♪♪ A century before the French partnered with the Americans during the Revolutionary War, they would fortify this spot where the Niagara River flows into Lake Ontario.

Protecting the main artery into the Great Lakes and western frontier, Fort Niagara would play an important role in the struggle of France, Great Britain and the United States for control of the region.

[Artilleryman] Fire!

[cannon fire] [Walter] Join me as I explore the history of this indestructible outpost and cook up some tasty meals within the French kitchen of this castle on the lake.

Oh yea!

[Hanae] That's so good.

All this for A Taste of History from Old Fort Niagara.

[Narrator] This program is made possible by the Blue and Gray Education Society, whose mission is to preserve American history through its historical guidebooks, nationwide tours, and philanthropic endeavors.

[waterfalls crashing] 6 million cubic feet of water flows over Niagara Falls every minute.

Offering what is undoubtedly one of the most spectacular views in North America.

For the first inhabitants of this region and later European colonists control of the Portage around this insurmountable barrier was essential for access into the heartland of the new world along the water highways of the Great Lakes.

The French were the first Europeans to arrive here.

They actually explored the area in the late 17th century, and they were the first to come here and fortify this site.

This was Seneca territory, the Seneca, where the guardians of the western door of the Haudenosaunee people.

Through diplomacy, through trade, the French worked their way into getting permission to build a better place where the trade goods would be safer.

They told the Seneca that they would build a house of peace, that it would not be a stone fort.

But that's not what happened.

[Narrator] Completed in 1727, this structure, known today as the French Castle, was the first permanent fortification at the mouth of the Niagara River and would play host to the decades long fight over the North American continent.

-When the French and Indian War breaks out in 1754 the French know that ultimately the British are coming for this fort with artillery.

So they expanded the size of Fort Niagara from a fairly modest footprint into what was considered at the time the most sophisticated earthen fortification in North America.

[Soldier speaking French] In 1759, British forces, along with almost 1000 of their native allies, laid siege to the fort.

The French would hold them off for 19 days but English troops would eventually breach the walls.

The French were forced to surrender and the British flag would fly over Fort Niagara for the next four decades.

[waves crashing] ♪♪ I'm so excited to be here at Old Fort Niagara.

It's been on my bucket list for a long time and I have Hanae with me today who is going to show me what the cuisine at the time was when the fort was active.

We are standing in the boulangerie which is the place where a lot of food has been cooked for a very long time here.

The French castle that we're standing in is almost 300 years old.

The feeling in here, it's just sensational.

Just listening to the waves hitting against the foundation.

I mean, it's just, it's unbelievable.

We could be talking about history forever.

-Yes [Hanae laughs] And I know we have some cooking to do.

-Yes [Walter laughs] I thought a good place to start would be to start with what most of the people who lived here are eating every day.

A pea soup, which is the common rations for enlisted soldiers.

So the first step in making pea soup is to soak your dried peas.

Dried peas are selected as part of the ration because they last basically forever unless they get wet.

So you can ship them great distances without having to worry about them spoiling.

Their rations are very calorie dense.

Helping soldiers to have energy to do manual labor.

And it's very filling as well.

Salted meats are a great way of shipping meat across great distances.

[Walter] The garlic, cut it really coarse because we are cooking for the troops and not for the king of the castle.

-That's right.

This first building that the French built here in 1726.

It doesn't look like most forts in North America or even in Europe.

It looks like a house or like a château.

-To camouflage the fact that it was supposed to be known by people as a house of peace, right?

Versus a fort.

When I look at the building from the outside, I'm envisioning a big lavish feast of a French château, which is not.

And the people in there will eat whatever they be given.

-That's right.

Yes.

[Walter laughs] Onions, some garlic, some carrots.

-Now, you know what I do, I just scrape mine.

People ask me this all the time.

Why?

It's because the nutritional value is right below the skin.

So if you take like a regular old potato peeler, what you're going to do is you kind of take away the vitamin.

They had some really rough times here with scurvy.

Scurvy, was a huge issue in the 18th century.

People didn't understand yet that it was a vitamin C deficiency, but they did understand that it had something to do with not eating fresh fruits and vegetables.

All right.

So I think we're ready to throw our vegetable and meat mixture into our pot.

back here to saute a little bit until the onions and garlic are starting to brown and caramelize Our hydrated peas.

There we go.

Bay leaf and a little bit of salt.

-Yep.

-A little bit of pepper.

It is nice to have a big fireplace where I can have, you know, a big pot of water going at the same time that I'm cooking something else.

And even while we're working on other things, our soup can sit kind of on the corner of the crane so we can get many things going at once in here.

I love it.

-All right.

