So it was possible to bring food in from pretty far away. A lot of people ask about that – they say, “They must have eaten better in the 19th century. They must have eaten more local food.” Yes. They did, but they also had the same desire for imported foods as we do today – lemons were everywhere in the 19th century, and they’re certainly not grown locally.
The food was more seasonal than it is now, but they were importing food from the south, so they had southern watermelons in the markets in April, and apples as early as July. The seasonal boundaries for food were beginning to be blurred even back then.
