Time inevitably marches on and there’s not much we can do about it. The world progresses, things change, and theoretically, everything improves. That may not always be the case, or at least not in everyone’s eyes, but you can’t deny that things definitely are different today than they were 100 years ago. Some things that used to be everywhere have been rendered obsolete and other things that used to be commonplace just seem to have vanished for inexplicable reasons.

10. Before Time Zones Two Nearby Cities Might Run a Few Minutes Apart

What better topic to discuss when focusing on things from the past than time itself. These days we’re all used to time zones separating the world into little segments like an orange. For the most part, everyone follows the breakdown of time zones with a few notable exceptions including China where everything is the same time, all the time. Before the acceptance of time zones, things were quite different and very disorganized.

When it was left up to everyone to determine time for themselves you could travel from one town to the next and find yourself four minutes in the future or four minutes in the past. This was thanks to people telling time by the sun and a single degree of latitude could tweak your clock just a tad.

You might even be in a town that was two minutes off of where you started. When it was noon in Washington, DC, it was 12:02 in Baltimore.  In Albany, New York it was 12:14. In Boston it was 12:24. These times were how railroads calculated when trains would arrive and depart, all locally, meaning confusion was inevitable. Comparative timetables had to be published to allow travelers some slight chance of guessing the correct times as they went from city to city.

9. White Dog Poo Disappeared Thanks to Ingredient Changes in Dog Food

Sarah Silverman once sang a song about white dog poop disappearing and as weird a way to start a sentence as that is, that’s what we’re talking about here. If you are old enough, you remember a time when dog poop turned white. All of it did, everywhere. You’d see it wherever owners refused to clean up after their dogs. But now you don’t see it and there’s a reason. 

Back in the 80s and earlier, dog food was bulked up with a lot of fillers that weren’t really nutritious. Bone meal was one of these fillers, which is basically just calcium. After a dog eats and digests their food, most of that bone meal goes straight through and out the other side. As the end result dried out on the sidewalk, it would turn powdery white, like a little ghost turd in the sun. 

Starting in the ’90s, dog food companies cut back on the bone meal and added more fiber and actual nutrients to dog food to make it better for your four-legged friend. That meant fewer white leftovers and now dog poop tends to stay the same color if people leave it lying around. 

8. Before Fountains and Disposable Cups We All Used Unhygienic Common Cups

Schools around the world have water fountains from which students can drink and have had them for years. In more adult settings you get water coolers with their little disposable cups from which you can refresh yourself. So what did we do before either of those things were invented? You know people would have been thirsty back in the day, how did they manage when they were out in public?

If you guessed “They shared a gross public cup,” you’re absolutely right. Before we devised ways to enjoy water in a sanitary way, the world had water buckets, water coolers, and whatever other sources that were manned by scoops or cups everyone had to share. Every strange, thirsty person put their mouth on the same cup and left it there for the next person, all covered in their bacteria-laden slobber.

The disposable cup has actually been credited with saving countless lives. They were invented near the beginning of the 1900s and when the influenza epidemic of 1918 hit; they exploded in popularity. Imagine trying to get through another contagious disease outbreak in which we all had to share a cup with strangers when we were thirsty. That’s just how things used to be and thankfully we don’t have to endure that anymore thanks to fountains and Dixie cups. 

7. Before Parks Were Big People Used to Picnic in Graveyards

In the UK, people picnic about three times a year. During the Covid lockdown when restaurants were scarce, Americans took up picnicking as a pastime and that habit has lasted even as Covid fears died down and restaurants opened again. People like to head to the park and have some lunch. 

The thing about picnicking in a park is that you need a park and public parks are a relatively new invention. England’s green spaces were mostly private until the mid-1800s. In America, Boston Common was the first public park back in the 1600s but up until 1800, there were only 16 parks in the entire country. In other words, there weren’t a lot of places to picnic. At least, not the ones you’d think. 

