[Heroic music] [Walter] Despite its small size, Delaware played a gigantic role in American history.

Like a tiny but mighty spark that ignites a roaring flame, Delaware's impact on American culture and politics cannot be understated.

From the early days of the Dutch and the Swedish settlements in the 17th century, to the crucial battles of the Revolutionary War, Delaware has always been at the forefront of American history.

And what better way to connect with Delaware's heritage than through its food?

So come with us as we cook up some delicious recipes and discover the many ways the first state has left its mark on American history.

All this for A Taste of History.

[Narrator] This program is made possible by.

Pasture-raised Australian beef and lamb, adding variety into your weekly meals or unique touch for your next celebration.

Widely available at your local market.

For recipes and more, we're at aussiebeefandlamb.com [Piano music] [Mike] The New Castle Historical Society, we started as an organization to save the building that's right behind me, the Amstel House.

This was the home of a man named Nicholas Van Dyke, who was governor of Delaware during the Revolution.

Another house called the Dutch House, where we talk about New Castle's earliest period.

Then we have another building called the Old Library Museum, where we do changing exhibits on New Castle history.

Really, the whole town of New Castle is a living museum, so it's a fantastic place to work, a fantastic place to visit.

[Fire burning] [Karen] Chef Staib, welcome.

We're so excited to have you here at the Amstel House today.

I hope you're going to enjoy spending some time cooking period recipes from the 18th century and 17th century.

[Walter] Karen, it's my honor to be here.

I'm always enamored with anybody that does such a great job on restoring buildings as such and also your entire town, it's like me just walking back to the 18th century.

[Karen] Our cooking will represent all three of the countries that were in charge of New Castle at one time or anothe [Walter] Karen, see what it says here?

[Karen] A Taste of History!

[Walter] That's what we are all about.

[Karen] Let's do it, Chef.

So our first recipe up is our 'Scollop Tomatos' from Mary Randolph.

[Walter] Honestly, I love tomatoes in any form I can get my hands on it.

[Karen] We didn't use them initially because people were getting sick after eating them and they thought that it was the tomato when in fact, it was really a reaction of the acid to the lead, either in the pewter or the glaze from redware.

[Walter] For sure the pewter because it oxidizes really quick absolutely.

You know, I used to run a big restaurant in Philadelphia and we served everything that pewter.

And the one thing we did not serve on pewter was our sliced tomatoes.

[Karen] So people stayed away from tomatoes for a while but you were explaining to me how they were encouraged to try them.

[Walter] Well, our president at the time, Thomas Jefferson, made sure that he served tomatoes all the time in the White House.

And then afterwards, obviously, in Monticello.

So you're right, there was a misunderstanding.

And it's just was a strange vegetable at the time.

What would be America without tomatoes?

We would have no pizza!

[Karen] We would not have any pizza.

We wouldn't have any BLT's, we wouldn't have all of our favorite things.

And we're just going to kind of layer them up.

[Walter] It's some beautiful tomatoes.

[Karen] Each layer then will get a layer of seasoning, salt and pepper, bread crumbs.

[Walter] Nothing would ever be wasted.

So obviously, any bread that got stale, they would make it into breadcrumbs.

[Karen] It was very labor intensive in the kitchen.

[Walter] Matter of fact, in Monticello, you had the kitchen help literally sleeping on top of flour bags right next to the kitchen so they could maintain the temperature of the oven.

So there may have been 15 or 20 different courses times three.

So think about the amount of prep work, the amount of detail that has to happen.

[Karen] And then a little bit of, or a lot of butter.

[Laughing] [Walter] You know what's also good about this dish here?

It's a nice vegetarian dish.

Delicious eating.

[Karen] It absolutely is.

[Walter] In the 18th century, there was a lot of vegetarian.

Not by design, why?

Because protein was sometimes difficult to get.

So meat may be eaten once in a household a week, and the rest was all vegetarian.

[Karen] I think that we are about to set here.

- Yep.

