A Culinary Tour Through Manhattan in 1679

With a stop in Gowanus for Oysters and Venison

Beneath the city, the village. Under the village, the field and forest.

In a previous essay we did a light load of armchair digging to uncover the location of the traditional six villages of Brooklyn from the days of the seventeenth-century New Netherland colony. If you’ll indulge me a short time more, lets row across to Dutch Manhattan and arrive on an island of villages, fields, and forest (the very REAL fantasia that Central Park will attempt to re-create two hundred years later). The year is 1679. It has been a decade and half since the colony was handed over to the English. The Dutch did not leave. Even the former governor, Peter Stuyvesant, returned to retire on his country estate, the Bowery. And though the colony has been renamed after the King’s brother, the Duke of York, most people still use the old names: New Amsterdam, the town at its southern tip, and even New Netherland for the colony as a whole. Here we meet Jasper Danckaerts, a Dutchman from (old) Flushing, and his companions just disembarked for the first time on the shores of New York. They’re legs are unsteady from many weeks at sea. It’s late September. They are guided by a local, Gerrit, just returning home. From Jasper’s journal:

“We went along with him, but as he met many of his old acquaintances on the way, we were constantly stopped. He first took us to the house of one of his friends, who welcomed him and us, and offered us some of the fruit of the country, very fine peaches and full grown apples, which filled our hearts with thankfulness to God. This fruit was exceedingly fair and good, and pleasant to the taste; much better than that in Holland or elsewhere, though I believe our long fasting and craving of food made it so agreeable. After taking a glass of Madeira, we proceeded on to Gerrit's father-in-law's, a very old man, half lame, and unable either to walk or stand, who fell upon the neck of his son-in-law, welcoming him with tears of joy. The old woman was also very glad.”

Manhattan’s Teeming Orchards

But it wasn’t just the ship’s journey that made the fruit so good. Jasper soon finds that Manhattans fields are teeming—overflowing—with such fruit:

“ It was strange to us to feel such stability under us, although it seemed as if the earth itself moved under our feet as the ship had done for three months past, and our body also still swayed after the manner of the rolling of the sea; but this sensation gradually passed off in the course of a few days. As we walked along we saw in different gardens trees full of apples of various kinds, and so laden with peaches and other fruit that one might doubt whether there were more leaves or fruit on them. I have never seen in Europe, in the best seasons, such an overflowing abundance.”

At the end of the first day the party returns to Garret’s house for delicious milk, more peaches (!), and rest:

“When we had finished our tour and given our guide several letters to deliver, we returned to his father-in-law's, who regaled us in the evening with milk, which refreshed us much. We had so many peaches set before us that we were timid about eating them, though we experienced no ill effects from them. We remained there to sleep, which was the first time in nine or ten weeks that we had lain down upon a bed undressed, and able to yield ourselves to sleep without apprehension of danger.”

Day two brought more culinary delights. After peaches for breakfast, a visit to Church (it was Sunday), where the minister preached drunk, a tour around the fort (the church was in the fort where today’s Custom House is by the Battery), they head off for a tavern a little out of town (above Wall Street). The tavern is such a dive that,

“it being repugnant to our feelings to be there, we walked into the orchard to seek pleasure in contemplating the innocent objects of nature. Among other trees we observed a mulberry tree, the leaves of which were as large as a plate. The wife showed us pears larger than the fist, picked from a three year's graft which had borne forty of them.”

To Gowanus for Oysters and A Feast

At the end of the first week, Jasper and friends, make their first visit to Brooklyn and Long Island. After passing through the village of Brooklyn and by its “ugly little church” they past through fruit abundance and hospitality of cosmic proportions:

“We struck off to the right, in order to go to Gouanes [Gowanus, then a tidal swamp]. We went upon several plantations where Gerrit was acquainted with almost all of the people, who made us very welcome, sharing with us bountifully whatever they had, whether it was milk, cider, fruit or tobacco, and especially, and first and most of all, miserable rum or brandy which had been brought from Barbados and other islands, and which is called by the Dutch kill-devil. All these people are very fond of it, and most of them extravagantly so, although it is very dear and has a bad taste. It is impossible to tell how many peach trees we passed, all laden with fruit to breaking down, and many of them actually broken down. We came to a place surrounded with such trees from which so many had fallen off that the ground could not be discerned, and you could not put your foot down without trampling them; and, notwithstanding such large quantities had fallen off, the trees still were as full as they could bear. The hogs and other animals mostly feed on them.”

They stop along the way to visit with a hundred-year old woman incessantly smoking a pipe, who shows them beautiful apples and serves them smoked sea-bass (which Jasper enjoys) and New cider, “which was very fine.” Finally they arrive at their guide Gerrit’s best friend’s house, where we will share in their final (for now) Culinary adventure: Oysters, venison, Wild Turkey, Goose, and Water melon. Roasting on the roaring fire was a pail of

“Gouanes oysters, which are the best in the country. They are fully as good as those of England, and better than those we ate at Falmouth. I had to try some of them raw. They are large and full, some of them not less than a foot long, and they grow sometimes ten, twelve and sixteen together, and are then like a piece of rock. Others are young and small. In consequence of the great quantities of them, everybody keeps the shells for the purpose of burning them into lime. They pickle the oysters in small casks, and send them to Barbados and the other islands. We had for supper a roasted haunch of venison, which he had bought of the Indians for three guilders and a half of seewant, that is, fifteen stivers of Dutch money, and which weighed thirty pounds. The meat was exceedingly tender and good, and also quite fat. It had a slight spicy flavor. We were also served with wild turkey, which was also fat and of a good flavor; and a wild goose, but that was rather dry. Everything we had was the natural production of the country. We saw here, lying in a heap, a whole hill of water-melons, which were as large as pumpkins, and which Symon was going to take to the city to sell. They were very good, though there is a difference between them and those of the Caribbee Islands; but this may be owing to its being late in the season, and these were the last pulling. It was very late at night when we went to rest in a kermis bed, as it is called, in the corner of the hearth, along side of a good fire.”