American Autumn and the Tyranny of New England

Or, Why We Celebrate A Very Specific Idea of Fall

Photo by Timothy Eberly on Unsplash

In the United States, the months of September, October, and November are dominated by “fall” and “autumn.” Those words call to mind deciduous trees with color-changing leaves, harvest time and fall hunting season, autumnal foods like pumpkins, apples, and cranberries, waning daylight, chilly weather, migrating birds, and coming frosts. It means Halloween and Thanksgiving, sweater weather, wool socks, the last hurrah of seasonal ice cream and seafood shacks. These are the things we associate with “fall” across the United States.

But for most of the U.S., the third quarter of the year rarely reflects all that. In more southerly states, fall comes late, if at all, and 90-degree weather in October isn’t uncommon. Cranberries and most varieties of apples won’t grow at all, and pumpkins aren’t particularly well-suited to tropical climes either. Some very southerly areas are where northern migrating birds migrate to. In agricultural states with two harvest seasons, fall can be planting time.

In the more northerly states, “fall” may last as little as two weeks – sandwiched between the heat of late summer and the onset of winter snows. Some of this is due to climate change. Summers are longer and hotter, and cold weather sets in later and less often. Some of it is due to location or elevation. Growing up in North Dakota, it wasn’t uncommon to get snow on or before Halloween.

So why then does “fall” always mean New England’s version in our culture?

If you guessed “racism,” you’re at least partially right.

Becoming America

The development of “American” culture really began in the first half of the 19^th century. The disparate colonies of what would become the United States were not particularly united at the time. Even among English colonists, varying cultural practices developed around foodways, usually due to limitations of local and seasonal availability of produce and game. But once the states became United, White elites like President George Washington were interested in creating a new culture to match the experimental democratic republic they had founded. But while the Federalist style of architecture and furniture spread across the country, there was no real “American” style of food or cooking. Foodways remained seriously regional, although the development of canals in the Northeast helped start the trajectory toward homogenization.

The first half of the 19^th century also saw a rise in interest in American history. Writers starting in the 1820s began recording histories of 17^th century colonies, old family genealogies, and the American Revolution. The peaceful years following the War of 1812 allowed industrial development, the rise of public education, and an interest in looking back as folks were looking forward.

New England, in particular was developing a more robust regional foodway centered on Indigenous foods like corn, pumpkin and squash, cranberries, turkey, shellfish, and potatoes alongside traditional English ingredients like wheat, dairy, beef, onions, turnips, beets, cabbage, and apples. Many of the most populous cities – Philadelphia, New York, and Boston – were located in the Northeast, although only Boston would be considered truly part of New England. A majority of the White American population lived in those states, although Virginia was among the most populous of the original thirteen colonies.

People like Lydia Maria Child helped define New England cuisine. A staunch defender of Indigenous rights and an abolitionist, Child published an iconic cookbook – The Frugal American Housewife – and the poem that later became known to generations of children as “Over the River and Through the Woods,” but whose original title was “A New England Boy’s Song of Thanksgiving.” Although pumpkin pie, cornbread, and cranberry sauce with turkey had been featured decades earlier in Amelia Simmons’ American Cook, they gained more widespread use thanks to books like Child’s. But although other cookbooks published at this time period also emphasized regional foodways like The Virginia Housewife, Kentucky Housewife, and the Carolina Housewife, only the New Englanders like Child and Simmons claimed “American” in their titles, or made no reference to their states or regions at all.

The Civil War

The Civil War proved a turning point. White Southern planters argued for their own supremacy – in Congress, in society, in culture – and in their right to impose their cruel, racist, and extremely lucrative system of exploitation on the rest of the country, whether they liked it or not. In the North and West, things were more complicated. Lydia Maria Child, who lost her job as a magazine editor in the years leading up to the war once her abolitionist beliefs became clear, was more the exception than the rule, even among New Englanders. Most Americans in the North opposed secession, but not necessarily slavery, and certainly the idea that men and women of African descent were the equal of their White counterparts was laughable to most of society’s powerful White elites, regardless of the state they lived in.

During the war, Union soldiers from all over the North were brought together in close quarters, largely eating the same food. Men who’d never left their home counties found themselves relating to others from thousands of miles away. The spread of railroads and the development of canned foods for the military helped homogenize American diets, to a point.

In popular culture in the North, the idea of bringing a nation of disparate states together in unity became increasingly important. Sarah Josepha Hale (who tried unsuccessfully to save the periodical Child had been forced to resign from as editor) had been badgering politicians for nearly two decades to implement a national holiday of thanksgiving. In the fall of 1863, President Abraham Lincoln finally acquiesced. But the resolution only applied to the Union states, as the Confederate states had their own rebel government. Thanksgiving traditions elsewhere began to be superseded by New England foodways. About the only things to survive were minor variations in stuffing and pie.