[Walter] Now just would have been a side dish that would have been served with many other dishes, but it's very, very simple.

Here, what Karen is doing she's preparing a dutchie, with a griddle in there, and she's going to put it in the dutchie and on the fire it goes.

[Karen] Maybe 40 minutes, 45.

[Walter] If you had a working beehive, it could go now in the beehive.

[Sounds of the ocean] [Narrator] The Dutch were the first European nation to establish a settlement in the Delaware Valley in 1614, which they eventually named New Netherland.

Originally home to the native Lenni-Lenape tribes, this colony's primary purpose was to control trade and commerce along the river, particularly in beaver pelts, which were used to make highly fashionable hats in Europe at the time.

However, the Dutch weren't the only European power interested in the region.

[Walter] In 1638, the Swedish established their own colony right here in present day Wilmington, Delaware.

And called it New Sweden.

[Mike] The Swedes and the Dutch, they both believed that they had rights to this area.

One of the things that caused a boiling point, so to speak, was the Dutch decided to establish Fort Casimir in 1651, right here where New Castle is today.

Just a little bit south of Wilmington.

Ships that were coming upriver would reach Fort Casimir first.

So that put the Dutch squarely in control of traffic along the Delaware River.

[Narrator] The Dutch eventually conquered New Sweden and governed the area for the next decade until 1664, when the British seized control.

[Mike] A little less than 20 years later, another Englishman shows up on the scene.

His name is William Penn.

I almost think that at that point, people that were living in the area would wake up on the morning and say, okay, who's in control now?

Is it the Dutch?

Is that the Swedes?

Is the English?

In 1682, when Penn arrived here, what is now today, the state of Delaware was originally part of the colony of Pennsylvania, and we were just referred to at that point as the three lower counties on Delaware.

[Flutes playing] [Narrator] The next century was marked by shifting alliances and political landscapes as the American Revolution began With independence on the minds of all of the British colonies.

A delegate from Delaware named Thomas McKean had been working behind the scenes to rally support for not only breaking away from British rule, but also for creating an independent state separate from Pennsylvania.

On June 13th, 1776, the Delaware Colonial Assembly met at the New Castle courthouse and unanimously voted in favor of separation.

[Tapping the wood floor] [Mke] So from 1776, the war continues until 1783.

At that point the original colonies, now states, they all have to make decisions on whether or not they're willing to work under this new national governing law.

Geographically, places like Virginia and Pennsylvania are much larger in space.

If you're basing your representation on population.

Delaware is at a disadvantage.

But the Constitution evened that out a little bit for them, and that's what they were interested in.

[Narrator] On December 7th, 1787, a modest tavern named the Golden Fleece served as the hallowed ground where a select group of 30 elected delegates congregated and officially ratified the U.S. Constitution, marking the beginning of a new era in governance and democracy and cementing Delaware's place in American history as the first state.

And it has been celebrated for its role in shaping the nation ever since.

[Orchestra music] [Walter] Spicy corn relish is one of my favorite dishes.

Why?

[Karen] Well, you created it!

[Walter] No, no!

It's not just because of that.

Just envision months and months and months of nothing fresh and no color.

Spicy corn relish, it's so visually appealing between, you know, scalloped tomatoes that are cooking right now, the corn relish I thought was a perfect complement.

What we're going to do, we're going to bring this corn over.

You boiled it for me, it's sitting right there.

I'll strain it up over here.

I'm from Germany as you know.

And the only way that I knew corn would be the little tiny corn cappets that are marinated.

[Karen] Oh, my goodness.

- We don't eat corn.

[Walter] Corn is to feed the chickens and the animals.

Until much later when I came to this country, and I saw corn meal and different recipes with corn.

Now you're going to put the corn right in there.

Onion, you got a little bit of pepper green, a little bit of red.

So now we're going to make a little mix here of that.

A little bit of thyme.

You could do me a favor on that, just pull it and throw it right in there.

So we've got some chive here.

This smell is wonderful, we've got the thyme going and the chives.

[Walter] All right.

