What was on the menu at the first Thanksgiving?
Today, the traditional Thanksgiving dinner includes any number of dishes. Turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes. Candied yams, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. They are all there. If we were to create a historically correct feast made up of foods that were served at the so-called "first Thanksgiving," there would be slimmer pickings.
"Wildfowl was there. Corn, in grain form for bread or for porridge, was there. Venison was there," says Kathleen Wall.
Two primary sources confirm that these staples were part of the harvest celebration shared by the Pilgrims and Wampanoag at Plymouth Colony in 1621. Edward Winslow is an English leader who attended. He wrote home to a friend:
"Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling. That so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms. Many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit. With some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted. And they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others."
William Bradford is the governor that Winslow mentions. He also described the autumn of 1621. He added, "And besides waterfowl there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc."
Determining what else they might have eaten at the 17th-century feast takes some digging. Wall is a culinarian at Plimoth Plantation. It is a living history museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts. To form educated guesses about history, she studies cookbooks and descriptions of gardens from the period. She also looks at archaeological remains such as pollen samples. They might clue her in to what the colonists were growing.
Turkey was not the heart of the meal. It's possible the colonists and American Indians cooked wild turkey. But Wall thinks that goose or duck was more likely.
Small birds were often spit-roasted. Larger birds were boiled.
"I also think some birds were boiled first. Then roasted to finish them off. Or things are roasted first and then boiled," says Wall. "The early roasting gives them nicer flavor. It sort of caramelizes them on the outside and makes the broth darker."
It is possible that the birds were stuffed. If so, it probably was not with bread. Bread was made from maize not wheat. But, it was likely a part of the meal. Exactly how it was made is unknown. The Pilgrims instead stuffed birds with chunks of onion and herbs. "There is a wonderful stuffing for goose in the 17th-century that is just shelled chestnuts," says Wall.
In addition to wildfowl and deer, the colonists and Wampanoag probably ate eels and shellfish. The shellfish might have included lobster. Or clams and mussels. "They were drying shellfish and smoking other sorts of fish," says Wall.
According to Wall, the Wampanoag had a "varied and extremely good diet." That is like most eastern woodlands people. The forest provided chestnuts, walnuts and beechnuts. "They grew flint corn. And that was their staple. They grew beans, which they used from when they were small and green until when they were mature," says Wall. "They also had different sorts of pumpkins or squashes."
As we are taught in school, the Indians showed the colonists how to plant native crops. "The English colonists plant gardens in March of 1620 and 1621," says Wall. "We don't know exactly what's in those gardens. But in later sources, they talk about turnips. And they talk about carrots, onions, garlic and pumpkins as the sorts of things that they were growing."
The exercise of remaking the spread of food at the 1621 celebration becomes a process of elimination. "You look at what an English celebration in England is at this time. What are the things on the table? You see lots of pies in the first course. And in the second course, meat and fish pies. To cook a turkey in a pie was not terribly uncommon," says Wall.
"But it is like, no, the pastry isn't there." The colonists did not have butter and wheat flour to make crusts for pies and tarts. That's right: No pumpkin pie! "That is a blank in the table for an English eye. So what are they putting on instead? I think meat, meat and more meat," says Wall.
Meat without potatoes, that is. White potatoes originated in South America and sweet potatoes are from the Caribbean. They had yet to make it to North America. There also would have been no cranberry sauce. It would be another 50 years before an Englishman wrote about boiling cranberries and sugar into a "Sauce to eat with meat."
How did the Thanksgiving menu become what it is today?
Wall explains that the current Thanksgiving holiday took root in the mid-19th century. It was then that Edward Winslow's letter was printed in a pamphlet called Mourt's Relation. And Gov. Bradford's manuscript, titled Of Plimoth Plantation, was rediscovered and published.
Boston clergyman Alexander Young printed Winslow's letter in his Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers. In the notes to the revived letter, he called the feast the first Thanksgiving. There was longing for colonial times. And by the 1850s, most states and territories were celebrating Thanksgiving.
Sarah Josepha Hale was the editor of the women's magazine Godey's Lady's Book. It was a leading voice in making Thanksgiving a yearly event. She shared her idea with President Lincoln. She saw it as a way to unite the country in the midst of the Civil War. In 1863, he made Thanksgiving a national holiday.
Hale printed Thanksgiving recipes and menus in Godey's Lady's Book. She also published close to a dozen cookbooks.
"A lot of the food that we think of like roast turkey with sage dressing, creamed onions and mashed turnips. Even some of the mashed potato dishes, which were kind of exotic then are there," said Wall.
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