Before parks, the best green space you could access as a regular person was a cemetery, and that’s where people went to picnic. They were green; they were peaceful, and they had a lot of unused space where you could toss down a blanket and have some sandwiches. 

Various epidemics might have kept people heading to cemeteries regularly, but the move away from morbid and dark cemeteries to landscaped, beautiful ones made them an ideal meeting place for an afternoon. 

6. Computers Used to Come With a Lock and Key

There’s a good chance you’re using your phone to check this out. You may also be using a laptop. Far less likely is an actual desktop computer but, if you are, hello! Does your computer have a keyhole in it?

Once upon a time, computers came with a lock and key right there on the case that held the hard drive. IBM pioneered these, and they existed in a time before password protection was the norm. If you used your little key and locked your computer, it prevented someone else from coming along and typing anything and potentially ruining whatever you had been working on.

Presumably this was meant for work or school where there was a chance some other person might try to use your machine when you were grabbing a snack or taking a bathroom break. On the downside, not every manufacturer actually connected that lock to anything so sometimes if you tried to use it, nothing happened. 

5. Airplane Windows Used to Be Square Until People Started Dying

Most of the windows we encounter in life are square or rectangular. It’s easy to work with frames that have 90-degree angles, after all. But on an airplane the windows are round and that’s not just a fun quirk of aviation. They used to have square windows, but they had to get rid of them for a terrifying reason. Square windows get sucked out of airplanes at high altitudes. 

Modern airplanes fly at high altitudes like 30,000 feet. This creates less drag on an airplane and allows it to fly faster and more smoothly. But, because of the air pressure up there, cabins require pressurization. 

If you have a cylinder-shaped fuselage under pressure with square windows in it, the air pressure really focuses on those sharp corners. The pressure is two to three times what it is anywhere else on the fuselage when you have window corners. That, in turn, forces the windows to fly right out of the plane and depressurize the cabin as the plane tears itself apart. If you’re sitting next to that window, maybe you go out with it. Or the whole plane crashes and kills everyone on board, like what happened twice with the de Havilland Comet and its square windows. 

Round windows prevent pressure from focusing anywhere so the planes don’t tear apart. It’s a good choice.

4. Before Cutlery Almost No One Had an Overbite

About 8% of people have a severe overbite and about 20% of people have some kind of overbite. They’re pretty common then, but they didn’t used to be. You can blame the invention of forks for a lot of it. 

According to anthropologists, 250 years ago just about no one had an overbite. You can look through old skeletons if you’re into that sort of thing and see for yourself. Folks had some very nicely aligned jaws back in the day. 

When researching the history of overbites, research showed that China developed them about 900 years before Europeans, which seems bizarre if the overbite was just an evolutionary change as had been previously thought. Why did the Chinese develop them 900 years earlier than Europeans? The Chinese began using chopsticks 900 years before Europeans started using cutlery.

Without utensils, humans used their hands. You picked up food and tore a chunk off. You had to use your jaw muscles to bite and tear and chew more. But forks and knives allowed you to do half of that work with your hands. Cutting and eating small pieces puts less strain on your jaw. Jaws weaken and overbites form.

3. Before Alarm Clocks, Knocker Uppers Woke People Up

Do you use an alarm clock to wake up? Maybe an alarm on your phone? That’s standard for many of us but the alarm clock wasn’t really a thing until the mid-1800s and it took a while to gain widespread acceptance. So what happened before that? Knocker Uppers happened.

People who needed to wake up back in the day had to hire someone to wake them and that person was a Knocker Upper. Despite the weird pregnancy vibe the name implies, the job of the Knocker Upper is to use a long, thin stick and knock on your window to let you know it’s time to work.

Especially helpful in towns where shift work was the norm, the Knocker Upper would go house to house where people had paid them and tap a few times then move on, making sure everyone was up. In some towns, these people were still working as late as the 1970s. 