The emphasis on a union of states also led to an increased interest in American history, notably that of the colonial and Revolutionary War period. American history books had begun to be published as early as the 1820s, as the United States proved itself on the world stage in the War of 1812. But during the Civil War, the idea of a single nation, with a single identity, became even more important.

Postwar, Reconstruction promised a new era for a country torn apart by White planter arrogance and racism. But White elites in the North were eager to sweep the past under the rug and heal a nation torn apart by war. As former Confederates were allowed to vote and run for office again, Reconstruction was undone, and the rise of Jim Crow set the rights of African Americans back by decades. Northerners wanted a united “American” identity – one that could stand up to the supremacist ideas of Europeans, who they saw as both inspiration and rivals. So they hearkened back to the earliest days of what became the United States as they knew them – the 17^th century colonies of New England. Claiming that the ideals outlined in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights reflected the “religious-freedom-seeking” Puritans who braved the harsh climes of the Massachusetts colony to establish their “shining city on a hill” was much more convenient than admitting to the spoiled and indolent second sons of Virginia’s early history, the complications of Dutch and Spanish colonies, the extreme violence of settler colonialism, and the prevalence of slavery in all of the thirteen colonies, including New England. That messy and complicated history just didn’t fit the American ideal White elites were trying to concoct.

By the second half of the 19^th century, Americans had their own dictionary, their own diverse religions (although mainline Protestantism was preferred by elites), massive industrial accomplishments, artistic movements, music, etc. But while some foods were becoming known as American overseas (notably steak, corn, and cocktails), the majority of U.S. residents still ate based on regional foodways, especially in the more established parts of the country.

Yankee Foodways Go National

That started to change with the advent of two important 19^th century innovations: cookbook publishing and nutrition science. The explosion of cookbook publishing following the Civil War meant that Americans had more access to printed recipes than ever before. A proliferation of periodicals, notably women’s magazines and rural and agricultural publications with women’s sections, as well as newspapers with women’s sections, meant that recipes were shared widely across the country. Fashionable recipes like lemon pie and lobster Newburgh made their way into community cookbooks across the country, regardless of the local availability of lemons and lobster, because both could be easily acquired if you lived anywhere near a rail line.

Most cookbook publishers were located in the Northeast and so were their authors. Some of the most popular and prolific cookbook authors and teachers of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries were from New England and neighboring states: Amelia Simmons (unknown, but likely Connecticut or New York), Eliza Leslie (Philadelphia), Lydia Maria Child (Massachusetts), Catharine Beecher (New York), Juliet Corson (Boston), Maria Parloa (Massachusetts), Mary J. Lincoln (Massachusetts), Sarah Tyson Rorer (Philadelphia), Fannie Merrit Farmer (Boston), Janet McKenzie Hill (Massachusetts), and Ida Bailey Allen (Connecticut). And they tailored their cookbooks to both their individual experiences and their audiences. Rarely were locales featured in commercially published cookbooks anymore (aside from Lost Cause cookbooks glorifying the pre-Civil War South), but their flavors were distinctly New England, even if the titles didn’t say it.

At the same time, nutrition science as in its infancy by the end of the century, and the majority (though not all) of its research was centered in New England. The calorie was applied to food at Wesleyan College in Connecticut. Mother of Home Economics Ellen H. Richards studied at Vassar College in New York and MIT before founding the Journal of Home Economics in upstate New York and doing research and writing in Boston. The term “home economics” was coined at Lake Placid, NY at a conference hosted by New York librarian (and staunch racist) Melville Dewey and his wife Annie and attended by Ellen H. Richards, Maria Parloa, and others.  

None of this evidence is meant to reinforce the perceived supremacy of New England foodways – merely to outline how dominant it was in the culture of this time period and how influential in the minds of the people who were making the biggest impact on American food at the time – cookbook authors and scientists.

These authors and scientists were also deeply steeped in the so-called “science” of race. American interest in scientific endeavor was focused on improvement. Improvement of machines, improvement of agricultural crops and livestock, improvement of people. Nutrition science was part of that, as were motion studies, sociology, psychology, and even researching into raising human offspring. “Better baby” contests were held (segregated, of course), childhood nutrition, education, exercise, and more were examined. It wasn’t called the Progressive Era for nothing – people were interested in progress. “The betterment of the race,” was a huge part of the conversation for White elites, everyone from college students to President Theodore Roosevelt.

A few weeks ago, Anjali Prasertong wrote this article for Well + Good, with the help of some wonderful food historians and researchers. It illustrates how closely tied nutrition science was to racist ideas like eugenics. But it also misses the bigger story: that “American” food is deeply tied to the idea that New England (read: White Yankee) foodways are superior to others.