Next one over here.

Now we've got a green onion.

[Chopping] I don't need it all, just about like that.

It takes plenty of salt because the corn itself doesn't have any much salt in there.

Pepper, spicy pepper, cumin.

I'm pouring a little extra virgin olive oil in there.

And then you have the rice wine vinegar.

I recommend you put it in your refrigerator for about a half an hour, because what happens is the corn has a tendency to absorb all that.

The only thing it gets.

- Cilantro.

[Walter] For the final flavor.

Oh, yeah.

[Karen] It is absolutely stunning.

[Laughing] [Karen] Awesome.

[Walter] But honestly, let it sit for half hour and then retest it.

[Karen] Okay.

Chef, I think we better check our tomatoes.

[Walter] Oh, yeah.

Perfect.

Two dishes down, two to go.

Let's put this there.

Let's put this one over here.

You did a good job.

Perfect portion.

[Karen] If I'm not mistaken.

[Walter] Yep, you got it.

- Right in the center.

[Walter] Did your homework.

[Orchestra music] [Walter] Oh.

Oh.

To die for, the butter the flavor of the tomato.

And look how simple and how beautiful.

Because you know what?

Less is always better.

Now, try this with a little bit of of corn relish.

[Karen] This, I can't wait to dig into.

[Walter] Oh.

Oh, I can't believe it.

Oh, a marriage made in heaven those two together.

[Upbeat music] [Walter] I'm visiting the Copeland Maritime Center in Wilmington, Delaware, where they have a full scale replica of the Kalmar Nyckel, a historic ship that played such a crucial role in the early history of Delaware and United States.

[Sam] Walter, welcome to the Kalmar Nyckel Foundation and the Copeland Maritime Center.

[Walter] Sam, I'm honored to be here and to experience this unbelievable place.

The Kalmar Nyckel was central to the history of Sweden, and also what would become the state of Delaware.

It was chosen by the New Sweden company and the chancellor of Sweden to be the flagship to launch this new colony all the way across the Atlantic in North America.

First there were Swedes, then the Dutch, and then the British correct?

[Sam] Yes, well, actually, the Dutch were here first, but they didn't put a permanent settlement.

So the Swedes had the first permanent settlement called Fort Christina.

It was a trading fort put right here 200 yards upstream.

And it was the first permanent European settlement in the entire Delaware Valley.

So the first log cabins in American history on American soil were built by the Swedes and the Finns in Fort Christina n 1638.

Peter Minuit, the commander of the expedition, had been here before.

He was the one that had been the director of the New Netherland Colony, knew all the strategic reasons that this might be a great place to start a new colony for the international fur trade that would compete with the Dutch and the English.

And then knew that the Dutch, they had perfected their claims in New Amsterdam and the Hudson, what they called the North River, but not here in the South River, that they hadn't gotten around to purchasing the land from the native Lenape.

So he used that insider knowledge to come in, set up shop, set up a new colony, and make the purchase treaties with the various Lenape tribes.

[Walter] Fort Christina was relatively short-lived too right?

[Sam] It survived the Dutch takeover in 1655 and it surrendered peacefully.

[Walter] No bloodshed?

- No bloodshed.

[Sam] It was a peaceful surrender.

But they also negotiated favorable terms that allowed the Swedes to remain and keep their property and their farms and their homes.

And many of the Swedes stayed in the Delaware Valley and they were here and they were part of the revolutionary generation.

One of the signers of the Declaration was a Swedish immigrant.

The Swedish colony reminds us the multicultural, multinational effort on the North American seaboard.

That's one element of the story that we can get across in ways that Plymouth or Jamestown can't [Acoustic guitar strumming] [Karen] So our next recipe is going to be To Stew Codfish.

And we've brought Erica in to help us out here because we've got a couple of different things going in its preparation.

This is a Dutch recipe.

Very few ingredients, but all put together comes out to be a very lovely dish.

One of the things that it uses is Rusk.

Rusk is a very, very hard [Tapping on wood] ship biscuit, basically.