-We're going to let that simmer for about an hour, and we'll scoot on to our next recipe, which is a salt cod with a lemon butter sauce.

This is something that officers might have been eating.

It's a little more upscale than what we've just prepared for the enlisted soldiers and just like with our salted pork, salt cod is something that can be shipped very widely because when you salt the meats, they're preserved.

And here at Niagara with Lake Ontario, right out the back door, there's lots and lots of fish that's being caught here every single day in the 18th century, not cod, but things like sturgeon and whitefish are coming out of there in large, large quantities.

Some of these records are saying that they're catching over 400 fish a day so a lot of fish gets eaten here.

[Walter] Salted cod is beautiful.

So I'm really intrigued with this recipe that you got here.

So tell me what I can do for you.

-One very common way that people are cooking fish in the 18th century is boiling it.

It's very easy.

And so that's what we're going to be doing with our cod.

So you're first step for this much like with the pea soup is you need to soak your salted cod for a while.

I think probably at least 12 hours and ours was done for almost a day and you can see the difference in the salted cod, which is quite stiff, the unsoaked, I should say, salted cod and then the soaked salted cod, which is much more like what we would think of a piece of fish being.

A little more flexible.

So I'm going to take our soaked cod.

Yeah.

And I'm just going to put it in this container here.

I'm going to pour some warm water over it and let it boil for about 20 minutes over the fire and while that's going away, we're going to work on the sauce for it.

All right.

So I'm going to get this butter going.

[sizzling] Oh and that's already warming right up [sizzling] Shallots, garlic and green onions.

Butter got a little brown, but that's all right.

[sizzling] Always a good sound.

Get those nice and cooked.

More butter!

[Hanae laughs] We'll let melt down, and then we'll throw in our lemon.

-The flavor is just unbelievable.

And I like the way that you let your butter become what we call in technical French terms, beurre noisette, which means brown butter.

-I do, too.

-The flavor is just... get a whiff of that.

-Oh, so good.

I can't wait to eat it.

[Hanae laughs] Here comes the lemon juice.

There we go.

Beautiful.

Some salt and pepper for us.

Good, good seasoning.

-It's so delicious, isn't it amazing?

-It smells so good.

-Smells so good?

It tastes so good!

Oh, yeah.

That's so good -Isn't it?

-Yea I just love the little bite that the lemon gives it.

A little more pepper.

Here you go.

All right.

-So now the fish.

We gotta.. -Yep.

Now we're going to fish our fish out.

Got it?

-Yep.

-All right.

It's kinda falling apart but that's what fish does.

Drain a little bit of the water out Get that right in there.

Now flip it over so that it's all on the... Oh, beautiful.

Beautiful.

Yep.

And scoop some of that sauce on top all around it.

About five or 10 minutes just to really let the cod soak up the sauce.

Beautiful.

And if you want to give me a couple more scoops of that delicious sauce on top.

We don't want to waste that.

Beautiful.

All right.

-I love your choice of platter.

[Hanae laughs] -It's my favorite plate.

[Walter] How much dill you want?

Just a little bit?

-Cut that up.

Just a little bit so we can sprinkle it.

Just a little bit of dill on top I love that dill with fish.

-The flavor is like, yea... -It's so good.

It always works together.

And the lemon as well.

-It's too pretty to destroy, but I gotta.. -Got to give it a taste?

-Oh, yeah.

And I got a spoon for you there, too.

Oh, yes.

Let's see here.

Wow.

Hanae!

-Oh, that's so good.

-The flavor is so clean.

It's so beautiful.

It's just.. there's only one word for it.

It's called spectacular.

While the enlisted men maybe don't get it, but the officer's for sure got it.

-Definitely.

-And since I'm an officer today, I got some.

[both laugh] -That's right.

-Being here and cooking in this unbelievable place that dates back so long ago, it makes you feel very appreciative of history.

-It does.

And a little connected to the past, too.

♪♪ [waves crashing] [Narrator] During the war for American independence, Fort Niagara became a sanctuary for those who opposed the revolution.

Many loyalists formed into military units and, along with native raiding parties, ravaged the lands of New York and Pennsylvania, diverting much needed manpower and supplies from George Washington's army fighting elsewhere.

[Bob] Washington was pressured into sending about a third of his army into the territory of the Haudenosaunee.

And their mission was to burn villages, destroy crops, and hopefully drive the Haudenosaunee out of the war.

[Narrator] In the aftermath of the devastation, Fort Niagara would become a haven for thousands of Native American refugees.

[Belinda] With the Clinton- Sullivan campaign coming through and destroying all of their food supply for the winter, thousands and thousands of bushels of corn.

It forced them to come to Fort Niagara and there wasn't even enough bread or flour to feed their garrison at the time.