Let’s look at some anecdotes.

In 1876, Juliet Corson opened the New York Cooking School. Like the Boston Cooking School, it was largely designed to train lower class women to be housekeepers and cooks. Although she had to ultimately close the school due to poor health, she went on to become a regular columnist for New York City newspapers, including the New York Times, where she worked for the rest of her career. Corson believed keenly in the power of good, economical cooking, and her Puritan background no doubt had a huge influence on her ideas and ideals. She famously published a number of cookbooks for the poor, including Fifteen Cent Dinners for Families of Six. According to her New York Times obituary, she published an edition of 50,000 copies specifically to give away during the height of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. Her books were immensely popular, their promise of healthful meals for little money was an important one in a time of robber barons and tenements. Interestingly, although she promoted the basic understanding of nutrition at the time (carbohydrates, protein, and fats), she offered a substitute for the cow’s milk so highly prized by nutritionists at the time – broth, which she encountered on her travels in France. But the remainder of her recipes in this booklet are stolidly New England – boiled meats, root vegetables and cabbage, beans, cooked cereals like cornmeal mush, dairy products like milk, cheese, and butter, and bread. No leafy greens or green vegetables, tomatoes, or fruits feature in her menus, except apples. A few dried herbs and spices and flavoring tinctures to be made at home (lemon, orange, vanilla). She even notes that dried or preserved fruits are for holidays only, and nuts are difficult to digest and so “they do not come under the head of the necessities of life.”

In 1890, Ellen H. Richards, with assistance from Mary Hinman Abel, debuted The New England Kitchen of Boston. Designed to serve Boston’s poor immigrant population with ready-made meals and teach them economical and nourishing cookery, the Kitchen was well-funded and with the benefit of medical professionals, scientists, and equipment manufacturers to assist Richards and Abel and conduct research.

“After a long series of studies, the following foods were placed on sale by weight or measure: beef broth, vegetable soup, pea soup, corn meal mush, boiled hominy, oatmeal mush, pressed beef, beef stew, fish chowder, tomato soup, Indian pudding, rice pudding, and oatmeal cakes.” Clearly, its proponents were certain that these typically New England foods were the most nutritious and best options. However, the local immigrant population in Boston was less convinced. According to The Life of Ellen H. Richards published in 1912, just one year after her death, the Kitchen, like many others, ultimately failed to convince “the poor” that the food on offer was both cheap and good. “’Their death knell was sounded,’ to quote Mrs. Richards, ‘by the woman who said, ‘I don’t want to eat what’s good for me; I’d ruther eat what I’d ruther’.’ The man, too, from Southern Europe who defiantly said, ‘You needn’t try to make a Yankee of me by making me eat that,’ pointing to baked Indian pudding, may have helped ring the knell.”

Like Corson, Richards and Abel were attempting to get poor and immigrant families to eat for survival, not pleasure. Both argued against alcohol, and while Corson embraced a more French style of eating for her middle-class cookbooks, salad vinaigrette was clearly out of the purview of the urban poor.

And therein lay the problem. Immigrants of all backgrounds did not want to be divorced from one of the few connections to their homelands they still had: food. And, as many people have argued before and since, English foodways aren’t always the height of culinary achievement, especially not when produced “economically.” But for these Progressive Era reformers, immigrant foodways were inferior. Messy, smelly, complicated, and probably causing all kinds of indigestion (the horror of meat- and white-bread-obsessed White elites everywhere). Mixed foods not only represented racial and ethnic mixing, they were also made calculating calories and nutrition components much harder to determine. The ”best” foods were simple, lightly seasoned, and served separately – hallmarks of many New England style foods. “Meat and three” if you will. And “Americanizing” immigrants didn’t mean teaching them about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It meant assimilating them to the dominant culture of the time, which was largely White, Protestant, and based in New England.

These ideas were carried forward into the 20^th century. They remained the backbone of nutrition advice in World War I, World War II, and the postwar boom, even as scientific advancements made clear the importance of vegetables and that immigrant and African American foodways were not nutritionally inferior to White Yankee foodways. Old ideas and habits died hard, encouraged by the continued prevalence of White supremacy in American culture. It was not until the 1960s and ‘70s that the idea that other foodways might have value trickled down to the mainstream, although even then it was often in highly Americanized form, either created by American immigrants themselves, or by home economists working in corporate test kitchens.

So how does this all relate to fall? New England foodways weren’t the only things to dominate our national culture. When American thought leaders and elites were inventing what it meant to be “American,” they lifted almost wholesale the culture of New England, including Protestant work ethic, Puritanical ideas about pleasure, and yes, even its distinct seasons. So when you see stuff about “what’s in season” for each month, they’re usually not talking about what’s in season in California, or Oklahoma, or Florida. They’re talking about the Northeast.

