WHAT DID THEY EAT? WHERE DID THEY STAY?

FOOD PROCUREMENT

As you may have noticed when examining “Amie Long’s recipes,” or rather, the recipes that correspond to Amie Long’s advertisement, that nineteenth-century ingredients and techniques are much the same as we use today. The most significant change has been how we procure our food. Mass-production and industrial canning of food did not come into practice until the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Refrigerators did not come onto the domestic market until 1917. During the period of the Colored Conventions, people relied primarily on fresh produce and cooking from scratch. Ice boxes could be used to keep food cold, but it could not be kept as long as we do today. Nineteenth-century stores typically sold dry and imported goods, such as sugar, tea, coffee, and spices. Breads could either be made at home or purchased from a neighborhood baker. At the local market, buyers could obtain a variety of fresh foods, including: meats from a butcher, poultry, fish, butter, cheese, eggs, and produce. There were no cars, so buyers relied on horse-drawn carts or wagons or were limited to what they could carry home.

: Without a wagon, these women were limited to the provisions they could carry and fit into their cart.

: Du Bois, W. E. B., Collector. [African Americans at sheltered outdoor market or fair]. [or 1900, 1899] Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/99472287. (Accessed May 09, 2016).

: A turn of the century country store.

: Du Bois, W.E.B., Collector. [Interior view of grocery store in Georgia]. [or 1900, 1899] Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/90706967. (Accessed May 09, 2016).

: Boardinghouse keepers could purchase dry provisions in local grocery stores. This one tailored the advertisement to the African American community and boardinghouse keepers, boasting of “free labor” goods.

: Even knowing the right kind of flour to purchase was not so simple.

: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division, The New York Public Library. “In the French meat market, New Orleans.” New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed May 10, 2016. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47df-b7b9-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

: “New York City—Friday Morning in the Fourth Ward—The Women’s Fish-Market in Oak Street.” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper [New York, New York] 14 Aug. 1875: 396. From Gale. 19th Century U.S. Newspapers. ©2008Gale, a part of Cengage Learning, Inc. Reproduced by permission. www.cengage.com/permissions

Sources

Abby Fisher, What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking (San Francisco: Women’s Co-operative Printing Office, 1881; Reprinted with historical notes by Karen Hess (Applewood Books: Bedford, MA, 1995), 14.

Robert Roberts, “Trimming and Cleaning Lamps” in The House Servant’s Directory (New York: Munroe and Francis, 1827),

Ruth Schwartz Cowan, More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave (London: Free Association Books, 1989), 54, 61, 62.