First Thanksgiving Feast

What Did They Eat?

First Thanksgiving Feast

Pigeons potentially served alongside turkey … venison instead of ham … maybe a side of eel … but definitely …

NO PIE.

WAIT. NO PIE?

"… no, the pastry isn't there. 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."

Kathleen Wall, a culinarian at the Plimoth Patuxet — a “living history museum” in Massachusetts where the Pilgrims accidentally landed in 1620 — explains that they were lacking butter and flour to make pie crust. Their first Thanksgiving in 1621 celebrated surviving their first year in a new land.

MAJOR MEATS

LASTING DISHES

LIKELY during Thanksgiving 1621:

• Wild turkey
• Corn (dried), beans & carrots
• Pumpkins (squash)
• Mussels, eel or shellfish

LIKELY NOT:

• Potatoes (not in North America)
• Cranberry sauce (not talked about for another 50 years — plus, sugar was scarce)
  

NAME TO KNOW: Sarah Josepha Hale

Hale’s work paid off. A letter to Pres. Lincoln in Sept. 1863 is thought to have inspired his proclamation to make Thanksgiving a national holiday on November’s last Thursday. He did this during the Civil War in 1863 (the same year he delivered the Gettysburg Address) as a way to unify the country around a common history. Read Hale’s letter on our source page!

Since 1941, after Pres. Roosevelt signed a resolution passed by Congress, Thanksgiving has occurred on the fourth Thursday in November.