New Hampshire historical reenactor shows how she prepares colonial-era food
New Hampshire Chronicle | July 1, 2026
JAFFREY, N.H. —
As the nation marks its 250th birthday, a New Hampshire historical reenactor is using food to bring the past to life, one colonial recipe at a time.
In the woods behind her Jaffrey home, author, cook and reenactor Allyson Szabo demonstrated what might have been cooking on a New Hampshire hearth in 1776, complete with period tools, open-fire techniques and recipes drawn from early America.
“If you had told me 30 years ago that I would be teaching history to people, I would have laughed at you,” Szabo said. “I thought history was boring, and now it’s coming alive.”
Szabo, dressed in period clothing beside her tent kitchen, said she portrays the camp followers who traveled with armies and handled “the cooking and cleaning and mending.”
Her setup included a brazier, which she said was the kind of cooking equipment “the average soldier, or company would have used,” along with a trade knife, spoon, and an early three-pronged fork. In 1776, she said, forks were only beginning to catch on in America and were sometimes viewed as “pretentious.”
The meal she prepared reflected the kinds of foods that might have appeared at a nicer Sunday dinner, either for an officer or on a farm serving its best meal of the week. The menu included sausage browned in bacon fat, stewed cabbage, fried apples, fresh bread, and a cucumber salad dressed with lemon juice, sherry, red wine vinegar, and cayenne pepper.
Szabo said bread made up a major part of the colonial diet.
“Sixty percent of the food that they ate in a day,” she said, noting that many colonists were wary of foods native to the Americas, including tomatoes and potatoes, because they distrusted ingredients introduced by Indigenous people.
For Szabo, food offers an inviting way into history.
She said she loves showing visitors that history “isn’t just numbers and names” and seeing people light up with fascination.
And unlike some conversations about the nation’s founding, she said, food has a way of connecting people.
“Everybody has to eat,” Szabo said. “You’re always gathering around food.”
Dining and Cooking