There are no original menus or recipes for early Plymouth Colony. 

That no such documentation exists is not surprising, given the realities of establishing a colony in the early 17th century. There are, however, several early sources that include descriptions of food supplies and there are even a few references to dishes served on specific occasions.

Mayflower passenger Edward Winslow recorded meticulous notes in preparation for the Pilgrims’ voyage to America, including lists of recommended food supplies for the early colony. Winslow’s jottings have been fully transcribed and published in The Brewster Book Manuscript, ed. Caleb H. Johnson (2019). Winslow’s is one of many provisions lists of stores to be brought to early colonies that help provide insight into 17th century English foodways across the Atlantic.

Of the foods available during the Colony’s initial year following a deadly first winter, William Bradford recorded in his journal:

“…others were exercised in fishing, about cod, and bass, and other fish of which they took good store, of which every family had their portion; all the summer there was no want; and now began to come in store of fowl, as winter approached, of which this place did abound when they first came (but afterwards decreased by degrees) and besides waterfowl, there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison etc. Besides they had a peck of meal a week, or now since harvest, Indian corn to that proportion. Which made many afterwards write so largely of their plenty here to their friends in England, which were not feigned, but true reports.”

– William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ed. Caleb Johnson (Xlibris, 2006, rev. ed. 2021), 143-44.

The first published account of Plymouth Colony, Mourt’s Relation (London, 1622), written by Edward Winslow and William Bradford, also highlights the abundance of local food resources. Obtaining these resources was often a challenge for the Plymouth colonists, who were not skilled in hunting, fishing or foraging. Writing a couple of years later, Winslow noted

“I will not again speak of the abundance of fowl, store of Venison, and variety of Fish, in their Season, which might encourage many to go in their persons, only I advise all such before hand to consider, that as they hear of Countries that abound with the good creatures of God, so means must be used for the taking of every one in his kind, and therefore not only to content themselves that there is sufficient, but to foresee how they shall be able to obtain the same, otherwise, as he that walketh London streets, though he be in the middest of plenty, yet if he want means, is not better but hath his sorrow increased by the sight of that he wanteth, and cannot enjoy it: …”

– Edward Winslow, Good News From New England (1624): A Scholarly Edition, Kelly Wisecup, ed. (University of Massachusetts Press, 2014), 114.

The first “menu,” or collation of dishes served together as a meal, for which there is any information is suggested in the scant record of the week-long harvest celebration held at Plymouth in the fall of 1621. During the event, the colonists were joined for three days by Wampanoag sachem Ousamequin (Massasoit) and at least 90 Wampanoag men. Known as the “First Thanksgiving” this gathering was described in a letter by Edward Winslow that was published as part of Mourt’s Relation in 1622:

“our harvest being gotten in, our governour sent foure men on fowling, that so we might after a speciall manner rejoyce together, after we had gathered the fruits of our labours ; they foure in one day killed as much fowle, as with a little helpe beside, served the Company almost a weeke, at which time amongst other Recreations, we exercised our Armes, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king Massasoyt, with some ninetie men, whom for three dayes we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five Deere, which they brought to the Plantation and bestowed on our Governour, and upon the Captaine and others. And although it be not always so plentifull, as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so farre from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plentie.”

In 17th century England, even simple dinners typically consisted of several courses with a variety of sweet and savory dishes for each course. If a menu of the Plymouth Colony harvest celebration could be reconstructed, it would certainly include wildfowl, possibly goose, duck, and turkey, and venison, in addition to other dishes such as fish and shellfish.

Learn More About the First Thanksgiving

The second recorded “menu” of early Plymouth was served on the occasion of Governor William Bradford’s wedding to Alice Carpenter Southworth in the summer of 1623. A visiting member of the Colony’s company of merchant investors, Sir Emmanual Altham, was a guest at the festivities along with the Massasoit and a large Wampanoag entourage:

“Massasoit was sent for to the wedding, where came with him his wife, the queen, although he hath five Lewives. With him came four other kings and about six score men with their bows and arrows – where, when they came to our town, we saluted them with the shooting off of many muskets and training our men. So all the bows and arrows was brought into the Governor’s house, and he brought the Governor three or four bucks and a turkey. And so we had very good pastime in seeing them dance, which is in such a manner, with such a noise that you would wonder. “

– Letter, Emmanual Altham to Sir Edward Altham, March, 1623/1624 in Sydney V. James, ed., Three Visitors to Early Plymouth (Plimoth Plantation, 1963), 29-30.

Altham described “the great cheer we had at the Governor’s marriage”:

“We had about twelve pasty venisons, besides others, pieces of roasted venison and other such good cheer in such quantity that I could wish you some of our share. For here we have the best grapes that ever you say – and the biggest, and divers sorts of plums and nuts which our business will not suffer us to look for.”

