Corned Beef and Cabbage
March 17th and It's Various Celebrations - Particularly in Boston
When I was working in Boston, I would be giving tours and have to explain the history of a pretty important holiday to Boston in the early American Revolution. Suffolk County, the county in which Boston sits, has a holiday that is not celebrated in the rest of the state - let alone the rest of the country. It’s called Evacuation Day. The fact that this holiday - recognized as a day off for city offices - falls on Saint Patrick’s Day, has always seemed a bit suspicious to outsiders due to the large Irish population in the city. Yeah, yeah - call it Evacuation Day - we know what you’re really up to.1
So the fact that in 1776, the British troops really did leave Boston on March 17 always seems to surprise people. Boston is also not the only city to have an Evacuation Day. New York City celebrates Evacuation Day on November 25 - though I should note that New York’s might have a little more significance as the troops evacuated New York in 1783 at the end of the War for American Independence. (For all that significance, Boston makes a much bigger deal out of its March holiday than New York does. But November in New York is really all about the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.) Boston had been under British military control for two years, starting in March of 1774, in large part because of the dumping of the tea in the harbor. The evacuation of the British troops, and the continued maintenance of patriot control of Boston for the remainder of the war, is a huge victory as far as the people of Massachusetts are concerned - though these days it is certainly put aside for wearing green instead.
Of course, with the influx of a large Irish population, having a city holiday fall on Saint Patrick’s Day was never going to change. Boston and the Irish immigration have become practically inseparable. Between the Irish and the Italians, Boston has also become largely Catholic. Considering how much of Massachusetts was settled by protestants, largely trying to escape the Anglican and Catholic churches, looking for a place to establish their own space, with their own religious rules (let’s not pretend these early settlers of Massachusetts were welcoming of other religions), it seems funny that so much of Massachusetts has become the home to some pretty large Catholic communities.
It has also had a huge impact on the culture around holidays, such as Saint Patrick’s Day. For example: I come from a family with long ties to New England. (I have Mayflower passengers in my family tree.) With that comes the fact that much of my family is also from the Congregationalist background. And yet, there is definitely some Irish in my family tree as well. (Difficult to trace Irish - there’s a “brick wall” on the family tree on that branch, and it’s not even in Ireland that we lost them. It was here in New England.)
Regardless, it has become tradition in my family that we had a “New England Boiled Dinner” around Saint Patrick’s Day. New England Boiled Dinner is just corned beef with a bunch of boiled root vegetables. And apparently a favorite of President Grover Cleveland. “Cleveland, a regular Joe of simple tastes, put up with the fancy food; but one night, catching a whiff of corned beef and cabbage being eaten by the servants, the president traded his Arthurian meal for theirs. “It was the best dinner I had had for months,” he later beamed.”2
But why? If you go to Ireland, you won’t find corned beef on the plates of the Irish during this Saint’s day. And the fact of the matter is, it has everything to do with what was available and for prices that the Irish immigrants could afford.
Originally, the increase in beef production in Ireland had everything to do with the British. The Brits had a heavy beef eating culture, they needed the cattle and needed the space. For the Irish prior to this, eating cattle was rare. You needed them for their dairy and their plow work more than anything, so the only cows that were eaten had gotten too old. But then, “the Cattle Acts of 1663 and 1667 were what fueled the Irish corned beef industry. These acts prohibited the export of live cattle to England, which drastically flooded the Irish market and lowered the cost of meat available for salted beef production. The British invented the term ‘corned beef’ in the 17th century to describe the salt crystals used to cure the meat, which were the size of corn kernels.”3 All that corned beef was being sold back to the British, though. It was too expensive for the Irish to afford. (Note that Yankee Magazine claims a different origin for the “corn” term: “Corns” of gunpowder were often used in the salting process in New England.4)
Things changed though when the potato famine hit. The Irish who moved to America were “making more money than they had in Ireland under British rule. Which brings us back to corned beef. With more money for food, the Irish could afford meat for the first time. […] And the beef they could afford just happened to be corned beef, the thing their great-grandparents were famous for.”5 But this wasn’t the same thing that had come from Ireland. Now produced in the United States, the corned beef that the Irish immigrants had access to was coming from their Jewish neighbors. “The Jewish population in New York City at the time was made up of relatively new immigrants from Eastern and Central Europe. The corned beef they made was from brisket, a kosher cut of meat from the front of the cow. Since brisket is a tougher cut, the salting and cooking processes transformed the meat into the extremely tender, flavorful corned beef we know of today.”6
“The Irish Americans transformed St. Patrick’s Day from a religious feast day to a celebration of their heritage and homeland. With the celebration came a celebratory meal. In honor of their culture, the immigrants splurged on their neighbors’ flavorful corned beef, which was accompanied by their beloved potato and the most affordable vegetable, cabbage. It didn’t take long for corned beef and cabbage to become associated with St. Patrick’s Day.”7
It seems to me that the evolution of the New England Boiled Dinner and the Irish celebration of Saint Patrick’s Day happened alongside each other, and simultaneously. The credit of the New England Boiled Dinner being just a standard New England “every Wednesday” kind of meal - and as Yankee Magazine notes “very Vermont”8 - and the fact that the dinner also contains the now Irish-associated corned beef and cabbage, seems to have just sort of happened. It is one of the ultimate cultural melting pot moments in United States history.
This push and pull between celebrating the cultures that make up our country’s diverse population, and the melting pot that they call seem to clamber into, regardless of intent, can be seen over and over again. It’s in our weird holidays. It’s in the foods that have become a part of our culture that no one can seem to pin down an origin for.
And it’s in the cook pots that boil our corned beef and cabbage in a “New England Boiled Dinner” for St. Patrick’s Day.
Of course, I’m alluding to the idea that the Irish are all drunks here. This is a well-worn negative stereotype of Irish immigrants that still lingers today.