2. Prior to Toilet Paper, People Used Sears Catalogs

In Western culture, toilet paper is pretty ubiquitous. If you went into a bathroom anywhere in America and there was no toilet paper, you’d probably panic a little. But toilet paper as we know it didn’t exist until 1857 and research shows pooping was invented quite a few years earlier. That means, before TP became the norm, something else was common. That something was, for a time, the Sears catalog.

If you’re too young, you may not know that Sears used to be a big deal department store. Every year they produced massive catalogs to show off what they had for sale and sent them to people’s homes. Usually a couple of catalogs per year, in fact, just hundreds of pages of stuff you could buy. Crazy, right? So every home had these huge books of paper sitting around, often for no reason.

Before the advent of glossy paper, Sears catalogs were printed on flat, soft newsprint paper and the rest of the story writes itself here. People kept the catalogs in their bathrooms or the outhouse. It wasn’t just a thing some people did; it was so commonplace that the Farmer’s Almanac, another choice toilet paper publication, used to send out copies with a hole pre-drilled in the corner so you could hang it up in the outhouse and tear off sheets as needed.

1. Before Trees The Earth Had Giant Mushrooms

There are currently an estimated three trillion trees on Earth. That seems like a lot but we are also cutting down 15 billion per year and it takes these things a few years to grow back. The idea of a world without trees is absolutely foreign to everyone alive today. But there was once a time when that was the norm. Like everything else, trees had to start somewhere. And before them? Mushrooms.

Around 400 million years ago, trees were not dominating the landscape. The forests of the world were made up of Prototaxites, towering fungi that grew to 24 feet in height with trunks three feet in diameter. Now that’s a magic mushroom. 

While the massive mushrooms were the kings of the forest back in their heyday, they went extinct about 350 million years ago. But when they did exist, they competed against plants that were barely more than shrubs. There was nothing larger in the world and they would have dominated the skyline wherever they grew.

Dogs have been around for as long as humans have been able to tame and work together with wolves, making them one of the oldest species to be domesticated.

Of course, they weren’t exactly domesticated, as they are the result of selectively breeding the wolf, and there have been tons of breeds over the past 14,000-29,000 years.

Unfortunately, some dog breeds have come and gone, and their like has never been successfully re-bred into existence. The ten dog breeds on this list were once popular for various reasons but have since disappeared.

10 People Killed By Their Dogs

10 Talbot

The Talbot was a once-popular hunting hound found throughout England during the Middle Ages. It’s believed that William the Conqueror brought the breed to England in 1066, though this has never been confirmed. The Earls of Shrewsbury, whose family name is Talbot, feature the dog on their crest. Interestingly, the Talbot and Greyhound are the only hounds used in English heraldry.

Talbots were small to medium-sized white dogs with short legs, long drooping ears, and a long curled tail. Records indicate it was prized for its sense of smell, though it’s unknown what it was primarily used to hunt (deer, boar, fox, rabbit, etc.).

There is evidence of the Talbot existing as early as the 15th century before becoming more popular throughout England in the 17th century. It was favored by hunters for its accurate tracking abilities.

Ultimately, the Talbot began to disappear around the end of the 18th century. At that time, the Northern Hound and Southern Hound supplanted it. The Talbot was likely bred out of existence with breeders favoring some aspects of the breed over others. It eventually gave rise to the Beagle, Bloodhound, and Coonhound.

9 St. John’s Water Dog

St. John’s water dog was a breed found in Newfoundland, which likely came into existence sometime in the late-16th century. They were hard-working dogs with a good temperament and were prized by fishermen for their qualities. They were excellent swimmers and retrievers, making them especially helpful in fishing communities.

Their precise genetic makeup is unknown, but it’s believed that they were a natural mixture of different working dogs found and brought to the province of Labrador. St. John’s water dogs were highly prized throughout the 16th and early 17th centuries. They were exported to England, but they went extinct due to two primary factors.

