"An acceptable refreshment": the meaning of food and drink in
the Hudson Valley, 1780-1860. |Abstract:||The North American
cornucopia is supposed to have removed the worry about
nourishment from everyday concerns by 1800. However, close
scrutiny of food-ways, only possible at the grassroots level,
uncovers a stratified society in which hunger remained a
preoccupation. It also reveals the coherence of the organizing
principles behind the workings of a local society. The belief
that nature would inevitably foil human efforts led the
population of the Hudson Valley to search for ways to achieve
food security. Provisioning bore the mark of "an economy of
expenditures," and vegetable and fruit gardens supplied culinary
variety. They also fostered the circulation of foods and
contributed to a barter economy in which foodstuffs served as a
currency equivalent. Closely linked to collective work efforts
that always ended with a shared meal, foodstuffs lubricated
social relations. They constructed and integrated the ne