Corn boiled in lye for 4-5 hours until the kernals burst open and were tender. Small chunks of meat were thrown in and sometimes berries. Used often at feast times. (Parker 1968: 74)

Dried Corn Soup

Green corn dried before a fire fairly quickly to prevent the milk from souring. The dried corn was boiled for ¾ of an hour. The dried corn was sometimes roasted or pounded for pudding meal. (Parker 1968: 74)

Nut and Corn Pottage

Nut meal or nut milk mixed with parched corn meal. Nuts are pounded in a mortar with a little water on them so that by stirring up the pounded nuts the broken shells separate from the liquor. (Parker 1968: 75)

Corn and Pumpkin Pudding

Parched corn mixed with boiled pumpkin or squash (Parker 1968: 75)

Samp

Corn boiled in lye but not beaten as fine in a mortar, berries or meat were added (Parker 1968: 75)

Corn Pudding

Corn roasted brown and pounded slowly in a mortar until all kernals were the same size. The meal was then thrown into boiling water and cooked until tender. Meal could be stored in bags and used by hunters. Dried cherries pulverized, often mixed with it. (Parker 1968: 75)

Roasted Corn Hominy

green corn stood nose upward against the top pole of a roasting pit. The pit was a long narrow trench a foot or more deep with Y-shaped sticks at either end as supports for the top pole. After a fire of saplings and sticks had been reduced to a mass of glowing embers. The ears were leaned against the pole and roasted. Watchers turned them as they roasted, while others gathered them and shelled them into a bark barrel. (Parker 1968: 77)

Roasted Corn

Green corn baked in hot embers. Dig a long trench and place the ears across two slender green saplings and allow the heat of the hot coals to cook the corn. Sometimes an ear was encased in clay and baked. For roasting ears singly, a sharpened stick was shoved into the stem and the ear held in the embers. (Parker 1968: 78)

Bean Soup

String beans cooked in pods, shelled green beans and from dried green beans (Parker 1968: 89)

Mashed Beans

Dried beans put in a mortar and pounded coarsely, soaked in cold water and boiled down to a pudding with bear or venison (Parker 1968: 90)

Boiled Beans

Mashed and mixed with grease (Parker 1968: 90)

Beans with Corn

Green shelled beans boiled with green corn, meat or fat (Parker 1968: 90)

Baked Squash

Baked in ashes and the whole squash eaten, shell, seeds included (Parker 1968: 92)

Boiled Squash

Squash split and cleaned and boiled (Parker 1968: 92)

Boiled Squash Flower

Flowers boiled with meat and the sauce used as a flavoring for meats and vegetables (Parker 1968: 92)

Berry and Sumac Sprouts

eaten raw or boiled with fat meat (Parker 1968: 93)

Crushed nut meats

Crushed and boiled nut meats often mixed with corn pudding or bread (Parker 1968: 100)

Chestnuts

Boiled and meat used for pudding, or dried meats pounded and mixed with bread meal(Parker 1968: 100)

Roots

Jerusalem Artichokes: Boiled and seasoned with oil, roasted also (Parker 1968: 105, 106)

Ground nuts: Boiled or roasted (Parker 1968: 106)

Wild Onions: Often eaten raw with meat, were a favorite substance for making soup. Onions boiled

and seasoned with oil. No evidence for their use as flavoring for soups or other foods (Parker1968: 107)

Yellow Pond Lily: Roots gathered in the fall by treading them out and scooping them up. Generally in 5-6' of water. Boiled with meat or roasted. (Parker 1968: 107)

Cat-tail: Dried and pulverized, made into flour for bread or pudding. Bruised and boiled fresh, a syrupy gluten was obtained in which corn meal pudding was mixed (Parker 1968: 107)

Arrowhead: Tubers esteemed good if boiled, bitter if eaten raw (Parker 1968: 107)

Indian Turnip (Jack in the pulpit): Juice is poison, roots sliced and dried and pulverized (Parker 1968: 107)

Milkweed: Possibly used (Parker 1968: 107)

Solomon's Seal: Mature roots gathered in fall, dried, pounded and worked into bread (Parker 1968: 107)

Skunk Cabbage: Roots used, being dried and pulverized, sometimes roasted or baked (Parker 1968: 107)