– Letter, Emmanual Altham, March 1623/1624 in Three Visitors to Early Plymouth, 29-30.

The wedding feast for William Bradford and Alice Southworth and their guests on August 14, 1623 was an event of diplomatic importance, and the menu would have reflected the specialness of the occasion. In addition to the venison and turkey provided by the Wampanoag guests, the menu for the Governor’s wedding feast would very likely have included at least two courses with several different dishes.

In his letters written while he was in Plymouth, Altham describes enjoying many kinds of fish, lobster, corn, and “good store of fowl,” although food sufficiency was a serious concern for the English in the colony’s early years as they struggled to raise productive crops and become more successful at fishing.

“Yet we have very poor fare here all this winter, being cold water and beef, sometimes, because we have but little of it; and now and then we have good store of fowl.”

– Letter, Emmanual Altham to Sir Edward Altham, March, 1623/1624 in Sydney V. James, ed., Three Visitors to Early Plymouth (Plimoth Plantation, 1963), 39.

Perhaps the most famous dish recorded in early Plymouth sources is the broth concocted by Edward Winslow to nourish Wampanoag sachem Ousamequin during a life-threatening illness in March 1623.

“He requested me that the day following, I would take my Piece, and kill him some Fowl, and make him some English pottage, such as he had eaten at Plimoth, which I promised: after his stomach coming to him, I must needs make him some without Fowl, before I went abroad, which somewhat troubled me, being unaccustomed and unacquainted in such businesses, especially having nothing to make it comfortable, my Consort being as ignorant as my self….”

– Edward Winslow, Good News From New England (1624): A Scholarly Edition. Kelly Wisecup, ed. (University of Massachusetts Press:2014), 82-3.

Winslow sent back to Plymouth to have chickens delivered to make broth. In the meantime, he made a meatless dish with grain and herbs to feed Ousamequin. Though drawing on English foodways and traditional medicine for his ad hoc recipe, Winslow was obviously unused to food preparation and tasked out some of the work to a woman of Pokanoket, the village where the great Sachem was being attended in his illness.

“…but being we must do somewhat, I caused a woman to bruise some corn, and take the flower from it, and set over the grut, or broken corn, in a pipkin (for they have earthen pots of all sizes.) When the day broke, we went out (it being now March) to seek herbs, but could not find any but strawberry leaves, of which I gathered a handful, and put into the same, and because I had nothing to relish it, I went forth again, and pulled up a Saxafras root, and sliced a piece thereof, and boiled it, till it had a good relish, and then took it out again. The broth being boiled, I strained it through my handkerchief, and gave him at least a pint, which he drank, and liked it very well. After this his sight mended more and more; also he had three moderate stools, and took some rest, Insomuch as we with admiration blessed God for giving his blessing to such raw and ignorant means, making no doubt of his recovery, himself and all of them acknowledging us the instruments of his preservation.”

– Winslow, Good News From New England, Wisecup, ed., 82-3.

Winslow’s pottage of corn, strawberry leaves, and sassafras closely resembles the recipe for a barley-based “tisane” or medicinal infusion, published in a 16th-century London cookbook:

“To make a Tyssan.
TAke a pinte of Barley beeing picked, sprinkled with faire water, so put it in a faire stone morter, and with your pestell rub the barley, and that will make it tuske, then picke out the barley from the huskes, and set your barley on the fyre in a gallon of faire water, so let it seeth til it come to a pottel. Then put into your water, Succory, Endiue, Cinkefoyle, Violet leaues, of each one handfull, one ounce of Anniseed, one ounce of Liquoris bruised, and thirtie great raisons, so let all this geare seeth till it come to a quart: then take it off, let it stand and settle, and so take of the clearest of it, and let it be strained, and when you haue strained the clearest of it, thē[n] let it stand a good pretie while. Then put in foure whites of Egs al to beaten, shels and all, then stir it well together, so set it on the fyre againe, let it seeth, and euer as the scum doeth rise take it off, and so let it seeth a while: then let it run through a strainer or an Ipocras bagge, and drink of it in the morning warme.”

– The good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin (London: Richard Iones, 1594), leaf 42.

Winslow’s healing dish substituted maize for barley. “Indian corn,” the native corn or grain of the Americas and staple food of the region’s Indigenous people, was a key factor in Plymouth Colony’s survival.

