The dietary rhythm of a Protestant New England family at the end of the 19th century was organized into three meals: a hearty breakfast of porridge, dinner (the main meal at noon or, on Sunday, after church), and a light supper in the evening. Saturday followed a Puritan custom: beans were slowly baked all day to avoid work on the Sabbath. The cooking was plain, thrifty, based on grains, dairy, salt pork, and brown sugars, without fuss — frugality was almost a moral virtue.

A dark syrup produced during the refining of cane sugar, molasses was the poor man's sweetener and the bittersweet soul of New England. It was poured into beans, corn puddings, hardtack, and brown bread. Its deep, almost licorice flavor marked all domestic cooking in the region during Leavitt's time.