Turkey? What Turkey? – A Brief Culinary History of Thanksgiving Dinner

Movies, TV Shows, books, and other illustrative media the world over laude the first Thanksgiving in all its glory; with pilgrims and natives sitting side by side enjoying a huge roasted Turkey, roasted corn, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie and many other delightful treats that we enjoy today. Truthfully, if we could hop into a time machine and join them at this feast, it is likely that we wouldn't recognize anything from our traditional thanksgiving meal at all.

Turkeys, while abundant in the wild, had not yet been domesticated and were very difficult to catch. It would have been much easier for the English settlers to hunt waterfowl, such as ducks and geese, since those were familiar to what they would hunt and eat back home in England. The birds themselves, whatever the species, would have been stuffed with herbs, onions, or whole oats if they were stuffed at all. From various sources, the first New England settlers tended towards easily caught bounty, such as lobster, eels, oysters, and fish.

The Wampanoag mainly used corn for making bread during the harvest season and were familiar with squash like pumpkins, so corn bread and baked squash would have made it on to the menu, though perhaps not in the same forms we recognize today. Cranberries were likely not so lucky. If they were included in the meal at all, it was only to be used sparingly as an added sour or tangy flavour. When they fled England, the Pilgrims only brought with them what they could carry on their backs, so expensive spices like sugar were not high priority. Historical records show that it wasn’t until at least 50 years after the first Thanksgiving that sugar would be both available and inexpensive enough in New England to be used in making sweets.

Like sugar, potatoes also hadn't quite made it to New England yet. Originally from South America, the tuber was exported to England, but considered a rare luxury item and one that the Pilgrims would not have been able to bring with them. Sweet potatoes, originally from the Caribbean, found themselves in a similar situation, but with the added stigma of being considered a potent aphrodisiac. Definitely not something the very religious Puritans would want to bring to the new world with them.

So, when did all these “traditions” come about? Not until about 200 years later, as the settlers learned about their new homeland and began experimenting with the food they had available. The earliest we see a menu resembling what we expect a Thanksgiving meal to contain isn't until 1779 and was described in a letter. “Haunch of Venison, Roast Chine of Pork, Roast Turkey, Pigeon Pasties, Roast Goose, Onions in Cream, Cauliflower, Squash, Potatoes, Raw Celery, Mincemeat Pie, Pumpkin Pie, Apple Pie, Indian Pudding, Plum Pudding, Cider” * Yum!

Cranberry sauce still didn't appear on the menu until the mid-1800s. Around that same time, the well-known bread based stuffing also began appearing on the menu. In fact, if you were to travel through time and eat at every thanksgiving dinner from the first until now, the most common food served during a Thanksgiving meal, was any dish featuring oysters. Can you just imagine watching the United States President pardoning an Oyster?