Canada began restricting dog breeding to encourage sheep farming, reducing their numbers. Around the same time, a measure meant to prevent a rabies epidemic in England forced their quarantine and ended their importation to the country. This resulted in far less breeding throughout the 19th century.

By the mid-20th century, the St. John’s water dog was rarely bred, and their numbers declined significantly. By the 1980s, the breed was extinct. Still, it left its mark, as it was one of the primary ancestors to all modern Retrievers, including the Labrador and Golden Retriever.

8 Grand Fauve De Bretagne

The Grand Fauve de Bretagne was a breed of scenthound used to hunt wolves and wild boars throughout Brittany. They were fairly large dogs with short, dense coats, and they were a pale golden-brown in color. They had a considerably difficult temperament, which made them ideally suited for hunting dangerous game.

Their temperament could be erratic, and they were hard to control. Grand Fauves de Bretagne were known to kill goats and sheep while tracking other game, which was problematic. Grand Fauves de Bretagne existed as early as the 1520s when they were prized for their excellent hunting abilities.

They continued to hunt alongside their human companions well into the 19th century, but they ultimately went extinct for an interesting reason. When wolves were extirpated from the vast majority of France, the breed was no longer desirable.

Since there were no wolves to hunt, breeders stopped breeding the Grand Fauve de Bretagne. By the early 20th century, the breed was considered extinct. Before that happened, it was crossbred with Briquet Griffon Vendéens to create the Griffon Fauve de Bretagne, a breed that remains popular in France.

7 Russian Tracker

For centuries, the Russian Tracker was used to herd flocks of sheep throughout the Caucasus Mountains. These large dogs were fast and well-suited to chasing off wolves to protect their charges. They were also considered highly intelligent and capable of keeping a flock alive without any human involvement for long periods of time.

The Russian Tracker weighed around 100 lbs. (45 kg) and sported a thick coat that protected it from the harsh cold weather of its homeland. The coat was also helpful in protecting the dogs from predators, which came in handy whenever wolves strayed too close to their flocks.

Despite their usefulness and popularity in the region, the Russian Tracker disappeared around the late-19th century. They were phased out as other dogs were brought into the area, and conserving the breed wasn’t a high priority for the people who used them.

Instead of conservation, the Russian Tracker was bred with bloodhounds and other breeds to create something new and capable of replacing them. Eventually, they all disappeared, but it is believed that they may have been the ancestors of the Golden Retriever, along with several other breeds.

6 Blue Paul Terrier

The Blue Paul Terrier was a Scottish breed with a violent history. The dogs were bred primarily for fighting, though their exact origin remains something of a mystery. What is known is that they were introduced sometime in the late 18th century and are likely the result of crossing an Irish Blue Terrier with a White Bull and Terrier, which is also extinct.

The Blue Paul Terrier had a dark blue color and a smooth coat, making their appearance similar to some Greyhounds. They had a large head with a flat forehead with small ears that were usually cropped.

The breed was incredibly popular in Scotland throughout much of the 19th century. They were prized for their strength and courage, which made them perfect candidates for dogfighting. They were considered cunning and highly capable of taking down their opponents.

The Blue Paul Terrier was aggressive when fighting. This ultimately led to its downfall, as it didn’t make for a healthy home companion. The breed became extinct by the early 20th century, mainly due to the criminalization of dogfighting in Scotland. The remaining dogs were likely crossbred out of existence.

5 Rastreador Brasileiro

The Rastreador Brasileiro was a large Brazillian breed first recognized in 1967, making it one of the newest breeds to go extinct. They varied in color from bluish to black, with many variations of spots or speckles on their short, smooth coat. In appearance, they looked like the American Coonhound.

They were first developed in the 1950s to aid in hunting peccaries, which are medium-sized wild pigs found in Central and South America. They were bred from American and European breeds to create the desired outcome. Still, the Rastreador Brasileiro was not long for this world.

Soon after it was introduced, the Rastreador Brasileiro went extinct following a double whammy. An outbreak of disease coupled with an overdose of insecticide completely destroyed the entire breeding stock. By 1973, the breed was delisted, as it was considered extinct.

