This story was originally published Nov. 18, 2022
WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — Thanksgiving is here, and while every family has traditional foods on their menu, there are certain dishes we almost always associate with Thanksgiving.
While the origins of our yearly feast have always been a mixture of reality, speculation, and legend, we can say for sure that Thanksgiving almost always includes turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin.
Well, kind of. Let’s explore the origins of three of our most popular Thanksgiving items:
Turkey
The wild turkey is wholly American. The bird existed nowhere else except in North America. A few unsuccessful attempts were made to introduce the large bird to Britain in the 18th century.
Some indications are that the Mayans may have even raised the birds domestically. Turkeys were also significant to many Native American tribes, especially eastern tribes. However, the story that Ben Franklin was so enamored with the turkey that he wanted it to be the National Bird is just a myth.
We can’t even say that Turkey was at the first Thanksgiving with any certainty.
First, the first Thanksgiving wasn’t really labeled a “Thanksgiving.” We know that there was a three-day feast involving the Plymouth colonists and Native Americans. However, harvest festivals have existed for centuries, with just about every culture having some form of celebration in the Fall centered around the harvest.
For what is often cited as the first Thanksgiving in America, we know that the Native Americans brought deer meat and that several men from the colony went out hunting for “fowl” for the feast. So, it could have been a turkey, wild duck, goose, or any bird, for that matter.
So, why has turkey winged its way to the top of the menu? Well, for starters, it’s a large bird that can feed a single family. Secondly, there were a lot of them, as many as 10 million, when Northern Europeans began settling in North America. The bird was nearly endangered at the turn of the 20th century due to overhunting. Industrialization and selective breeding have kept bird populations robust and helped keep costs relatively low.
It also isn’t easy to determine when exactly Turkey became the go-to main dish for the holiday. Thanksgiving was first recognized officially in 1789 when George Washington proclaimed Thursday, Nov. 26, as a”Day of Publick Thanksgivin.” Thanksgiving was celebrated afterward, but it wasn’t a fixed holiday and often changed yearly.
It wasn’t until the mid-1800s that turkey took off as the favored fowl for the Thanksgiving feast. That’s likely due to Sarah Josepha-Hale, the poet, editor, and author behind Mary Had a Little Lamb. he devoted a whole chapter to a New England Thanksgiving meal in her novel Northwood: A Tale of New England with turkey at its center.
She also lobbied for the holiday to be a fixed day. Those efforts convinced President Abraham Lincoln to declare in 1863 that Thanksgiving would officially fall on the last Thursday of each year.
Stuffing
Love it or hate it, stuffing has been a part of Thanksgiving for a very long time. In fact, it’s been around so long that it’s in the first published cookbook.
The first written mention of it is in a Roman recipe book dating back to sometime between 1 BCE and 1 CE. However, most people today would probably not find it too appetizing since it included not only vegetables and herbs but also nuts, grains, and organ meats like liver and brains.
Humans began domesticating birds thousands of years before, so stuffing likely has even older origins. Over the centuries, different ingredients were added and subtracted based on cultures and what was available.
In America, stuffing would have likely involved vegetables, herbs, spices, tree nuts, possibly some grains, and other meats like sausage. At the first Thanksgiving, it was even possible that the birds were stuffed with things like clams, mussels, and small fish, which were readily available to the Plymouth colonists.
As time went on, stuffing became more than just a seasoned filling for birds; it became a side dish all its own. The introduction of a branded boxed form of “instant” stuffing in the 1970s probably helped increase its popularity.
Pumpkin pie
It can be said with certainty that there was no pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving. There may very well have been pumpkin, but they might not have even called it that. Back then, squash and pumpkin were considered the same thing since they were native to North America.
By the time Europeans arrived, Indigenous Americans had grown pumpkins for thousands of years. Pumpkin certainly could have been served at the first Thanksgiving feast, but it wouldn’t have looked anything like a pie.
Early recipes called for the pumpkin to be hollowed out, then filled with milk, spices, honey, and pieces of the pumpkin, and then placed into a fire to cook, forming a sort of sweetened stew. The first pumpkin pie recipe appears to be not American but French.
François Pierre de la Varenne, considered one of the fathers of modern French cooking, released what was considered a groundbreaking cookbook in 1651: “Le Vrai Cuisinier François. ” The cookbook includes a recipe for “Tarte la Citrouille,” or pumpkin pie.
Several versions of Pumpkin pie appeared in English cookbooks in the later 1600s. An American version wouldn’t appear until the first book of American recipes, “American Cookery,” by Amelia Simmons, was released in 1796. The dessert became popular in the Northeast, eventually spreading throughout the United States as the Thanksgiving holiday gained popularity.
Cranberry sauce
The Smithsonian Library and Archive writes that Native Americans have cultivated cranberries for centuries. Several historical documents note that tribes in the northeast used the fruit as part of their pemmican and also made jam from the fruit that was eaten with meat.
In American Cookery, published in 1796, Amelia Simmons included a recipe for preparing cranberries for a pie. Nearly a century later, the Home Cook Book included recipes for cranberry sauce. The Library of Congress notes that recipes for cranberry sauces began frequently appearing in community cookbooks throughout the early 20th century.