American food in 1832

As reported by Frances Trollope (the mother of novelist Anthony Trollope), from Domestic Manners of the Americans:

They consume an extraordinary quantity of bacon. Ham and beefsteaks appear morning, noon, and night. In eating, they mix things together with the strangest incongruity imaginable. I have seen eggs and oysters eaten together; the sempiternal ham with applesauce, beefsteak with stewed peaches, and salt fish with onions. The bread is everywhere excellent, but they rarely enjoy it themselves, as they insist upon eating horrible half-baked hot rolls both morning and evening...

They seldom indulge in second courses, with all their ingenious temptations to the eating a second dinner, but almost every table has its dessert (invariably pronounced “desart”) which is placed on the table before the cloth is removed and consists of pastry, preserved fruits, and creams. They are “extravagantly fond,” to use their own phrase, of puddings, pies, and all kinds of “sweets,” particularly the ladies; but are by no means such connoisseurs in soups and ragouts as the gastronomes of Europe. Almost everyone drinks water at table, and by a strange contradiction, in the country where hard drinking is more prevalent than in any other, there is less wine taken at dinner; ladies rarely exceed one glass, and the great majority of females never take any...

Their large evening parties are supremely dull; the men sometimes play cards by themselves, but if a lady plays, it must not be for money; no écarté, no chess; very little music, and that little lamentably bad. Among the blacks, I heard some good voices, singing in tune, but I scarcely ever heard a white American, male or female, go through an air without being out of tune before the end of it...

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