Fortunately, efforts have been underway to recreate the breed. This is being done by identifying mixed-breed dogs and crossbreeding them to try and return the first Brazillian breed to be recognized back into the world. While it hasn’t been fully reintroduced, the Brazillian Kennel Club officially re-recognized it in 2019.

4 Turnspit Dog

While many dogs were bred in the Middle Ages for specific purposes, they were most often used for hunting. The Turnspit Dog is something else entirely, as it was bred for one purpose and one purpose only: to help out in the kitchen! These dogs were first described in the 16th century and have been called Kitchen Dogs and Cooking Dogs.

Their specific purpose in the kitchen was to run on a wheel. This would turn a spit (hence the name) and cook meat. It wasn’t uncommon for a kitchen to employ two Turnspit Dogs, which would work in shifts. The breed was well-adapted to its role, and they remained in the employ of English cottages for centuries.

Unfortunately, the Turnspit Dog became the victim of automation or the 19th-century kitchen equivalent. The invention of the spinning jenny, a multi-spindle spinning frame, made the dogs obsolete. Of course, it took some time, but eventually, they were no longer needed in English kitchens.

Their presence eventually “became a stigma of poverty,” and they weren’t desirable. Without their specifically bred need, Turnspit Dogs went extinct around the turn of the 20th century. Interestingly, there exists only one known taxidermied turnspit dog named Whiskey at the Abergavenny Museum in Wales.

3 Argentine Polar Dog

The Argentine Polar Dog is not a breed many were familiar with while it was around. However, it was nonetheless popular and essential for a select group of people. The dogs were bred by the Argentine Army in the 1950s as sled dogs for its bases in Antarctica.

These working dogs were powerful and skillful dogs derived from crossbreeding the Siberian Husky, Greenland dog, Alaskan Malamute, and a Manchurian Spitz. They were fairly large, reaching around 132 lbs. (60 kg) for males. Their triple coat made them considerably well-adapted to the polar temperatures.

It took 11 Argentine Polar Dogs to drag a sled weighing 1.1 tons, and they could move it quickly. On flat terrain, they could move at 22 mph (35 km/h), making them perfect for the needs of the Argentine Army. Unfortunately, they were extinct by 1994.

In accordance with the Protocol on Environment Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, every Argentine Polar Dog was removed from the continent. This was done due to the threat they were believed to pose to the native wildlife. After they were removed, they died out, as they lost the ability to fight off common canine diseases due to their isolation in Antarctica.

2 English White Terrier

In the 1860s, an eager group of breeders dubbed the name “English White Terrier” for a new breed of dog they hoped to popularize. The English White Terrier is a pricked-ear version of the white terriers common during that time. Ultimately, the goal was to create a new show ring breed, but the plan didn’t come to fruition.

For about three decades, the English White Terrier was bred and sold throughout Britain with the goal of having them outperform the other terriers of the day. They were likely crossbred from a fox terrier and a White Italian Greyhound, and they were first recognized in 1874.

The English White Terrier was far from a working dog, as it had no characteristics that made it helpful in hunting or any other task common to dog breeds. They were meant entirely for show, but they did make for loving companion dogs that require “a considerable amount of cuddling and care.”

After about 30 years, the English White Terrier was extinct, but its genealogy lives on in modern breeds. It was crossbred with the Old English Bulldog. This pairing eventually led to the Bull and Boston Terriers.

1 Molossus

The Molossus was an ancient breed of dog favored by the Greek tribe and Kingdom of the Molossians, which is where it gets its name. These dogs were bred for their great size and ferocity, which made them ideal working dogs in the realm of hunting, fighting, and herding.

Molossus were exceptionally large dogs, and they were written about by some of antiquity’s greatest poets and scholars, including Aristotle, Horace, Virgil, and many others. The precise origin of the Molossus breed has been lost to history, though there are some surviving stories.