What About the South?

The South has just as long and distinct a food culture as New England. So why wasn’t it the chosen one? Well for one, although the South had its rebrand post-Reconstruction, largely courtesy the Daughters of the Confederacy and their Lost Cause Movement, treasonous secession wasn’t exactly the ideal the White elites of the more populous Northeast wanted to emphasize (comparisons to the American Revolution aside). Besides which, the food culture of the South was much more diverse. In addition, part of the revival of the racist Ol’ South was an emphasis on the role of genial Black cooks and “servants” in the magic of Southern food and hospitality. African foodways were much more in evidence in Southern food, and the still-racist North valued White supremacy just as much as it did New England supremacy.

African-Americans, however, existed and continue to exist in large numbers in the North, some of whom can trace their family lineages back to the earliest days of the colonies. Throughout the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, they were relegated primarily to service jobs, even after legal slavery ended in the North. They were the ones cooking for taverns, hotels, and spas, and on board steamboats and railroads. Many Northern families employed people of color as household servants as well, although by the end of the 19^th century White German or Scandinavian servants were preferred. In addition, Black Americans were far more populous in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania than in Massachusetts and other traditionally New England states. They just did not fit into the “shining city on a hill” narrative White Progressives wanted to embrace.

The large Black population in the South didn’t help either. Southern food did enjoy a late 19^th and early 20^th century revival, thanks in part to the Lost Cause movement, which sponsored not only Confederate statues and textbooks, but also helped Southern cookbooks proliferate. Not all of them exploited their African American contributors, but most did, and nearly all reinforced negative stereotypes about uneducated, “magical negroes” who were happy to serve their White masters.

While Lost Cause cookery did encourage a positive view of the South, it also helped other it. Slow Southern recovery following the Civil War, its reliance on agriculture (particularly sharecropping), its reluctance to industrialize, and its highly stratified Jim Crow society all helped brand the South as “other” – that is, part of America, but not really American. Southern food was a novelty in the North and West – not an everyday staple. This is a dichotomy that persists even today. For instance, we have many Southern restaurants, but few New England restaurants. Most of New England’s foodways are simply presented as “American.”

As American as New England

Colonial revivals in the 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s all helped reinforce New England foodways as “American,” even as cognizance of the decline of other regional foodways helped spur attempted revivals in the 1930s and 1970s-90s. By the time of the Second World War, “American” food had become pretty firmly entrenched, and it was largely derived from New England foodways. Roast beef and pot roast, roasted turkey and chicken pot pie, mashed potatoes and gravy, mashed turnips, creamed onions, baked beans and succotash, Harvard Beets, cranberry anything, apple and pumpkin pie, gingerbread cake and molasses cookies, Boston brown bread and Parker House rolls – these foods all have their roots in New England Yankee foodways.

Today, the popularity of many of these foods has waned. But the New England influence lingers on in pumpkin spice lattes and plaid scarves in 90-degree weather, in pumpkin patches and U-pick apple orchards across the country, and in Halloween and Thanksgiving traditions totally divorced from local food conditions.

Someday I hope we’ll be more realistic about both local conditions and the White supremacy behind a lot of these “traditions.” The United States is an incredibly diverse place. And while “American” food is starting to change, we’re not quite there yet. I look forward to seeing where it goes next.

Bibliography & Further Reading

“Eugenicists Shaped the Pathologized Way Many Americans Think About Nutrition Today” by Anjali Prastertong for Well + Good, 2023.

“Are Nutrition Science and Nutritional Guidelines Racist?” by Sarah Wassberg Johnson, The Food Historian blog, 2023.

“Institutional Racism and New England’s Food” by Meg Muckenhoupt, NYU Press Blog, 2020.

Food on the Page: Cookbooks and American Culture by Megan J. Elias (2017).

Modern Food, Moral Food: Self-Control, Science, and the Rise of Modern American Eating in the Early Twentieth Century by Helen Zoe Veit (2015)

How the Other Half Ate: A History of Working Class Meals at the Turn of the Century by Katherine Leonard Turner (2014).

Linoleum, Better Babies, and the Modern Farm Woman, 1890-1930 by Marilyn Irvin Holt (2006).

97 Orchard Street, New York: Stories of Immigrant Life by Linda Granfield (2001).

Note: Friends, if I’ve seemed quiet lately it's because once again I've been having issues with posting articles to Substack. This has sat in drafts for weeks, frozen. I'm now scheduling it from my phone (the only way to access it), and minus most of the links I'd hoped to include. So I hope you'll accept my apologies! If anyone has a contact for Substack please let me know. This issue has been persisting across machines, browsers, and IP addresses. Thank you and hope you enjoyed the read!