Thanksgiving is all about the food, and everyone's got their favorite traditional dish. Do you pine for your mother's mashed potatoes? Do you always make sure to save room for that pumpkin pie no matter what? Or are you more of a purist who lives by the motto "turkey or bust"?
Whatever your flavor is, we can all agree that Thanksgiving is a celebration of food, which makes sense because the holiday originated as a meal between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag tribe during the harvest celebration in 1621. Of course, technology and tastes have changed a lot in almost 400 years. Was the first Thanksgiving meal anything like what we eat now?
Yes and no. There isn't a ton of information out there about what the menu was like during the first Thanksgiving, but there are two primary sources that reference the meal. This oft-cited letter from the English leader Edward Winslow written to a friend about the harvest celebration he attended describes the meal:
"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. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. 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, the governor of Plymouth Colony that Winslow mentions in his letter, also wrote of the autumn of 1621 saying, "And besides waterfowl there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc. Besides, they had about a peck a meal a week to a person, or now since harvest, Indian corn to that proportion."
From what we can glean from these two accounts, it looks like that first Thanksgiving meal consisted of a lot of fowl (So. Much. Fowl.) and venison. The fowl Winslow refers to in his letter was most likely goose or duck, but it may have also been swan or passenger pigeon, which was especially abundant in the wild at this time. Cooking birds included boiling and roasting them, according to Smithsonian.com. The pilgrims also probably stuffed their birds, not with bread, but with onions and herbs. The feast probably also included corn, squash and pumpkins, but unfortunately not in pie form. There was also probably a ton of seafood at the first Thanksgiving meal, including lobster, clams and mussels. Hey, it was in New England, after all.
But what about that turkey that Bradford mentioned in his writing, which has become a staple of the Thanksgiving dinner? There's some debate over whether the bird actually made an appearance at this celebration. Some believe Bradford's letter is evidence that turkey was served at the first Thanksgiving, while others think there is no mention of the bird in connection with the meal, so the Pilgrims and Native Americans probably didn't chow down on turkey.
However, most historians agree that turkey wasn't the centerpiece of the first Thanksgiving like it is today. That would come a little bit before Abraham Lincoln officially declared Thanksgiving a national holiday to be celebrated every month in 1863. Some historians credit Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor of the popular women's magazine Godey's Lady's Book, as helping to popularize the turkey as a Thanksgiving tradition in her 1827 novel Northwood in which she described, "The roasted turkey took precedence on this occasion, being placed at the head of the table; and well did it become its lordly station, sending forth the rich odor of its savory stuffing, and finely covered with the froth of the basting." In fact, much of the food we now associate with Thanksgiving comes from recipes and menus first published in Godey's Lady's Book.
Unfortunately, the attendees of the first Thanksgiving missed out on some of the most beloved holiday dishes today. Neither white nor sweet potatoes had arrived in North America yet. There was no butter or wheat flour to make pies. Cranberries may have been served but not in sauce form.
So what have we learned today, kids? If you want to have an authentic Thanksgiving, you should just load up on meat, meat and more meat. Otherwise, be thankful you get to celebrate Thanksgiving now and not 400 years ago.