Some say that Alexander the Great brought the dogs back from Asia, while others believe they were initially bred by the Romans, who used them as guard dogs for the Roman Army. None of these stories have ever been confirmed, but they speak to the awe and majesty of the Molossus.

The Molossus went extinct, though it’s not known how this happened. Crossbreeding may have bred them out of existence, which isn’t an uncommon end for a dog breed. The Molossus is the ancestor of numerous modern breeds, including the American Bulldog, Rottweiler, Great Dane, Mastiff-type dogs, and many more.

10 Lies About Dogs We All Believe

The American diet has been diverse from the beginning, as would be expected since diverse peoples settled the country. All of them brought traditional foods to the table, so to speak, foods considered strange today. For example, the English brought their love of pies to America, but many of the types of pies they enjoyed aren’t commonly found today. Modern noses turn up at many of the foods consumed by our ancestors, and some of what was regularly eaten is not even considered food today.

Some of the dishes which are considered strange — which is a generous descriptive to say the least — included roast peacock and peahen. In medieval times they were brought to table with flourishes including their own feathers. Other dishes from medieval times are still savored today by a few, including eel pies and jellied eels. There are still eel shops in London, though relatively few. Another food, beaver tail, was eaten widely in the Middle Ages because the beaver was an aquatic animal. The tail resembles a fish, and was so considered so, allowing it to be eaten on fast days of the liturgical calendar. Here are ten foods once widely enjoyed by Americans but generally considered strange today.

10. Eel Pie and jellied eel

Eels were plentiful in the waterways of Britain, particularly in the Thames, and eel shops abounded in the city during the days of American colonization. Arriving colonists in America were happy to find the waterways of the New World teemed with fish, eel among them. Settlers cooked eel in a variety of ways. They were fried, baked, broiled, and both used in pies and jellies. To make the latter, chopped eel was boiled in a stock, which was then cooled. The cooled stock set as a jelly, and eaten cold. In America, it was often made in the evening, allowed to cool overnight, and enjoyed for breakfast.

For most Americans today, facing cold chopped eel in jelly with one’s morning coffee does not appeal. But early American settlers loved them, taking them from the waters of Cape Cod and inland streams. Lobsters, with which the area also teemed, were so common they were often used as bait for eels. Interest in jellied eel and eel pies subsided in American cuisine as much from overfishing as for any other reason. Today eel is consumed mostly as sushi rather than in pies, though there are diehards who swear by them as a delicious dish. To each his own.

9. Pear cider and perry

Making an alcoholic beverage from pears is a process which was recorded in the annals of Ancient Rome. The Romans carried the process to France, and the Norman Invasion took it to England. Two alcoholic beverages were made from pears: pear cider and perry. Pear cider was always scarcer than cider made from apples. Pear trees grow more slowly than apple trees, and produce less fruit per tree to be harvested. But they have the advantage of being able to produce annual harvests for two centuries or more, if well husbanded. Perry became a popular cider in France and England, but in America the more prevalent apple became the primary choice for fermentation.

Pears suitable for making the beverage perry are less common than those typically eaten. In order to make a good perry, the pears need to be astringent and are typically smaller than those consumed as fruit. In France, varietals for different types of perry were developed by cultivars. Perry was well-known in early America, among those with money, imported from Britain and France. It died out in the mid-19th century. More recently, the craft brewing industry, particularly in Oregon, began producing American pear cider and perry, which are distinctly different beverages. Pear cider is sweeter than its more expensive cousin. Whether either becomes popular in America is an open question.

8. Sassafras, used as a spice and a medicine

The Europeans who arrived in colonial America had never encountered the sassafras tree, a genus indigenous to North America and Asia, but unknown in Europe. They discovered the natives using the sassafras tree in a wide variety of applications. The leaves were used to treat wounds. Other parts of the tree were used as medicines, against the woes of scurvy, toothaches, colds, fevers, and many other disorders. Leaves of the tree were also dried, ground, and used as a flavoring. It is still used in the manufacture of file, also called gumbo file, used predominantly in Cajun cooking.

