A window, with 6-by-6 panes of glass, warped and bubbled in some spots, was the only bit of light that would penetrate the wood and stone walls of a dark smokey colonial kitchen. With the wide fireplace pulling the weight of the eyes to the spot, it’d be the epicenter of the action, as bread was baked and something like this Colonial Vegetable Pottage was simmering away above the hot embers. This recipe is a throwback to the early days of the Americas when every day wasn’t a feast. A pottage like this was an everyday meal of sustenance, flavored with garden-grown aromatics and a base of hearty pulled-from-the-soil root vegetables.

In colonial America, pottage was more of a crucial part of a diet than one might think. Today, a pottage could be considered a crossover between a soup and a stew. In debtors’ prisons, pottage was a thin gruel, made of simple grains like bran and oats boiled in water. For sailors, a pottage would look different with soaked ship’s biscuits alongside beans and salt pork. For normal colonists, a pottage could harbor a spectrum of ingredients. While meats and fish could find their way into the pot, pottages were ways to stretch ingredients, when there were slim pickings and things were tight. This Colonial Vegetable Pottage is filled with simple vegetables like hearty leeks, cabbage, onions, carrots, and flavored with stock and readily available herbs of the period like thyme, rosemary, and sage. Oats would be the backbone, thickening the broth to give the pottage some satisfying weight.

This pottage calls for no oil, but it can be used to give the vegetables a deepened caramelization. After cooking the heartier root vegetables with a bit of the stock, the other vegetables like the leeks, cabbage, mushrooms, and herbs get cooked down as well.

The remainder of the stock and the bay leaf is added to the pot and brought to a boil. After the pottage stew simmers away for twenty minutes, the oats are added and everything cooks for an additional thirty minutes.

A last bit of salt and pepper finishes the Colonial Vegetable Pottage. One spoonful of this thick soup feels like a warm hug of hearty and rustic flavors.

Root vegetables add a nice hearty and sweet element while the leeks, mushrooms, and onions add a wonderful aromatic backbone. The variety of vegetables and the classic lineup of herbs will not have you searching for meat.