A 1925 painting depicts an idealized version of an early Thanksgiving celebration in Plymouth. (Public domain, Wikimedia Commons)
Thanksgiving dates back to November 1621, when the newly arrived Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians gathered at Plymouth for a harvest feast, an event regarded as America’s “first Thanksgiving.” For the Wampanoag, the feast would have been part of their annual tradition of giving thanks for the natural bounty they received from the land.
The Pilgrims had much to be thankful for as they approached their second winter. Their first had been a harsh one. Seventy-eight percent of the women who had traveled on the Mayflower had perished that winter, leaving only around 50 colonists to attend the first Thanksgiving--22 men, just four women and over 25 children and teenagers.
So what was really on the menu?
Wild turkey was indeed plentiful in the region and a common food source for both English settlers and Indigenous tribes. But it is just as likely that that the fowl served were ducks, geese and swans. Instead of bread-based stuffing, herbs, onions, or nuts might have been added to the birds for extra flavor.
Fruits indigenous to the region included blueberries, plums, grapes, gooseberries, raspberries and, of course cranberries. The Pilgrims might have been familiar with cranberries by the first Thanksgiving, but they wouldn’t have made sauces and relishes with the tart orbs. That’s because the sacks of sugar that traveled across the Atlantic on the Mayflower were nearly or fully depleted by November 1621. Cooks didn’t begin boiling cranberries with sugar and using the mixture as an accompaniment for meats until about 50 years later.
Culinary historians believe that much of the Thanksgiving meal consisted of seafood, which is often absent from today’s menus. Mussels in particular were abundant in New England and could be easily harvested because they clung to rocks along the shoreline. The colonists occasionally served mussels with curds, a dairy product with a similar consistency to cottage cheese. Lobster, bass, clams and oysters might also have been part of the feast. Colonist Edward Winslow describes the bounty of seafood near Plymouth:
“Our bay is full of lobsters all the summer and affordeth variety of other fish; in September we can take a hogshead of eels in a night with small labor, and can dig them out of their beds all the winter. We have mussels... at our doors. Oysters we have none near, but we can have them brought by the Indians when we will.” Edward Wilson
Adapted from “First Thanksgiving Meal,” Read the full story and more at History.com