In the Putnam household of Salem Village, there is no starter, main course, or dessert: austerity is a virtue and gluttony a sin. The day is ordered around three simple moments — morning porridge, the midday dinner of corn or rye mush, salt pork, and boiled root vegetables, and a light supper at dusk. Everything cooks in a single pot hung from the crane in the hearth, or under the embers of the bread oven. And because no work is permitted on the Lord's Day, Sunday's meals are prepared on Saturday evening.

Two gifts of the New World and Atlantic trade structure this entire cuisine. "Indian corn" (maize), learned from the Wampanoag, becomes the colonists' daily bread as coarse meal, often mixed with rye. Molasses, the dark syrup brought from the West Indies through the triangular trade, is the only affordable sweetener in a modest home: it sweetens the porridge, glazes the beans, and perfumes the bread. Together, they are the ground bass of the Salem table.