Part 3 in a special series on the Pilgrim Breakfast

Lifelong Plymouthean and historian James W. Baker shared the following memories of the Pilgrim Breakfasts he attended in the 1950s-60s. His mother, Jane Cooper Baker (1908-1998), was a descendant of Sgt. William Harlow and an active Antiquarian. 

Recollections inevitably fade and commingle after 60 years, but I do have some surviving impressions. The breakfasts I attended from the early-1950s to about 1967 were not unlike those we have now, but details differ. The shaky card tables and venerable wooden folding chairs out under the great shady elm tree (now long gone) were arranged around the well box (ditto) and garden beds. Some guests were served in the house (not just when wet out) where fishcakes were on occasion fried in the fireplace. The rest of the operation was out of the old woodshed – I recall the excitement when the 1939 “kitchen” was modernized in 1967 – from which servers brought the baked beans, cornbread, “gems”, standard doughnuts and homemade relishes or ketchup in those very sturdy custard cups. Cranberry juice or water was served in rather small waxed paper “Dixie Cups” and of course, coffee. I do not remember any eggs, although they may have been served then. All of this for $1.25 – a tenth of today’s post-inflationary cost.

My mother was involved at various levels, from chairman of the Breakfast committee to organizer of the “tussie-mussies” which involved scrounging in other people’s gardens such as Mrs. Cyrus (Edith) Jones’ down Howes Lane, for example, pinning the tiny bouquets and ribbons together and delivering them to their young distributors in pans of water. Still, it all blends together into a hazy idyllic summer scene from those far-off days to the tune of locusts and the smell of crushed lemon balm leaves.

Report of Jane Baker, chairman of the Harlow House committee, November 5, 1959

“We have made two innovations to our breakfasts [July & Sept]. One is to post the menu at the gate so that unsuspecting tourists may be forewarned as I have met those for whom baked beans and fish cakes were just too great a challenge to their digestions. We have also added cranberry juice to the menu and it has been poured by our president at a table just outside the Harlow House door and at the entrance of the garden…I would like to mention here that the July Breakfast was directly preceded by the holiday which made it impossible for Mrs. Dunham to make her usual arrangements for ordering the food. Mr. Dunham, who is supervisory cook at the County Farm offered to prepare the beans and fish cakes from their kitchens, a great courtesy and convenience.”

Curious about the “gems” Jim mentions above? We’re pleased to share this description and recipe from The Plimoth Colony Cook Book (originally published in 1957). This book is available to purchase in our online gift shop.

Gems for Breakfast
Gem pans were heavy cast-iron pans with rather shallow oblong divisions with rounded bottoms. A gem was rather like a small oblong popover. Sometimes they were made with rye flour instead of white flour. Gem pans were introduced to Plymouth kitchens about 100 years ago [ca. 1850s]. They may still be found in antique shops. Home tinkerers like to keep nails in them.

Plymouth Gems
2 cups flour
1 cup milk
1 cup water
pinch salt

Mix all ingredients, beat well; pour into well-heated greased gem pans, and bake in a hot oven (400 F.) about 20 minutes. Eat immediately. Popover pans may be used, if desired. Fill pans only about 2/3 full.

Part 2 in a special series on the Pilgrim Breakfast

In 1957 the Plymouth Antiquarian Society published The Plimoth Colony Cook Book. It featured “receipts” used in Plymouth from the colonial period to the end of the 19^th century. Antiquarians Elizabeth St. John Bruce and Edith Stinson Jones collected the recipes, preserving culinary methods and traditions passed down in local families for generations. Their meticulous documentation and faithful recreation using period tools provided the foundation for cooking demonstrations at the Harlow House.

The first pages of the cookbook feature recipes served to guests at the Pilgrim Breakfast. Recognizing that not everyone had access to a brick oven, the Antiquarians modernized the recipes for this publication.

Interested in recreating the Pilgrim Breakfast at home? Download our recipe sheet here.