The Wampanoag prepared corn in various ways, including boiling ground corn in water to make a thick grain porridge for eating or making into bread or cakes. In A Key into the Language of America: or, An help to the language of the natives in that part of America, called New-England (London, Gregory Dexter, 1643), Roger Williams translated Algonkian words for corn-based foods, including:

Nókehicke: “Parch’d meal, which is a readie very wholesome food, which they eate with a little water, hot or cold; I have travelled with neere 200. of them at once, neere 100. miles through the woods, every man carrying a little Basket of this at his back, and sometimes in a hollow Leather Girdle about his middle sufficient for a man three or foure daies:

With this readie provision, and their Bow and Arrowes, are they ready for War, and travell at an houres warning. With a spoonfull of this meale and a spoonfull of water from the Brooke, have I made many a good dinner and supper.” (11)

Aupúmminea-naw-saùmp: “The parc’d meal boild with water at their houses which is the wholesomest diet they have.” (11)

Nasàump: “A kind of meale pottage, unparch’d. From this the English call their Samp, which is the Indian corne, beaten and boild, and eaten hot or cold with milke or butter, which are mercies beyond the Natives plaine water, and which is a dish exceeding wholesome for the English bodies.” (11-12)

Isaack de Rasieres, an early Dutch visitor to Plymouth Colony, similarly described Indigenous cooking with Indian corn in the New Netherlands area:

“When they wish to make use of the grain for bread or porridge, which they call Sappaen, they first boil it and then beat it flat upon a stone; then they put it into a wooden mortar, which they know how to hollow out by fire, and then they have a stone pestle, which they know how to make themselves, with which they pound it small, and sift it through a small basket….The finest meal they mix with lukewarm water, and knead it into dough; then they make round flat little cakes of it, the thickness of an inch or a little more, which they bury in hot ashes, and so bake into bread; and when these are baked they have some clean fresh water by them in which they wash them while hot, one after another; and it is good bread, but heavy. The coarsest meal they boil into a porridge, as is before mentioned, and it is good eating when there is butter over it, but a food which is very soon digested.”

– Letter, Isaack de Rasieres to Samuel Blommaert, c. 1628 in Sydney V. James, ed., Three Visitors to Early Plymouth (Plimoth Plantation, 1963), 71-72.

Within a generation, these local Indigenous foods were adopted and adapted by the English settlers. John Josselyn, a visitor to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1663 who recorded details of the region’s natural resources, provides an early recipe for “Indian wheat.”

“…the English make a kind of Loblolly of it, to eat with Milk, which they call Sampe; they beat it in a Morter, and sift the flower out of it; the remainer they call Homminey, which they put into a Pot of two or three Gallons, with Water, and boyl it upon a gentle Fire till it be like a Hasty Pudden; they put of this into Milk, and so eat it. Their Bread also they make of the Homminey so boiled, and mix their Flower with it, cast it into a deep Bason in which they form the Loaf, and then turn it out upon the Peel, and presently put it into the Oven before it spreads abroad; the Flower makes excellent Puddens.”

– John Josselyn, New-Englands Rarities Discovered (originally published London, 1672; reprinted Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1972), 52-53.

Josselyn also described the use of native blueberries, which he called “Bill Berries, two kinds, Black and Sky Coloured.” The berries made a “most excellent Summer Dish….put into a Bason, with Milk, and sweetened a little more with Sugar and Spice, or for cold Stomachs, in Sack.” The Indigenous people gathered and dried the berries in the sun “and sell them to the English by the Bushell,” to be used by the colonists like dried currants, “putting of them into Puddens, both boyled and baked, and into Water Gruel.” (Josselyn, 59-60)

According to Josselyn, New England cranberries – ”The Cran Berry, or Bear Berry, because Bears use much to feed upon them”- were boiled “with Sugar for Sauce to eat with their Meat” by both “The Indians and English.” Josselyn presumably referred to the colonists’ cooking when describing how the sweetened boiled berries made “a delicate Sauce, especially for roasted Mutton: [and] Some make Tarts with them as with Goose Berries.” (Josselyn, 66)

Josselyn gave recipes for two New England “standing dishes,” popular dishes widely served in Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth Colony.

One “standing Dish in New England” was a simple preparation of “Naked Oats, there called Silpee,” boiled “leisurely” in milk with sugar and spice to “thicken like a Custard,” and served “to the Table in deep Basons.” (Josselyn, 88)

The other was a dish of stewed “pompion,” referring to a range of squashes or pumpkins.
Pompions, there be of several kinds, some proper to the Country, they are dryer then our English Pompions, and better tasted; you may eat them green.

The ancient New-England standing Dish.

But the Houswives manner is to slice them when ripe, and cut them into dice, and so fill a pot with them of two or three Gallons, and stew then upon a gentle fire a whole day, and as they sink, they fill again with fresh Pompions, not putting any liquor to them; and when it is stew’d enough, it will look like bak’d Apples; this they Dish, putting Butter to it, and a little Vinegar, (with some Spice, as Ginger, &c.) which makes it tart like an Apple, and so serve it up to be eaten with Fish or Flesh….” (Josselyn, 91)