In 1994, I was the administrator of the newly renovated Packwood Home. Lauria Fubler, the chef, and I prepared a menu we felt the residents would be familiar with and therefore, enjoy.

On the first Sunday staff observed that certain residents were refusing the traditional Sunday codfish and potato breakfast. This was puzzling but when I asked for their names, I discovered they were all of the White residents.

We had just assumed everyone ate what we, as Black people, had grown up eating and quickly amended their Sunday breakfast choice.

In retrospect, these residents would have been born less than 70 years after the abolition of slavery and therefore, salted codfish would not have been a part of their diet. It had always been imported to feed the enslaved.

Recently, I mentioned this observation to my friend Venita Caesar-Smith who remembered that in the 1940s as a girl of about nine, she assisted in her grandfather’s grocery business on Cambridge Road in Somerset.

She recalled few White customers purchased cod fish and when they did, they waited until there were no other customers present. She also remembered two White customers who pre-ordered their groceries. They specifically requested codfish be wrapped in two different types of paper and placed at the very bottom of their bag.

Possibly, over 80 years ago, eating what the enslaved ate was frowned upon.

Bermuda did not receive slaves directly from Africa. They were transported here from other islands in the Caribbean and Native Americans from North America. The total population of Bermuda at Emancipation was estimated at 10,000. There were 3,000 Black and 600 Native American enslaved and 1,200 free Blacks.

Unlike the other islands in the Caribbean, we did not have large plantations but relied primarily on patches of land for food. Bermuda’s main focus was trade and commerce. It was through this trade that the enslaved were purchased from other islands and transported here.

We did not have the fertile land found on the other islands and our weather, with its high winds and salt spray, as well as land crabs and rats, hindered the growth of plants that flourished elsewhere. As a result, food for the enslaved often had to be imported.

From around 1678, Bermudian enslavers transported their slaves to the Turks and Caicos Islands to rake salt from naturally occurring salt ponds discovered there. The collection of salt took place in the winter months with the salt being transported back to Bermuda until the weather made it possible to trade in North America for corn, and various other commodities.

The salt trade boomed, because it was used as a preservative before refrigeration. Bermudian ships carrying salt, and other commodities were traded in North America, especially Newfoundland where salt was needed for preserving cod.

In return, salted cod was brought as cheap fodder for the enslaved because it did not spoil in our semitropical heat. For generations of the enslaved, salted cod became the main source of protein.

The vast majority of enslaved men were shipwrights, sailors, sailmakers, carpenters, masons, labourers and blacksmiths, while the women and children worked mainly in the houses and the fields.

Nellie Musson in her book, Mind the Onion Seed, describes a slave girl who had to run up and down the onion patch all day with a bird switch made of palmetto leaves tied to a stick to keep the birds from eating the young onion seedlings. She described being fed chicken guts for supper, cornmeal mush and leavings from the kitchen.

Slaves were fed whatever the enslaver discarded and this is probably why many of us continue to eat ox tails, cow foot, pig tails, tripe, tongue, chicken backs, chicken necks, chicken feet and chitterlings, which are the intestines of slaughtered pigs.

Older Bermudians recalled chitterlings taken to the seashore to be washed and cleaned. I still remember my mother cooking tripe, which is the lining of the pig or cow’s stomach and the sandwiches made with tongue.

Cyril Packwood, in his book, Chained on the Rock, describes the enslaved women going to the shore to do laundry and fish becoming entangled in the clothes thus providing the welcome change of fresh fish.

He also describes the excitement surrounding the capture of whales as they passed by Bermuda in the spring. He describes the meat as “sea beef” with the choice cuts coming from the head and shoulders. It was eaten fresh and like turtle meat was frequently salted.

Cedar trees produced an abundance of berries which ripen between September and December. These were eaten as fruit and fermented to make cedar berry beer.

Palmetto palms had holes drilled in the trunk to drain the sap to make an intoxicating drink called Bibby. Palmetto heads were eaten raw and when cooked, tasted like cabbage. Palmetto berries, mulberries, prickly pears, pawpaws, figs and scurvy grass found growing near the sea shore were all a part of the enslaved diet if, or when they were allowed to collect it.

The War of Independence in America from 1775 to 1783 caused great hardship to Bermuda. Trading was difficult and food in short supply. The enslaved suffered the most and many died.

Cyril Packwood wrote that, “White families raised enough food to feed themselves during this period, but the slaves who prepared and cooked the food did not always share in the eating”.

The Royal Gazette of 18 April 1801 reported dreadful weather conditions had destroyed the crops and the winds too high to fish. Fortunately, two weeks later, two large whales were caught and this revealed the seriousness of the island’s dependency on imported food.

Over 55 years ago, I began interviewing relatives and older Black Bermudians. They were of the generation not far from Emancipation in 1834.

