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The foods that the Pilgrims brought with them on their voyage to the new world fall into two categories. One would be the provisions that would be eaten during the voyage, the second was the seeds of the grains they used at home to plant in the New World.

The new world food or seed would have included the cereals that were grown on there farms in England. Wheat was a major one. It was used to make a stable of their diets, bread. Others would have been barley and rye. Hops as well, all of these grains were used to make a necessary commodity. Beer. No the Pilgrims were not party animals that thought they would need a beverage that would intoxicate them. Due to the lack of healthy clean water at the time, the drink of choice was a watered down beer. It had a low alcohol content and the fermentation process would kill most bacteria. They didn't know that in the New World clean water was the one thing that they would find in abundance. The Native Americans didn't have the huge, unclean urban centers that polluted the waterways beyond the use for drinking. Other seeds were brought as well. Any kind of vegetables that they might have had in their gardens at home, they assumed would grow in the new colony.

The provisions that were taken to be eaten during the journey where pretty typical of the day. Even though they had been shorted one ship and the provisions from the Speedwell were transferred to the Mayflower, delays made it so that over half of the trips food was gone before they even left Europe. At one point they even had to sell over a ton of butter while still off the coast of England.

The ship board food wasn't exactly 5 star cuisine. You would have meat, mainly pork or fish that had been preserved with salt. Salt-pork was what it was known as. During the first part of the voyage they would still have some fresh vegetables, but once underway these fresh stores went quickly. Vegetables could be preserved in vinegar, but after a few weeks this wasn't the most appetizing meal. Hardtack has always been a stable of sea voyages (as well as when people moved west a couple of centuries later). It was a biscuit that sometimes would have bits of bacon in it. It was hard enough to crack a tooth. The shelf life of this little biscuit was literally years. Most of the time to make it edible it would have to be soaked in a liquid. If available fat from beef or a pig was used, more often than not water was the only liquid available.

Speaking of water. Even if it was potable and healthy at the start, it soon became undrinkable due to the fact that it was stored in oak casks. It would become brackish and absolutely undrinkable. To counter this they would drink the beer or a stable that sailors used for years: grog. Grog was rum that was watered down. It served two purposes. One the alcohol content would kill bacteria. Second the fact that rum is made from sugar cane, it can help with the disease that went hand in hand with sailors of the time. Scurvy.

So the food brought to the New World wasn't very good, or in any great amount. It was enough that they did survive. Ironically though after all the troubles of the journey, half of the colonists would starve the first winter.

Learn more about this author, T. Scott Randolph.
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