Abraham Lincoln at the table

On the frontier of Kentucky, Indiana, and then Illinois, meals are not served in successive courses as in Europe. Everything arrives at once on a wooden board or table: a cornbread base, meat when available, pantry staples (dried apples, salted preserves), and a drink from the orchard. People eat quickly, standing or on a bench, between chores. Sweetness comes from molasses, not refined sugar reserved for feast days in town.

A dark syrup from cane or sorghum, molasses was THE poor man's sugar on the 19th-century frontier. It sweetens gingerbread, drizzles over cornbread, and sugars coffee. It is Lincoln's childhood taste, far more than white sugar.