For some reason, I was interested in what they ate for breakfast? The answer was a cooked cereal, either corn meal, oats or cream of wheat were always named. In later years they ate “Wheatena”, which became popular in the late 1880s.

During enslavement there was insufficient corn grown to feed the slaves which led to its importation. Today we also enjoy it as corn bread or as dumplings over green split pea soup. Many also described having tea made from hot water and molasses.

Growing up in Jamaica I became familiar with green banana and peanut porridge which would have originated from the creativity of the enslaved from foods readily available.

Cassava, brought to Bermuda in 1616, was imported to feed the settlers and the enslaved who were familiar with it from Africa and from the Arawak people in Jamaica. They were also aware of the dangers of improper preparation. Many Arawaks drank the poisonous cassava liquid to commit suicide rather than suffer the humiliation of enslavement.

Once properly prepared, cassava root could be pounded into a flour for making bread. How we arrived at the Christmas cassava pie we eat today, remains a mystery.

When I interviewed my Aunt Edith who was born in 1889, about a church event in her youth, I questioned why there was no peas and rice on the menu. I was surprised when she responded that this was a relatively new addition to our diet and she had not grown up eating it.

I now wonder whether the people in St George’s during her era would not have been exposed to it, while the people of Somerset would have eaten a more West Indian diet. Possibly this was due to the influx of West Indians brought here in the early1900s to work at the Dockyard.

Over the years I have recorded some of the things we used to cook and the methods used in preparing food. Many talked of baking iron bread known today as Johnny bread.

Corned beef was made into a pie with bacon, potatoes, carrots, peas, onion and thyme. I assumed a corned beef pie was made with pastry until others recalled it being made similar to a cassava pie and eaten on occasions like a birthday celebration.

They described a layer of cassava mixture followed by a layer of well-seasoned corned beef covered by another layer of cassava. It was put to bake in the brick oven beside the bread. In those days bread was baked three times a week, however, the pie did take longer to bake than the bread.

In the 1920s the late Hilda Bean-Sharpe recalled her mother making codfish pie in a three-legged cast iron pot which she lined with pastry before adding a seasoned codfish filling. She covered it with a piece of tin and set a fire on the bottom, as well as on the top.

In her teens she worked with Mrs O’Neil of the Fairview Boarding House in Somerset. She described many food preparations but the one I found most interesting was the fact that she never pre-cooked the pork used in the cassava pie. It was cut raw into small pieces seasoned with herbs and spices before adding it as a filling for the pie and baked in the brick oven.

Pumpkin and cabbage were plentiful and cooked with rice. Some described eating bread smeared with bacon grease and lettuce to take to school for lunch.

Others described potted meat sandwiches. Potted meat comprised of various cooked hot meats which were placed in a pot, tightly packed to exclude air, then covered with hot fat. As the fat cooled it hardened to form an airtight seal.

In 2008, I interviewed 94-year-old Martha Gilbert who grew up in Devonshire. Her family always ate leftovers for breakfast. She recalled bacon with sweet potatoes fried in bacon grease and bread to soak it up.

As a child she roamed freely between Tee Street and Devon Springs. She collected firewood for the brick oven or the big black stove with its black pots. Each pot hung on three chains. Her father would make a lasso to get dead branches down from the trees then they dragged the bundles home.

She recalled fields of sweet lemons with rough skin which she had not seen in her adult life. The soil was red and she saw tobacco growing in clumps which reminded her of Romaine lettuce with much wider leaves.

There were numerous loquat trees with fruit much larger than seen today and wild black grapes with a slimy texture which she ate until her lips were stained black.

Recently, I interviewed 93-year-old Bill Anderson, about food eaten when he was growing up. We primarily talked about food from the sea. He remembered Pompano Beach Club to Wreck Hill being a muddy area covered in thick sea grass and mangroves. Today this is noticeably absent.

Oysters grew as large as five inches, conch, mussels, clams and small lobsters could be found there. Conch was made into a salad and eating conch stew and turtle soup was popular. He further described young sharks made into shark hash and when pan-fried reminded him of amberjack.

Prior to refrigeration, when fresh fish was abundant, local families salted and hung their fish to dry and believe it or not, this included anchovies.

The culinary history made by the people of St David’s has not been forgotten. I believe it deserves a written history, entirely of its own.

References

Bermuda Past and Present by Walter B. Hayward, 1927

Memorials of Bermuda by Lefroy, Vol 1 and 11, 1932

Life in Old St. David’s by EA McCallan, 1948

Chained On The Rock by Cyril Packwood, 1975

Mind the Onion Seed by Nellie Musson, 1979

Slave History of the Turks and Caicos Islands by Nigel Sadler

• Cecille Snaith-Simmons is a retired nurse, historian, writer and author of The Bermuda Cookbook