Cuisine of New England  New England cuisine is an American cuisine which originated in the New England region of the United States, and traces its roots to English cuisine. It is characterized by extensive use of seafood and dairy products, which results from its historical reliance on its seaports and fishing industry, as well as extensive dairy farming in inland regions. Many of New England's earliest Puritan settlers were from eastern England, where baking foods (for instance pies, beans, and turkey) was more common than frying, as was the tradition elsewhere. Two prominent characteristic foodstuffs native to New England are maple syrup and cranberries. The traditional standard starch is potato, though rice has a somewhat increased popularity in modern cooking. New England cuisine is known for limited use of spices aside from ground black pepper, although parsley, garlic, and sage are common, with a few Caribbean additions such as nutmeg. Use of cream is common, due to the reliance on dairy. The favored cooking techniques are stewing, steaming, and baking. Many local ingredients, such as squash, corn and local beans, sunflowers, wild turkey, maple syrup, cranberries and dishes such as cornbread, Johnnycakes and Indian pudding were adopted from Southern New England Algonquian cuisine. The traditional diet of the Wampanoag people included chestnuts, beechnuts, walnuts, beans, multi-colored corn (called "flint corn"), and varieties of squash and pumpkins. In 1620, the newly arrived Pilgrims faced the prospect of surviving their first winter in Plymouth Colony. The climate was harsh and the growing season was shorter than they were accustomed to due to the long and frosty winters. The newly arrived colonists brought vital techniques of food preservation like smoking, curing and drying that helped them survive the harsh New England winter. They also received help from the Wampanoag, who taught the newly arrived Pilgrims how to grow the staple crops of squash, beans and corn. It is not known for certain what crops were grown in early colonial gardens, but later sources mention turnips, onions, carrots, garlic and pumpkins. The Pilgrims used corn to make hasty pudding and Wampanoag recipes like popcorn, sagamite and nasaump. The Wampanoag also taught the Pilgrims to bake in hot ashes, and ash cakes (also called johnny cakes or breakfast bannocks) became a staple breakfast bread. Beans were used to make stews or combined with corn to make succotash.