Sassafras root was the source of the flavor for root beer, though it is no longer present in most commercially made root beers. The leaves were boiled and eaten as greens during the Starving Time in colonial Virginia, as well as in the early settlements of North Carolina. Sassafras bark was stripped from living trees and shipped to Britain by the early colonists as a cash crop. The process killed the trees and reduced supply, making the commodity harder to acquire. Other than in file and in a few crafted root beers and craft beers, sassafras is seldom consumed as a food today, one reason being its tendency to damage livers and kidneys.

7. Roasted turtle and turtle soup

Well into the 20th century roasted turtle and turtle soup were commonly consumed at American tables. Arriving colonists found the waters of their new home were the old home of myriads of Green Snapping turtles. The Pilgrims ate their meat at their tables, cooked them into stews, and devoured their eggs as well. Turtle eggs were an appreciated delicacy, served to dignitaries and on special occasions. Recipes which survive from the 19th century instructed the housewife in the cleaning of turtles, and the proper use of the meat from different portions of the body.

The turtle was said to contain seven different flavors of meat, each resembling veal, shrimp, chicken, goat, beef, pork, or fish. The best use of each portion was advised by cookbooks. In the 1920s Campbells offered a canned version of turtle soup. Eventually mock turtle soup, using the meat which the various portions of the turtle resembled, overcame the use of turtle meat. Convenience was the main factor, the availability of whole turtles another. Mock turtle soup is still common in America, but real turtle soup, which is in reality more of a stew, can seldom be found outside of Louisiana.

6. Roasted beaver tail

As mentioned above, the beaver was once considered a fish, allowing the meat of the tail to be consumed on days when fasting was ordained by the church. The days of considering it a fish were over by the time Europeans arrived in America, but eating beaver tail was not. Typically, the tail was severed from the animal and cooked over an open fire until the skin charred and split. It was then taken off the fire, the skin peeled away, and the meat boiled in a pot of water until it was tender. If a pot of water was not available the tail could be roasted, as it often was over campfires by hunters and trappers.

Early Americans dined on other parts of the beaver, including the liver. The entire animal was cut into parts, as would be a chicken, and roasted, fried, or baked. It did not however taste like chicken. Instead its meat was claimed to resemble wild rabbit. But the tail was considered to be the best cut of the animal, laden with protein and fat, and when properly cooked, moist and buttery in texture. Beaver meat was also used in stews and in New England baked into pies. The predominance of recipes easily found online indicate it was once quite popular, and in Canada and parts of North America, there are some who still relish roast beaver tail, and a good beaver pie.

5. Dried fish were enjoyed throughout the country

Fish of all sorts was an important source of protein in early America. Records from Mount Vernon describe annual catches of mackerel in the spring, with vast amounts of fish captured. The fish was a cash crop, food for slaves on the plantation, and served on Washington’s table. It was often eaten for breakfast. Since fish deteriorates quickly, it was salted and dried as a means of preserving it. The quality of the salt used in the preservation process was critical. Cheaper salts were corrosive and destroyed the flesh they were meant to preserve. Dried fish had to be rehydrated before it was eaten, though it retained high levels of salt when it was consumed.

Canning, and later freezing, replaced drying as the primary means of preserving fish in the late nineteenth century, and dried fish all but disappeared from American restaurants and tables. It remains a feature of some ethnic cuisines. Fish is seldom served at American breakfast tables anymore either, replaced by bacon or sausage, or other proteins. Dried fish was also once eaten in America as jerky is today, without further cooking as a snack or a meal. The image of fish drying in the sun, heavily laden with salt, is an unappetizing one for most Americans, but it was once a mainstay of the diet at all levels of society.

