Old Sturbridge Village - Chaine des Rotisseurs
Inside the Bullard Tavern

The tavern's entry room had a fireplace and coat rack.

There was a display case in here with 1830s items including wine bottles.

Through the door was the sitting room - where in the old days people would hang out, drink, talk and listen to music. There was a fireplace in here as well. We congregated in here for a while.

This is where we got the first dish - homemade "pounded cheese" dating from a recipe from 1832. You take 2 cups cheddar and parmesan, 2 tsp mustard, 1 tsp curry, 1/4 cup butter, 1/4 tsp cayenne, 1 Tbsp sherry. Mix all together!

The main dining room had all the ingredients for this laid out to examine.

It was explained that colonial people loved spicy food - and NOT because it hid rotting meat flavors. Rather, colonials felt the body needed a "balanced diet" and that included hot and cold food. If you had a cold cheese, it needed a hot spice to offset it. They did not eat rotting meat! They lived off the land and knew very well what fresh food tasted like (probably far better than we modern people do).

They served hot buttered rum, which was clear and VERY buttery tasting. I could only drink a small amount of this. They had ginger beer which I didn't try but which apparently was very spicy (see above). They also had a hand made cider which was quite good. What they did for the cider was heat up a poker in the fire and then put the poker carefully into a pottery container of cider. They couldn't let the poker touch the sides of the container lest it shatter it.

This was also served with a Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc which while nice didn't seem to fit the period theme very much :) I'm not sure the colonials had much interface with New Zealand.

Dinner at Old Sturbridge Village

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