A New History of Food and Meals on the Upper St Lawrence Covers the Past 150 Years

[Editor's Note: How lucky are we? Not only do we have the opportunity to learn about this special collection of recipes, but the author is sharing the Who, What, Where, When and Why! Yes, very lucky indeed.]

Part 1: 1875-1925

After three and a half years researching the habits, preferences, and meal preparation on the River since 1875, my new book: Dinner on the River: 150 Years of Food and Meals in Thousand Island Park and the Upper St. Lawrence is now available. My research has caused me to reassess my assumptions about what was going on in kitchens and eating spaces along the St. Lawrence. For one thing, I surely have gained an unbounded respect for the ingenuity and determination of 19th and early 20th century cooks, who only had primitive ways to get a meal to the table. So much was done by hand—slicing, grating, chopping, mixing, whipping; one needed muscle!

By 1920, the typical cook still was spending six hours each day preparing food. Yet, added to those long hours was much love going into planning and cooking meals for the family every single day. That love was reflected in the care to serve a healthy meal that looked and tasted very good.

Recipes in the Victorian era were mostly passed orally from mother to daughter. A very few cookbooks appeared at the very end of the 19th century, but not many cooks here used them. I did find two commercially printed cookbooks dated 1886 and 1889 in local cottages. The earliest local cookbook – dated 1920 – was the forerunner of many over the 20th century compiled by members of women’s clubs to raise funds for a special project. Instructions were often skimpy, mostly listing ingredients, but often without mixing or cooking instructions.

Early stoves didn’t have temperature controls. Many were the pot-bellied type, fueled by coal or wood and used for space heating as well as cooking. The cook, wanting to roast a cut of meat, would lay a fire inside the stove, and would wait until her experience said it might be at the right temperature to insert a metal or cast-iron pan. Before putting the meat into the belly of the stove, the cook had two ways to test the temperature: either toss a small handful of flour into the stove and judge the speed of the flour turning black, or thrusting a hand and quickly pulling it back—if a blister began to form, it was still too hot for the pan with the meat to go in. This situation prevailed until the first purpose-made cooking stoves came onto the market in the early 20th century. But most on the St. Lawrence continued to use the stove already there for as long as possible.

Keeping food cold was equally challenging. The earliest ice boxes were simple wood boxes, lined with tin or zinc and cork, and used sawdust or straw as insulation. A pan in the bottom of the ice box caught drips, a shelf near the top held the food, and the rest of the box held a big piece of ice. Thousand Island Park had a two-story icehouse that held large slabs of ice cut from the River in the winter, hauled by horse-drawn sledges, and propelled to the second story via a lift, where the ice was stored from winter through summer, between layers of sawdust. When a customer needed ice, a carter was ready with a saw and large tongs to cut and move the ice block to the cottage.

What was lacking in efficiency in preparing a meal because of the equipment available was made up by efficiency in using leftovers. Leftover meat or chicken was diced, creamed, and presented in the center of a mold of another recipe. Cheese went into a sauce. Bread crusts that had been trimmed away for a delicate tea sandwich were dried, cut, and used as croutons. Rendered fat was saved and used for frying. Bones went into the stock pot, and eggshells were saved to clarify soup.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, ingredients available to the cook were the basics: beef, lamb, pork, wild fowl; fish from the River; eggs; products from the cow including milk, cream, butter, and cheese. The list also included locally gown vegetables in summer; fruits in season, especially berries in summer and apples in fall; milled grains and rice; molasses, maple syrup and sugar; powdered gelatins; and a few flavorings like vanilla.

Nevertheless, the cook knew how to vary the meal. It was a numbers game of sorts used: a few types of fish and a few cuts of meat, boil or fry or braise, half a dozen types of sauce to pour over or mix in, and the cook had twenty-five or thirty different dishes easily available to her.

The next part of the story of Food and Meals on the St. Lawrence—focusing on the remainder of the 20th century—will appear in the July 2025 issue. For more information about the book or to purchase it, please go to: thousandislandparklandmarksociety.org.

By Sandra Moore Rennie

Sandra Rennie summers in Thousand Island Park, where her husband’s family set down roots in the early 20th century. She has contributed to several anthologies on living well and is working on a book on her life in gardens. She started an early multi-disciplinary environmental consulting firm, served as a senior executive at the US Dept. of Energy in Washington, D.C. and for 20 years as a mediator of multi-party, high stakes environmental disputes around the US.