Cooking mounds at Fort Ticonderoga

In Witness to the Revolution, Savvy describes a cooking mound that she comes across in the Continentals’ camp as a “tiered wedding cake.” In these photographs, you can see openings carved in several places in the bottom tier. Wood fires are fed into the openings from the side. Another opening is carved over each fire, and a pot is laid on top of the opening in the earthy shelf, just as a modern-day pot would be set on a burner on the stove.

A typical meal schedule included a “stimulator” first thing in the morning, which was a shot of alcohol or milk with maybe bread. Breakfast was eaten around 10 AM, dinner at 3 PM, and supper - which was much lighter than a modern evening meal - was eaten around 7 PM. There was no equivalent to lunch.

Fort Ticonderoga was occupied by both the British and the Continentals at different points during the Revolutionary War. Today, it is a working fort in upstate New York, meaning reenactors populate the fort during the warmer months, engaging in many of the same tasks that their eighteenth-century compatriots would have. The cooks in these photographs are seen preparing the midday meal that was distributed to all those posted at Fort Ticonderoga that day.