by Effie Moore Salem

Created on: October 30, 2009   Last Updated: December 22, 2010

While sailing over and during that long, harsh first winter the food for the Pilgrims was random and sparse. On board the Mayflower they ate what they brought with them or what the ship's cooks prepared. This was smoked beef and poultry, dried beans, herbs, clarified butter and cheese. They prepared foods that would last and for drinking, instead of water, the ship stocked barrels of beer. This was safer. However, William Bradford reports in his book "Of Plimouth Journey" that often the hateful crew on board the Mayflower kept the beer for themselves and made the poor Pilgrims drink tainted water.

The journey took sixty-five days and was hampered by stormy weather, bad tempers, and often hunger pangs. By the time they landed at Cape Code their cheese and butter was rancid and miniature little bugs were crawling in their biscuits and other hardened bread. The left over dried beans, and other dried and preserved foods, were diminishing but these had to sustain them during the winter. I read somewhere the first pretzels, those salted and hardened little twisted bread tidbits, was first eaten on the Mayflower.

On land, they scrounged for food and of course fished and hunted for wild game. After they made acquaintance with Squanto, their friendly Indian guide who spoke English and could communicate with them, their diet improved. Until then it was indeed rough going. Half of the one hundred and one Pilgrims that sailed over on the Mayflower died during the first winter. Squanto showed them how to roast corn and how to make corn mush and to better prepare their game Indian fashion and how to grow a hardy crop of corn.

Fish certainly must have been plentiful since they used them for fertilizer when planting their first crop of corn. This was the instructions from their friendly Indian guide and they were impressed with his knowledge. Especially when their first New World gardening venture turned out so well. We can well imagine that fish were cleaned and gutted, wrapped in a corn husk and baked in the coals of a fire. If all that sounds healthy and holistic remember that it happened in New England, a place well known for cold and blustery winters.

In addition to eating sparsely from their reserved stash that they brought with them from England, they somehow had to find enough energy simply to survive and take care of the sick and dying. Yet one find of food was reported by William Bradford in his Book Of Plymouth Plantation. The men, himself probably and Miles Standish,

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