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Local Roots Blues, Brews & Evening Dining BBQAugust 8, 2014 (6:30pm-9pm, Dinner 7pm) in Greenfield Village PavilionThis is an extraordinary backyard-style event. |
Click on an artifact below to see how the foods we ate and the ways we prepared them have changed over the last three centuries.
1780-1800
Butter Churn
Probably Massachusetts
71.1.203
Gift of David M. Gwinn
The 20th century concept of “ready made food” was not part of the experience of people living in the 1700s. Meals had to be prepared from scratch using foodstuffs grown on the farm or available in the local community. It was a labor-intensive process--a housewife could spend a good part of the day preparing food for her family.
Butter making was one of the many responsibilities of the rural colonial housewife. After milking the cow and setting out the milk in flat pans to separate the cream, she put the cream in a churn like the one above. Then she--or one of her children--moved the churn’s dash handle up and down countless times until the cream finally turned into butter. The housewife used butter for baking or in roasting, or to spread on bread at meals. |
