In the United States, Thanksgiving Day is a family celebration of fellowship and the sharing of a festive meal. As with most festive occasions, particular foods are associated with these days. Thus, it is that the pleasant aromas of turkey, corn, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie permeate families’ homes on Thanksgiving Day.
This typical American holiday dinner started with the Pilgrims first Thanksgiving meal, held in the autumn of 1621, in Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts. The Pilgrims, having landed at Plymouth the previous wither, not only faced sickness, they also had makeshift dwellings and an inadequate food supply. With the coming of spring, planting proved so successful, at harvest time, Governor Bradford proclaimed a 3 day feast of Thanksgiving with the Indians.
We know, from a letter to friends in England, that Edward Winslow, one of the Pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving meal, mentioned: “Our harvest being gotten in, our Governour sent foure men fowling…” and he continues, they returned with “a great store of wild turkeys…”
The hunters not only returned with wild turkey when they went “fowling,” but, also duck, wood pigeons, partridges, and goose. Others brought oysters, clams, and all kinds of fish. Another account, by one of the Pilgrims, tells us that Chief Massasoit’s Indian braves “killed five Deere” and brought them to the governor.
The wild turkey and other meats may have been on the table that first Thanksgiving, but our roasted turkey did not become traditional fare until the beginning of the nineteenth century. A. W. Schorger, in his book, “The Wild Turkey,” states that at first, Thanksgiving was celebrated irregularly in the Colonies and probably the first culinary reference to the turkey was made by Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of Treasury, from 1789 to 1795: “No citizen of the United States should refrain from turkey on Thanksgiving Day.”
Another account of the prominence of turkey on the Thanksgiving table by the early nineteenth century, comes from an Englishman named Stuart, in his book, “Three Years in North American.” He writes about this particular day at the market in Boston, “…but the quantities of turkeys in relation to other kinds of food seemed to us most extraordinary, until we were told that on Thanksgiving Day persons of every condition have a roasted turkey at dinner…”
The turkey is native to North American and Mexico, where it had long been domesticated and called uexolotl. Spanish explorers took the bird to Europe, via Turkey, and by the 1600s the turkey was popular in England. The turkey received its name from being confused with guinea fowl (which looked similar to the turkey, but smaller) erroneously believed to be Turkish.
In addition to the roasted turkey, as we know it, pumpkin pie was also missing from the Pilgrim’s table. The Indians, who raised pumpkins, which grew abundantly, had given the new settlers the taste for boiled pumpkin. Understandably, the first year the Pilgrims were in the New World, the stores of flour on the ship were exhausted. It would have taken some time before a good crop of wheat would be cultivated, before pumpkin pie could be made.
It was the Pilgrim’s second Thanksgiving, in 1623, that pumpkin “pie” was featured on the table. Jeff Smith, in his book, “The Frugal Gourmet Cooks American,” tells us how different it was from what we know of it today: “The pumpkin was cleaned as you would a jack-o’ lantern and filled with milk, eggs, spices, and maple syrup. When it was baked, the filling turned into a wonderful custard.”
From early cookbooks, we find the colonists use of pumpkin for a variety of dishes, such as a beer and soup, and the seed were used to snack on.
The wild ancestor of the pumpkin came from the Aztecs, Incas, and Mayan peoples, eventually spreading north, and from here to Europe.
The Indians also introduced corn to the Pilgrims. Squanto, an English-speaking Pawtuxet, who befriended the colonists, taught them how to plant and cultivate the crop. Corn played an important part in the survival of the Pilgrims because the strains of wheat, brought from Europe, would not grow well in the new soil.
The Indians grew many varieties of corn, or maize, as they called it. They knew its importance, called it Sacred Mother. The Indians taught the colonists many uses of corn, such as grinding corn for several kinds of corn bread and using cracked corn for hominy and ersotz bread, which was baked corn kneaded into cakes and fried.
The Indians also taught the New World colonists about cranberries, which grew wild in the Northeast, especially the Cape Cod area of Massachusetts. Cranberries grow wild in bogs and marshes in western Europe, but America’s native cranberry is a larger variety.
There are two versions of the origin of the word. One version is that it its early stage, the flower resembles the head of a crane. Another explanation is the word comes from the French, canneberge, or shore reed, from the French colonists.
The new colonists learned how to make a sweet sauce from the berries, which has since become a traditional accompaniment to turkey. In addition to watercress, leeks, wild plums and nuts, cranberries boiled in sugar syrup would have been a treat.
Whether or not you have the traditional holiday fare—turkey, corn, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie—it’s a special time to be together with friends and family. It is also the time to remember to say “thanks” for the blessings of food in our wonderful land of abundance—America.
Reprint: 2011 on Berks County TV web site; 2012 The Lutheran Digest Carole Christman Koch grew up in Berks County and has been published in numerous publications. She has a passion for writing and has many stories from growing up on a farm to raising children to humorous stories about her and her husband to everyday stories to season stories and more.