So it was a definite hardship.

[Bob] A lot of the natives spent the winter here, and many, many of them perished from starvation and exposure [Hanae] All right.

So our pea soup has been cooking for a while back on the hearth.

And I think that by the time we finish our next recipe, our pea soup will be ready to serve at the same time.

-So now we're playing tribute to the British because obviously our first dish was very French oriented.

-Yes -So it's perfect.

-Yep, and it's just like the fort's history here too.

The British show up here in 1759 and they stay for quite a while.

So we're going to go ahead and pay a little tribute to their cuisine.

-Way too long, actually.

[both laugh] -The next dish hat we're making is called Bacon Fraze, and it's a bit like bacon pancakes.

This is one of those kinds of recipes you can make it a little bit richer with nicer ingredients if you want to, but you can also use very basic ingredients.

For example, for our pancake batter we're going to be using cream, but you could easily use water if you don't have access to cream.

But cream is so much better.

It is.

It tastes a lot better.

First step is going to be to cook the bacon in our frying pan that's back here on the hearth.

-Got you.

-That's what I'll do first [Walter] There's nothing better than bacon and butter.

-I agree.

And we're just going to fry these up until they're crispy.

Oh, yeah.

And those are crisping up beautifully.

-Smells like breakfast around here -Yeah.

[Hanae laughs] One thing that is a little different with open hearth cooking versus cooking on a modern stove is that you have to be a little more aware of where your heat source is.

So my heat source is kind of in this direction.

And so the hottest part of the pan is back over here, and that's why I'm trying to rotate my bacon around so that all of it can go to the hottest part of the pan.

And also so that the pieces that started back there don't stay back there and burn.

Put that there for safekeeping.

All right.

Crack and beat four eggs and just a little bit of nutmeg.

-Always nutmeg.

-Always nutmeg in the 18th century.

Nutmeg is something that we see cropping up over and over and over again.

-Watch A Taste of History, [Hanae laughs] there's barely a show I don't use nutmeg.

Oh, smells so good!

flavor of nutmeg.

-Cream in.

That should be good I think.

-And you said salt?

-Yep.

-No pepper.

-No pepper, a little salt.

I guess you could put pepper in if you really wanted to.

A little salt and then grab some flour and the recipe for this, it doesn't even really give measurements.

It just says "Make a batter like any other" -Pancake batter.

Mhm, and if you know what the consistency of that is supposed to look like, you're good to go.

-There's so many recipes from the 18th century that just give you an outline and then the rest is for you to figure out or what I recommend, trial and error.

-Yes.

-Make it once or twice before you invite your friends over.

[Hanae laughs] -Yep, probably a little more right?

-Definitely [Hanae] My favorite 18th century recipe instruction is "Cook it till it's done."

[both laugh] Very specific.

[Hanae laughs] That looks great.

-All right.

Go ahead.

-All righty.

Grab a couple with my poker here.

Put a little bed of batter down there we go.

OK, here's my bacon piece going in.

I'm waiting for the side I've just put down to cook.

[sizzling] Oh, perfect.

[Walter exhales] Perfect.

Master of disaster.

[Hanae laughs] [Hanae] That's a great party trick.

All right, We finished our bacon fraze and to top it off, it's always good to put a little maple syrup -Canada is right there -Right across the river - So, piece of cake.

Now I want to find that knife over here.

Let me see what I'm thinking about it here.

Wow!

What do you think?

I think it's so simple, but so good.

Simplicity always rules!

It's beautiful.

Now, the only thing I'm waiting for is you told me about this pea soup.

The pea soup is about done.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you can scoop some of that out, because that, I think, would pair very nicely with our bacon.

That's what I'm thinking, too.

Well, the soup has a whole yellow peas, it has carrots, onion, garlic, and a little bit of bacon or salted pork.

Sometimes the soldiers are making it thick enough that it's almost like a porridge where you can spread it over bread Very good.

Mm!

And I think the two of them actually work extremely well.

-I think so, too.

Having a little bit of sweet and salty together.

You've done spectacular here.

Thank you for your help.

Psh, what help?

And that is a surprise to me.

I have never had it before.

I never thought of doing it like this, but it's a good flavor.

-I'm glad you like it.

-Yeah, I do.

Both.

And a soup as well.

It's unbelievable.

So simple, so easy, but yet so delicious.

There's only one word really, spectacular, the dishes.

I mean, if I had to be a soldier and you give me that, I'll be a real happy soldier.

[Hanae laughs] ♪♪ [Bob] Fort Niagara is handed over to the United States in 1796 and the British move across the river so they begin the construction of Fort George.

The two forts got along pretty well during this time period.