[Walter] So it's like a relative of the hardtack.

[Karen] Yes, exactly.

[Walter] You know what's really interesting, there are two components that were expensive already then, lemon and mace, because mace is the outer emblem of the nutmeg that gets dried and then gets ground like what you have there.

It's used a lot in baking, but honestly, me, I have never seen it with cod so it's going to be very interesting.

[Karen] In the recipe it says, take thick slices.

How do you think we should set this up?

[Walter] Okay, as a Chef for many, many years, I would not slice it.

I would fold it over.

Cod is so delicate that if you cut it it's going to fall apart.

It's a very flakey fish.

Very tasty, but very flaky.

So I would do it like that.

Me, my recommendation would be, put the seasoning on the inside.

A little salt.

Here I go.

Okay.

Salt, pepper and a very precious mace, which is like very-- I can hardly wait for you to cook that, because it's going to be a very, very interesting flavor profile that the mace will give.

So then I would just take, like so.

[Tapping the dutchie] There we go, yeah.

[Karen] So Erica is going to get started by getting that rusk all crumbled down for us.

[Crumbling bread] [Walter] So do the same thing one more time here.

The skin part on the inside it holds together.

Salt, black pepper, and the mace.

You could use any kind of fish.

Most likely for me, I would recommend, the firmer the fish, the easier to get it out later.

And now comes the water.

[Karen] Water.

That's good.

And then our rusk.

And then we're going to get our coal set.

[Walter] And there we go.

That's what makes it nice because the heat on the top will make the rusk a little more crispy even.

[Karen] Mhmm.

[Walter] Cooking it the old fashioned way, it be more like 20 minutes or thereabouts.

If you would do it in a modern oven at maybe four and a quarter, 8 minutes.

[Soft piano music] [Walter] Wow!

And the flavor.

Look at that.

It's done when you're able to penetrate all the way through and it comes out off with ease.

There you go.

The addition of the citrus from the lemon obviously will take this right over the top.

No question about it.

I've never done this dish, or cooked with mace.

Let's see here.

I've never had this flavor and I've been cooking for many, many years.

It's very unique.

[Karen] And it's buttery.

[Walter] I mean, I learned something today, seriously, in New Castle I really did.

This is a hell of a great dish.

It shows you that after all the years I've been cooking, I always find something new, like today.

And God knows I had to find it right here, in New Castle, Delaware.

Think about it.

[Karen] Thank you, chef.

[Energetic orchestra music] [Walter] The journey across the Atlantic was a treacherous one, with passengers facing a host of dangers.

Surviving the journey required not only physical endurance, but a range of specialized tools and skills and a sturdy ship.

[Energetic orchestra music] [Walter] Captain.

[Lauren] Hi, welcome aboard, Chef.

Welcome to the Kalmar Nyckel.

My name's Captain Lauren and it's great to have you here today.

[Walter] What does it feel like, first of all, to be able to sail that treasure?

And what are the challenges for you?

[Lauren] So we have so many more resources available to us now.

Good weather forecasting, electronic navigation.

But operating a ship like this still requires an incredible amount of manpower with a significant amount of training and teamwork.

It's a lot of time and effort and dedication to make that work.

So I know about cooking, but I surely don't know how to operate a beautiful ship like that.

[Lauren] I am not much of a cook but I do know how to navigate.

[Laughing] [Lauren] In the 17th century to estimate how far you had traveled across the ocean.

We use this device.

It's called a chip log.

If you would like to be the ocean.

Yeah.

Okay.

I'm going to throw the chip into the ocean.

We turn the timer, and for 6 seconds, this string runs out, the timer runs out, and we say stop.

And we grab the string.

And then as we pull it back aboard, there are little knots tied in the twine.

And we count them.

So each of those knots represents a nautical mile per hour of the ship's speed.

If you're going four knots and you've been doing that for one hour, you know that you've gone four nautical miles.

But the origin of that term is from these knots that are in this twine.

- That's really interesting.

