New Amsterdam Kitchen
How New Amsterdam's Settlers Cooked & Ate
Excavations in lower Manhattan have unearthed how early settlers cooked and ate their daily repast. These excavations of lots once inhabited by the first settlers revealed the shards of cookware, tableware, bottles and drinking vessels displayed in this exhibit.
Much of the food that early settlers in New Amsterdam consumed came from gardens, fields and forests around them, but at least initially, the implements they used to prepare and eat food were brought with them or imported. Because the Dutch engaged in abundant trade with many countries, seventeenth-century settlers on the southern tip of Manhattan had access to a diverse assortment of household goods.
Excavations of lots once inhabited by the first settlers revealed the shards of cookware, tableware, bottles and drinking vessels displayed in this exhibit. All were in common use during this early period, and have been sourced using historical records, seventeenth-century Dutch paintings, and scientific analysis.
Exhibit Credits:
Based on “New Amsterdam Kitchen,” an exhibit of artifacts by the New York State Museum on display at the New Netherland Research Center in the New York State Library.
Online production by Steve McErleane.
Photography by Dietrich Gehring.
Food Preparation
The kitchen of a typical seventeenth-century household contained not only metal pans and pots, but also earthenware vessels. For example, this three-legged redware pot (grape, in Dutch) was used to simmer food slowly over coals. The redware colander would have been used to drain fish, a popular food choice.
Dining
Delft plates, often decorated to resemble the admired Chinese porcelain Wan-li pattern, were familiar Dutch tableware. Metal spoons were the most frequently used eating utensil, and knives sported wooden or bone handles. Forks did not come into general use until the eighteenth century.
Glass Drinking Vessels
The ‘onion bottle’ (its name denotes its shape) originated in England. The contents of an onion bottle might have been served in a wineglass. They also could have filled a passglas with lines to mark the amount each person could gulp in a drinking game. Or, they might have been poured into a Roemer goblet whose raspberry prunts provided a better grip for greasy fingers. Both of the latter vessels originated in Germany.
Posset Pot
The ‘onion bottle’ (its name denotes its shape) originated in England. The contents of an onion bottle might have been served in a wineglass. They also could have filled a passglas with lines to mark the amount each person could gulp in a drinking game. Or, they might have been poured into a Roemer goblet whose raspberry prunts provided a better grip for greasy fingers. Both of the latter vessels originated in Germany.
Stoneware, Mugs, Jugs, and Bottles
Potters in the Rhine Valley produced a variety of gray, salt-glazed stoneware. Some from the Westerwald region were decorated with applied molding and incised designs colored in cobalt blue or manganese purple. Others, such as mottled brown Bartmann jugs and bottles, bore intriguing bearded faces.