4. Mutton was a major protein source

Mutton is the meat of an adult sheep, that is, an animal more than two years of age. Some countries also use the term to describe the meat of goats. Few Americans eat mutton anymore, its flavor and texture both considered unappealing. But it was once a major contributor to the American diet. Stronger in flavor than lamb, or even domestic beef, mutton was once the most popular meat in the United States. Modern Americans often go their whole lives without ever once tasting it, and have an aversion to trying it. It has been the butt of jokes – a memorable episode of Seinfeld denigrated mutton thoroughly – and it is generally disdained.

One reason for the decline of mutton’s popularity was how it was cooked. Mutton requires slow cooking at lower temperatures, for up to 25 minutes per pound for some cuts, and post-World War II lifestyles didn’t accommodate such dedication. During the war American servicemen were often fed canned mutton from Australia and their dislike of the meat came home with them. Mutton (and lamb) were banned from their tables. By the end of the 20th century, Americans on average consumed less than one pound of meat from sheep per year, nearly all of it lamb. It is virtually impossible to find mutton in today’s butcher counters, and even harder to find any demand for the once popular meat.

3. Syllabub was a festive drink

Syllabub was both a drink and a dessert, consisting essentially of curdled cream, flavored with citrus and the agent used to curdle the cream. Samuel Pepys wrote of the beverage in his famous diary in 1663, so we can assume the concoction came to America from Britain. The first cookbook published in the American Colonies, The Compleat Housewife (1753), contained a recipe for syllabub. It included a quart of cream, the juice of three lemons, a pound of sugar, and a pint of wine, beaten together. The acid in the wine curdled the cream, causing it to froth. According to the recipe, the result kept for up to ten days, and was best when consumed after three or four days of aging.

It was a dessert and an after-dinner drink, though it was also served on festive occasions, separate from a meal. For use as a dessert the froth was skimmed off and served separately, the liquid discarded. Some recipes suggested tinting the froth with saffron or the juice of beets or spinach. Syllabubs were popular throughout the British colonies in America, and remained so until the mid-19th century, when they gradually and inexplicably faded away. If curiosity compels one to make a syllabub, a sweeter white wine such as a Riesling is recommended as the liquid.

2. Madeira wine

A fortified wine from the Portuguese Islands of Madeira was once an essential part of fine dining, served with cheese at the end of the meal. A long period of relaxation, sipping Madeira, was considered essential to good digestion at finer tables. Port wines, including Madeira, are readily available in the United States, though their popularity is not what it once was. Lingering at table after meals is no longer an American habit. In fact, it never was, except in the upper classes. Americans sit, eat, and go on about their business. There isn’t any time to linger over Madeira and cheese.

Madeira was the beverage chosen by the founders to toast the Declaration of Independence when their work was finished. A bottle of Madeira was broken across the bow of the USS Constitution when it was christened in 1797. Madeira’s qualities were used to ensure the legal debates of the early Supreme Court remained civil. Through the late 19th and early 20th century its popularity waned, in part because it was linked to gout. By the mid-20th century it was considered no more than a cooking wine, unfit for drinking. As such it is mainly considered today.

1. Robins were a popular game bird

An entry in an 1890 American cookbook reads, “Cover the bottom of a pie-dish with thin slices of beef and fat bacon, over which lay ten or twelve robins.” Robins were once a popular food in America, hunted and eaten on the frontier and served in restaurants and fine homes. Besides being baked in pies, robins were fried, baked, and broiled over open flames. They were split, or kept whole and stuffed, much as quail is today. The most popular means of preparing them though was baking them in pies, often in company with other small birds.

 They were far from the only small bird eaten. Why they fell out of favor is unknown. From the cookbook recipe noted above it is clear they were still regularly consumed around the turn of the 20th century. But then, so was mutton. Tastes change. In 1890 few Americans would have considered eating sushi, though eel pies were still fairly common. Today robins are protected by the Migratory Bird Act, and hunting them is illegal. They are one food of a bygone era with little chance of returning to the popularity they once held at the table.