[Lauren] The other half of the game, of course, is the compass.

So if you know how far you've gone, that's helpful.

But you also need to know which direction you're going.

[Walter] I can't even drive to the store without using the GPS and look at them.

They're out there in the big old ocean.

When you look around, all you see is water.

There is no way to see anything.

There's no landmarks.

- Yeah, exactly.

[Lauren] This is a magnetic compass, somewhat more modern than the one they would have had back then.

But the concept is also ancient, right?

Even the Greeks had lodestone or magnet compasses.

The compass points toward the North magnetic pole.

Every half hour when they streamed the chip log, they would also make note of which direction they had been steering.

What they could do is take one of these pegs.

Even in the first half hour, using the inner ring, they put a peg in the direction that the ship had been sailing.

So maybe it was Southwest.

And then in the second half hour, a little bit of a wind shift and they were going maybe a point more south than before.

At the end of eight of those half hours, the four hour watch, the officer could take all this information and transfer it into the log book.

[Walter] I see a lot of new things but today you actually wowed me.

[Lauren] Thank you so much for coming, Chef, and come back anytime.

[Soft piano music] [Karen] So our last recipe for today, Chef, is macaroons.

It's a recipe from Hannah Glasse And they're just as delicious today as they were back then.

[Walter] So did you ever cook anything inexpensive here?

I see almonds, I see eggs, I see sugar.

All this stuff was relatively expensive for the time.

[Karen] And just like our last recipe with the spices, the mace and the lemon, we are able yes, to use all of these foodstuffs because it was an upper class Gentile household.

And so this would have been expected in a household like this.

So this is what you're going to see right out of the shell.

And then they would have to be blanched and dried and chopped.

The first thing we're going to do, Erica is going to separate three eggs and start whipping whites.

So the egg white is going to make it to puff up.

And after it is baked, it gives it that chewy consistency.

And then you have the crunch from the ground almond and it's just a mouthful of sweet, chewy goodness.

[Walter] There's lots of natural fat in the almond that comes out.

So basically, your egg white is a natural binder that combines it all together.

If you wouldn't have that it'd never stick together.

[Karen] All we have to do really for this recipe is to mix up our almonds, equal weight of sugar.

[Walter] Oh, gosh!

[Karen chuckling] [Karen] It just has to come together.

The sugar starts to melt down a little bit, breaks things down.

So you have a nice thick paste.

And then all we do is form them onto mounds on our tin.

We're going to only use one or two here because they tend to get very puffed up in the oven.

[Walter] For the people that watch it at home, they're going to say, this is a macaroon?

What has she been drinking today?

That's what they look like until much later when the macaroon became smaller and more fluffy.

So now I have to get our last oven together and ready to go.

[Walter] How much time on that?

[Karen] In a regular oven it's 10 minutes.

They're done.

[Piano music] [Walter] Wow!

You're fantastic.

I mean, look at that.

[Karen] They're wonderful aren't they?

[Walter] You know what it tells me?

Eat me.

[Karen] Yes.

Well, I have some for you.

Check it out.

[Walter] Oh, golly.

You're an artist.

Let's try some macaroons.

Let me bite in there.

I have my eye on it.

[Crunch] Mhmmm.

One of Hannah Glasse's.

better recipes, no question about it.

[Karen] Agreed.

[Walter] I don't want to know how many calories are in there, not important, or how much it costs.

But it's beautiful.

[Energetic strings] Obviously, Delaware has changed over time.

What hasn't changed, their commitment to a cuisine like I experienced today with those two lovely ladies, really digging deep to the recipe vocabulary of the 18th century.

All this for A Taste of History!

[Narrator] This program is made possible by.

Pasture-raised Australian beef and lamb, adding variety into your weekly meals or unique touch for your next celebration.

Widely available at your local market.

For recipes and more, we're at aussiebeefandlamb.com Viewers can find DVD's and cookbooks at atasteofhistory.org including the all new A Taste of History Cookbook, complete with step by step instructions of recipes seen on the show.

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