[Narrator] In June of 1812 the young United States, angered over violations of national sovereignty, declared war on England and Fort Niagara once again found itself on the front lines of the conflict.

[cannon fire] Trading artillery fire with Fort George in a series of bombardments, advancements were made to remove the roof from the stone house of the French castle and turn the top floor into an elevated gun deck.

-The noise from the bombardments could be heard in Buffalo, which is 35 miles away.

So these were horrendous bombardments.

We have to protect the fort.

This war is going on way too long for [Artileryman] Fire!

[cannon fire] [Walter] Nice job!

Go home you Brits!

[American soldier] Yes!

[Walter] Nice nice!

[Narrator] During the barrage, a woman by the name of Betsy Doyle stood alongside soldiers of the First Regiment of the United States Artillery.

-Her husband had been taken as a prisoner, but he was born in Canada, so the British regarded him not as an American P.O.W., but as a traitor.

Betsy does not particularly like this situation, and so she spends this bombardment day in November of 1812 running hot shot cannonballs to an artillery piece on the roof of this building.

And she was written up as equal to Joan of Arc in her bravery.

By May of 1813, U.S. troops invaded Upper Canada and successfully captured Fort George and the village of Newark.

-In December of 1813, the tide has again turned and the British secretly cross the river.

They launch a surprise bayonet assault on the fort and the American garrison is caught completely by surprise The British once again captured Fort Niagara and they held it until the end of the war.

-The war ended in a stalemate and Fort Niagara was ceded back to the United States.

Throughout the ensuing years, the fort continued as a peaceful border post, expanding and strengthening throughout the Civil War and occupied by the U.S. Army until 1963, making it one of the longest continuously operated military bases in North America.

[Hanae] Our final thing that we're going to make is the conclusion of every good meal which is dessert It's another British recipe called fried toast.

We've got some slices of bread that have been soaking in a cream for a while.

And the length of time that you want to soak your bread depends on how thick your bread is, how stale your bread is.

That's the other thing.

This recipe calls for stale bread.

Nobody would ever waste any bread.

So this was another way of recycling bread.

You don't want to oversoak it either.

Then it's later going to be completely to a mush because in the end you want to have one nice presentation.

-This has been soaking for about an hour now, and our cream mixture is not complete.

So I'm going to take our bread slices out put in a couple of eggs if you would like to get me some nutmeg.

-But of course.

Oh god the flavor of the nutmeg is like so beautiful.

-We can kind of go wild with the nutmeg on this one as much of the flavor as we can get in.

All right.

Oh, that's beautiful.

That smells so good.

A little bit of sack, which is basically now referred to in our days as a sherry, in the 18th century they called it sack.

So that's exactly what it is.

That's beautiful.

Smell it.

Oh, that's going to be delicious.

[Hanae] And now for a little bit of sugar, one more.

There's also a fair amount of sugar in the sauce -Wow.

-How's it tasting?

-You don't even need the bread in there.

[Hanae laughs] [Hanae] Just drink it as is huh?

All right, I'm now going to throw some butter back into my frying pan to get it ready to go.

Butter going in.

-Oh, that's good.

-Get that pan nice and buttered dip my bread in my egg mix right in that pan.

[sizzling] There's my hot portion.

While these are cooking away, we can get started on our cognac sauce.

-And you got a nice baby spider over there.

-It is butter and sugar and cognac.

-There you go.

-There we are.

OK.

Here we go.

There we go.

Now we're going to do the same thing on the other side.

Let it cook down a little bit, and I'm going to scoot our sauce it's looking really really good.

That's much more the consistency that we want from this, which is more syrupy than runny and liquidy.

-Yeah -And we'll bring it off And we're going to pour it over the top of our fried toast.

Drizzle it on there.

[Walter] I gotta try this sauce.

[Hanae laughs] Mm.

-You like it?

-Very good.

-All right, now it's time for the whole thing.

-Gosh, it's good though.

Unbelievable.

Well, what a great finale to a fantastic menu, huh?

It don't get better than that, huh?

-I agree.

I agree.

-I mean, it's been a spectacular time already, but this is absolutely a fantastic dessert.

I'm telling you.

And that sauce.

-You can eat it on anything, huh?

-Yeah.

Plus, you might have to turn in your car key [Hanae laughs] Gosh.

I want to thank you one more time for all the help.

And Kate and Bob for the research.

Spectacular.

And all this for A Taste of History.

From Old Fort Niagara.

[Narrator] This program is made possible by the Blue and Gray Education Society, whose mission is to preserve American history through its historical guidebooks, nationwide tours, and philanthropic endeavors.

Viewers can find DVDs and cookbooks at atasteofhistory.org including the all new “A Taste of History Cookbook ” complete with step by step instructions of recipes seen on the show.

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