Harlow House Mulled Cider

3 quarts cider
1 ½ teaspoons cinnamon
ginger, if liked
¾ teaspoon cloves
1/3 teaspoon nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon salt

Add the spices and salt to the heated cider and simmer 10 to 15 minutes. Makes 24 punch cup servings.

Harlow House Doughnuts

often called “Wonders”
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon butter, melted
flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon salt

Beat sugar, eggs, and milk together, add butter. Sift 3 cups flour with rest of ingredients, add to first mixture and stir until smooth. Add more flour, if necessary, to make a soft dough. Chill dough overnight. Roll out on floured board and cut with doughnut cutter. Fry in fat hot enough to brown a 1-inch cube of bread in 40 seconds (375 F.). As doughnuts rise to top, turn and brown on other side. Remove, drain on absorbent paper.

Harlow House Baked Beans

2 pounds pea beans
1 onion
2 teaspoons mustard
½ cup molasses
½ teaspoon salt
3/8 pound salt pork

Pick over, wash, and soak the beans overnight. In the morning, drain, rinse, and cover with cold water, bring to a boil and cook until the beans can be pierced with a pin. Drain, put in bean pot with an onion in the bottom. Add mustard, molasses, and salt. Scrape and score the pork and bury it in the beans so that only the top shows. Cover with water and bake in a slow oven (300 F.) about 6 hours, adding water as needed. Uncover the pot for the last hour to brown the pork. 6-8 servings.

Harlow House Fish Cakes

4 cups potatoes, cut in 1-inch cubes
1 cup salt fish, picked and shredded
2 eggs, slightly beaten

Boil together potatoes and fish until potatoes are tender. Drain, mash, and beat in eggs. Drop by spoonfuls in hot fat, (390 F.) and fry for 1 minute. Drain on absorbent paper. 6-8 servings.

Part 1 in a special series on the Pilgrim Breakfast

The founders of the Plymouth Antiquarian Society sought to preserve not just the buildings and objects of the past, but also the traditions and skills of everyday domestic life. The Harlow Old Fort House, purchased in 1920, became their primary venue for practicing and teaching the household industries of colonial New England. A focus on open-hearth cooking led the Antiquarians to host food-related events for the public.

The earliest recorded Pilgrim Breakfast at the Harlow Old Fort House was in 1933. That year’s annual report on the Society’s activities included a very brief mention of this special event: “A delightful old fashioned Sunday morning breakfast was served at the Harlow House Oct 1st, after which the house was closed for the season.”

The Breakfast became a fixture in the Antiquarian Society’s annual calendar. By 1949 the Antiquarians established a schedule of holding two Breakfasts each year, on the Sundays closest to July 4^th and Labor Day. PAS members prepared the meal, which costumed volunteers served to the public both inside and outside the historic house. The menu from the beginning featured fishcakes (or “fishballs”), baked beans, and cornbread.

Rose T. Briggs, who served as the Assistant to the Society’s Directors, used the Breakfast as an opportunity to showcase the traditional crafts that the Antiquarians demonstrated throughout the year at the Harlow House. Their innovative course for adults, “Household Arts of the 17^th Century”, drew national attention. Held every July between 1935 and 1941, it featured hands-on lessons on preparing flax and wool, spinning, dyeing, weaving, candle making, and open-hearth cooking, supplemented by lectures on architecture, furniture, clothing, and by trips to other historic houses and museums.

The Pilgrim Breakfast was a family affair; the children of Antiquarian Society members were recruited at an early age to dress in costume, sell “tussie mussies” (small bouquets), and serve the guests. In the 1930s and 40s PAS member Souther Barnes and his siblings (Brooks, Mercy, Parker, and Philip Jr.) would help their mother, Mercie Hatch Barnes (1899-1992), cook inside the Harlow House. “I kept the fire going and she cooked the fishballs, which are like the fishcakes they serve today. She fried them by the spoonful in hot fat. That fire was so hot her face would be beet red,” Souther recalled in an interview with the Old Colony Memorial in 2019.