Enhance your dish's flavors by adding the right cheese!
Early pioneers venturing West undertook long, arduous journeys. Life on the wagon trail wasn't easy, and food played a big role in both nourishing settlers and boosting their morale. Some of the food staples available back home could not be taken on the journey, and many ingredients weren't available in the wilderness of the West, but these men and women were extremely creative and highly adaptable.
Pioneers created new recipes tailored to their resources using local ingredients. In this gallery, you'll get a glimpse of what their diets looked like. Curious? Click on and find out what pioneers ate in the Old West.
Skunks were abundant across the US, so they were easy enough to catch and a good source of protein for the early pioneers.
In case you're wondering, the scent glands were removed before cooking!
You wouldn't find Jell-O on the American frontier, but you could make yourself some calf's foot jelly for dessert! The jelly was made from calves' feet (without the hooves, of course), sugar, eggs, lemon, and spices.
Some recipes called for white wine, egg whites, and even crushed egg shells to be added to the boiled feet.
Pioneers couldn't just stop by a Starbucks and enjoy a cup of joe while traveling West. In fact, real coffee was not abundant in the pioneers' provisions, so they came up with alternatives. One of them was sweet potato coffee.
Sweet potato coffee was made by cooking the potatoes, then making a patty with rye flour. The mixture was then dried and grounded into powder and added to hot water for a flavored hot beverage.
Despite the name, Rocky Mountain oysters, also known as prairie oysters, are not oysters at all. Instead, they are deep-fried calf/bull testicles.
This Old West delicacy was often cooked by cowboys on the spot. Though not as popular as they were back then, they're still available today.
Beef tea was made by boiling strips of salted beef for one hour or more. You can call it a broth, if you will.
The use of beef tea dates back to the 1700s. It was recommended as a supplement. Chicken, lamb, and vegetables were sometimes used instead of beef.
What do you do when you want to make a nice lemon pie but don't have the ingredients you'd find back home? You use native plants instead. In this case, a flowering plant from the buckwheat family called sheep sorrel.
Pioneers would use shredded sheep sorrel leaves instead of lemon. Thankfully, sheep sorrel pie doesn't contain any sheep.
Despite the name, head cheese is not an actual cheese. This European dish is basically meat jelly, also known as cold cut terrine, or brawn in the UK.
The dish is traditionally made from meat from the head of an animal. The pioneers were true to the name and used bear head.
In the absence of lemons and apples in the Old West, pioneers made use of apple cider vinegar to mimic those flavors.
Apple cider vinegar would give pies the tartness pioneers were craving. From the wagon trail to the world, vinegar pie is still made to this day.
Pioneers were very creative when it came to substituting popular ingredients. In the absence of regular wheat flour, grounded acorns would be used to make bread.
The acorns would be roasted before being grounded, which helped remove their bitterness, and then mixed with the other ingredients to make bread.
Jackrabbit were abundant in the West. These were easy to catch and cook, making them a good source of protein for early settlers.
However, jackrabbit meat is very lean. The absence of fat and other macronutrients in the pioneers' diets would sometimes lead to "rabbit poisoning" or "rabbit starvation," also known as "protein poisoning."
It goes without saying, there were no ovens on wagon trails, so frying pans were used instead to cook bread and biscuits.
Frying pan bread, also known as bannock, was a dense bread made with wholemeal flour.
Fresh meat was a staple in early pioneers' diet. Settlers would hunt along the journey, and when no larger animals were available, squirrels would do.
Hunters would break the bark underneath the branches where squirrels were found, so they'd fall and become easier to catch.
Pioneers would cook dried meat with milk, butter, and flour, to make this dish. The mixture would then be served on toast.
The dish is still eaten to this day. It's also known as chipped beef.
This cowboy food staple goes a long way back! It was a favorite among early settlers.
Sources: (Ranker) (Weird History) (Off The Grid News) (Livestrong) (Live Science)
Weird foods pioneers ate in the Old West
Have you ever tried sweet potato coffee?
FOOD Diet
Early pioneers venturing West undertook long, arduous journeys. Life on the wagon trail wasn't easy, and food played a big role in both nourishing settlers and boosting their morale. Some of the food staples available back home could not be taken on the journey, and many ingredients weren't available in the wilderness of the West, but these men and women were extremely creative and highly adaptable.
Pioneers created new recipes tailored to their resources using local ingredients. In this gallery, you'll get a glimpse of what their diets looked like. Curious? Click on and find out what pioneers ate in the Old West.