Colonial meals combined foreign spices and beverages—like sugar and tea—with local meats and vegetables, such as turtle caught in the Bay or corn, gourds, and beans that Native people first taught colonists to cultivate. If a settler colonist had the means, they ate off pewter dishes. The pewter on display in the corner cabinet was variously imported from European metalworks or cast by American blacksmiths. Pewter was cheaper than silver but more costly than the earthenware or wooden dishes used by sailors, servants, and enslaved African people.