Cuisine of New England

New England cuisine is an American cuisine which originated in the New England region of the United States. It is characterized by extensive use of seafood and dairy products, which results from its historical reliance on its seaports and fishing industry, as well as extensive dairy farming in inland regions. Many of New England's earliest Puritan settlers were from eastern England, where baking foods was more common than frying, such as pies, beans, and turkey, as was the tradition elsewhere. Two prominent characteristic foodstuffs native to New England are maple syrup and cranberries. The traditional standard starch is potato, though rice has a somewhat increased popularity in modern cooking. New England cuisine is known for limited use of spices aside from ground black pepper, although parsley and sage are common, with a few Caribbean additions such as nutmeg. Use of cream is common, due to the reliance on dairy. The favored cooking techniques are stewing, steaming, and baking.

Native American foods and cooking methods were adopted by early immigrants to New England, such as corn meal johnny cakes, oysters, succotash, and New England clam bakes, as were many staples of their diet, such as the nuts of the black walnut tree, the nuts of the shagbark hickory, popcorn, blueberries, blackberries, and beach plums. In England during this period, carrying weapons (especially guns) was forbidden to any but the upper classes. Upon reaching the New World, these Englishmen found themselves in a land where they could feast on venison from the white tailed deer and the Eastern moose and shoot pigeons for their meat, some of which were likely featured at the first Thanksgiving feast in 1621.

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