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Atlantic, is thought to reflect and have influenced the cooking of Dutch people in America.
    To Stuff a Capon or Hen with
Oysters and to Roast [Them]

    Take a good Capon cleaned on the inside then Oysters and some finely crushed Rusk, Pepper, Mace, Nutmeg-powder and a thin little slice or three fresh lemons, mix together, fill [the bird] with this. When it is roasted one uses for a sauce nothing but the fat from the pan. It is found to be good [that way].
    â€”DE VERSTANDIGE KOCK,
    1683 edition, translated by Peter G. Rose

    The settlers of New Netherlands tried to maintain their traditional Dutch cuisine. They domesticated cattle, to have beef, which had become popular in Holland after being imported from Denmark in the sixteenth century. With cattle came dairy products because the seventeenth-century Dutch loved butter and cheese. They distrusted milk, which turned too easily, and they recommended that after drinking milk the mouth should be rinsed with honey. They also raised pigs and chickens, the longtime standbys of Dutch cooking. They raised their livestock in the English style of smaller, easier-to-maintain animals, while back in Holland, the Dutch raised enormous cattle and pigs.
    The settlers also adopted the local habit of eating a great deal of wild game, an aristocrat’s meal in Holland. Analysis of bones from kitchen scraps shows that in the early years in both the Fort Orange area and New Amsterdam, a large proportion of the meat that was consumed was deer. This suggests that though they tried to eat like Dutchmen, they also took advantage, especially in the early years, of the bounteous products of their new Eden. Wheat, always in short supply in Holland and imported there, grew abundantly, and along with pelts was the chief export of the upper Hudson. The settlers became avid bakers, but the company, ever mindful of the wheat shortages in the homeland, became concerned that too much baking could diminish the wheat supply. The company declared it illegal to sell bread or cookies to Indians in Fort Orange. One man was fined because an Indian was seen leaving his house with a sugar bun.
    The Dutch of the seventeenth century were famous throughout Europe for their vegetables, and the early settlers of New Amsterdam quickly planted vegetable and herb gardens. Parsnips, carrots, and beets as well as lettuce and cabbage, and rosemary, chives, parsley, and tarragon became central to New Netherlands cooking. But a native influence was seen in the widespread use of corn, squash, and beans.
    The Dutch drank beer, regarding it as safer than milk or fresh water because the water was boiled in the brewing process. The people of New Netherlands, unlike the other American colonies, were not Puritans and they drank openly and heavily. One of the first American breweries was built in New Amsterdam on the north side of Bridge Street between today’s Whitehall and Broad streets.
    New Amsterdam’s first tavern, Stadt Herbergh, or City Tavern, was built in 1641. It was one of the finer buildings in the city, being two stories high with a view of the East River. It had a basement, which was unusual at the time, but was the forerunner of a long-standing New York tradition of basement food-and-drink establishments. In the nineteenth century, such underground eateries became associated with oysters and were known as oyster cellars.
    The north side of Pearl Street between Whitehall and Broad started to become noted for taverns that offered good meals, local beer, and oysters. The exotic local specialty was terrapin, unique among turtles because it lives in the same brackish tidal waters as the clams and oysters upon which it feeds. While this local specialty went on to be featured in elaborate wine-sauce recipes in the famous nineteenth-century New York restaurants, it was originally prepared in these first few taverns, cooked in the native American way, roasted whole over an open fire.
    Unlike the English of New England,