Literary Eats #3: Little House on the Prairie

Food features heavily in this story of a little girl growing up as a pioneer in nineteenth-century America. In this, the second book in the series, the Ingalls family makes a trip from Wisconsin to the prairie of Kansas, builds a log cabin and starts a little farm, until they have to move on after hearing that the land they are living on is not legal to be settled after all.

            The ever-resourceful Pa brings home plenty of game – mostly prairie rabbits and fowl – and they have corn meal, sometimes fried in little cakes or made into mush (presumably like polenta), and beans (bean porridge with salt pork is one of Laura’s favourite dishes). But apart from that, no vegetables are mentioned. Of course, this is before the ‘invention’ of vitamins, but you do wonder how they, and families like them, got vitamin C. There’s no description of foraging for wild greens, which presumably they could hardly do on grassland anyway. No fruit or vegetables are mentioned, except for blackberries, and the fateful watermelon that a fellow settler has planted (which the family believes has given them malaria). It takes until the end of the book for them to plant a garden – with peas, beans, turnips and potatoes – and as soon as they do, they have to leave it behind. The pioneer cuisine detailed in the book is simple, repetitive and high on protein but low on vitamins and carbs. You can't have potatoes without a garden, or bake bread without an oven, and processed wheat goods like pasta are still far in the future. Neither does the book mention rice, which would be an ideal, compact staple for a pioneer family: but although it was grown in the Mississippi Valley in the nineteenth century, it didn't seem to be available - or perhaps just wasn't wanted - this far west.

            The luxury food of Laura’s childhood – treats the family has at Christmas – is bread and cake made with white flour, candy, and sweet potatoes. It’s interesting that with all the no doubt flavourful wild game, the more difficult to source complex carbohydrates are the real treats; and the opposite of today, when protein is usually considered the star of the meal, with carbs just the filling accompaniment.