Ridge Historical Society
The First Thanksgiving Feast
By Carol Flynn
Thanksgiving Day is a uniquely American holiday. More so than any other holiday, it is associated with a certain traditional menu, including roast turkey, stuffing, mashed and sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. But the menu for the first celebration recorded four centuries ago was very different than the one we enjoy today.
The first “Thanksgiving” celebration occurred in 1621 in Plymouth, Massachusetts, as a harvest feast. The celebrants were the English Protestants called Puritans, known affectionately in American history as the “Pilgrims,” who had split from the Church of England and come to the New World on the ship called the Mayflower; other Englishmen such as the crew who also came on the ship; and the Wampanoag people, the Native American tribe that had lived in the area for over 12,000 years.
Note that there was already a colony of settlers in Jamestown, Virginia, dating to 1607. Most likely they also held harvest feasts, but the Plymouth celebration is the one for which detailed records exist, hence it is considered the first Thanksgiving.
The Pilgrims intended to go farther south than Massachusetts. Delays caused them to not leave England until September, and they arrived in America in November. Bad weather forced them to land where they did and remain there for the winter. They were not at all prepared for the freezing cold and snow they encountered in the New World, which had a much harsher climate than that of England. The one hundred settlers and fifty crew members stayed on the ship in Plymouth harbor that first winter. Many of them, weakened by the trip and suffering from scurvy from lack of Vitamin C, and some already suffering from tuberculosis, came down with pneumonia. About half of them died on the ship, most without ever setting foot in their new country.
They were finally able to come ashore and build huts in March 1621. They were greeted by the Wampanoag people. The Wampanoag showed the Pilgrims how to fish and hunt in the area, and how to cultivate the native food plants and gather fruit.
As far as what was available for a harvest feast that fall, many items we take for granted now were not available then. There were no sweet or white potatoes. It would be another hundred years before potatoes came up to North America from South America. The Pilgrims had not yet planted wheat fields so there were no pies and no bread. The sugar rations they brought with them had quickly been depleted on the journey over, so there were no jellies or sweet desserts. They brought no large livestock with them on the Mayflower, only chickens, and a few pigs and goats, so there were no dairy products except maybe goats’ milk. No ovens had been constructed yet for baking, so all cooking was done over open fires.
A journal kept by Puritan William Bradford reported the colonists went fowl hunting for this harvest feast. Duck, geese, swans, and turkeys were all plentiful. The Wampanoag guests brought a gift of five deer to the celebration, so venison, probably some roasted and some served in a hearty stew, was without a doubt on the menu. Historians also believe that seafood was a major component of the feast, this being New England by the coast. Mussels, lobster, bass, clams, and oysters were readily available. The first Thanksgiving was very heavy on animal protein.
The vegetables the Wampanoag cultivated at the time included corn, pumpkins, squash, turnips, garlic, onions, beans, carrots, lettuce, spinach, and cabbage. The pumpkins were roasted. Fruits available for gathering included blueberries, plums, grapes, and gooseberries. Cranberries were there but it was another fifty years before there were reports of boiling them with sugar to make a jelly.
Flint corn, the multi-colored “Indian corn,” was plentiful at the first harvest. Most likely, the corn was ground into cornmeal, which was boiled and pounded into a thick corn mush or porridge. This was called Indian pudding, a take on the English fondness for “hasty pudding.” Later this dish was sweetened with molasses, made from sugar cane brought up from the Caribbean islands.
Herbs, and nuts like chestnuts, walnuts, and beechnuts, were plentiful from the forests. Along with onion, these would have been used for stuffing the fowl and flavoring dishes.
The celebration itself was a three-day event, with feasting, ball games, singing, and dancing. “Grace” was likely said before meals, but it was several years later that an official prayer service was added to the annual harvest celebration to give thanks for rain after a two-month drought.
Within a few years, the Pilgrims planted wheat and other crops. Other settlers came, bringing dairy cows and honeybees. Eventually, the diet of the settlers expanded.
Fast forward to 1827, and Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor of the popular Godey’s Lady’s Book, began advocating for a national Thanksgiving Day. She petitioned thirteen presidents until finally, Abraham Lincoln made the declaration in 1863 as a way to help unite the country in the midst of the Civil War.
For decades, Hale published Thanksgiving recipes and menus in her magazine. She also published a number of cookbooks. She championed mashed potato dishes, which were considered exotic in the mid-1800s.
A typical cookbook of 1870 recommended the following menu for Thanksgiving dinner: Oyster soup, cod with egg sauce, lobster salad, roast turkey with cranberry sauce, mixed pickles, mangoes, pickled peaches, coleslaw and celery, boiled ham, chicken pie, jelly, browned mashed potatoes, tomatoes, boiled onions, canned corn, sweet potatoes, and roasted broccoli. Mince and pumpkin pies, apple tarts, and Indian pudding were the desserts. Apples, nuts, and raisins were for snacking.
By the early 1900s, the basic fare was set – turkey, stuffing, mashed and sweet potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. Most families have favorite dishes they add to the table, and of course there are many regional, ethnic, and individual variations. The menu is forever evolving – green bean casserole was invented in 1955 by the Campbell Soup Company to promote the use of its cream of mushroom soup and has become a Thanksgiving standard.
Studies have shown that Thanksgiving dinner is the largest eating event in the U.S. People eat more on Thanksgiving than any other day of the year. And then there are always the leftovers … turkey sandwiches, turkey tetrazzini, turkey chili…. Happy Thanksgiving!
For more information on the history of Thanksgiving, visit smithsonian.com, nationalgeographic.com, history.com, and other history websites.