Happy Thanksgiving

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.

“… 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, culinarian at the Plimoth Plantation — a “living museum” in Massachusetts where the Pilgrims landed accidentally 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

• Surviving letters from the time period describe hunts for “wild fowl” — likely wild turkey, geese, duck, and potentially flocks of passenger pigeons.
• Venison (aka DEER) meat was contributed by local Native Americans, the Wampanoag Indians, who helped teach the pilgrims how to hunt, fish & harvest the area of modern-day Cape Cod.

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 yrs) — plus, sugar was scarce.

NAME TO KNOW:
Sarah Josepha Hale

• Original poet of “Mary Had A Little Lamb” & editor of woman’s mag “Godey’s Lady’s Book,” where she wrote about American issues & customs.
• Wrote editorials & petitions for more than two decades encouraging politicians to make Thanksgiving a national (instead of regional) holiday.

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 third 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 here: