November 27, 2008

• A gourmand’s carnivorous feast

  
  
  

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  How was your turkey today? Or ham?
  
  

  Despite our modern tradition of having a Thanksgiving turkey, it’s probably not the only thing the Pilgrims had at their first feast. And virtually everything else we associate with the meal was probably not on the menu for the Pilgrims. Though our modern celebration for the most part centers on a meat dish with many sides, their meals included many different meat dishes and very few of our current staples. Vegetable dishes didn’t really play a large part in seventeenth century feast mentality, and depending on the time of year, many vegetables weren’t even available to the colonists.
  
  The celebration lasted for three days (try getting off from work that long these days!), and in addition to the food, there were games, races, and music. Exactly when the festival took place is uncertain, but it is believed it took place in mid-October (not November). The true tradition of Thanksgiving did not begin until three years later however, when an unusually hot and dry spring and summer caused the crops to die in the fields. Rain came soon after a day of fasting and prayer and to celebrate, November 29th was proclaimed a day of thanksgiving. During the American Revolution, a day of national thanksgiving was suggested by the Continental Congress, and by 1817, New York had adopted Thanksgiving Day as an annual custom. Many other states were also celebrating Thanksgiving by the middle of the 19th century. It was not until 1863 that President Lincoln appointed a national day of thanksgiving, and since then each president has issued a Thanksgiving Day proclamation, usually designating the fourth Thursday of each November as the holiday.
  

  The pilgrims probably didn’t have pies or anything sweet at the harvest feast. Though they had brought sugar with them on the Mayflower, by the time of the feast, there was little left. Of course, they didn’t even have an oven, so pies and cakes and breads were not at all possible even with a sweetener. The pilgrims used many spices, including cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, pepper, and dried fruit in sauces for the meats. Cooks in the seventeenth century did not use proportions like teaspoons and tablespoons however. They just improvised by taste (kind of how I cook).

  By our standards, the food that was eaten at the harvest feast would have seemed fatty, but it was probably more healthy for the pilgrims than it would be for people today. The active lifestyle of the colonists dictated a diet richer in protein, and heart attack was the least of their worries. The best way to cook things in the seventeenth century was to roast them. But this meant that someone had to sit for hours at a time and turn the spit to make sure the meat was evenly done. Also, since the pilgrims and Wampanoag Indians had no refrigeration in the seventeenth century, they tended to dry a lot of their foods to preserve them. They mainly had dried Indian corn and cornmeal, and fish.
  

  The biggest meal of the day for the Pilgrims was at noon. This was called noonmeat or dinner. Supper was a smaller meal that they had at the end of the day, while breakfast consisted of leftovers from the previous day’s noonmeat. The meal probably included cod, eel, clams, lobster, turkey, goose, duck, crane, swan, partridge, eagle, venison, and seal. Other dishes might have included pumpkin, peas, beans, onions, lettuce, radishes, carrots, plums, grapes, walnuts, chestnuts, acorns, liverwort, leeks, dried currants, and parsnips.

  The colonists and Wampanoag Indians ate similar foods, but their eating patterns were different. In a pilgrim household, the adults sat down to eat and the children and servants waited on them. Also, the Pilgrims were served by status, the choicest dishes near the most important members of the group, and there was no passing of the dishes. You ate what was nearest. While the colonists had specific meals—breakfast, dinner, and supper—the Wampanoags tended to eat when they were hungry and to have pots cooking throughout the day. This may have made those three days easier for the four adult women remaining among the pilgrims who would have had to prepare the vast feast.
  

  What Was Not on the Menu

  The following foods, all considered staples of the modern Thanksgiving, did not appear on the first feast table:

  Ham: There is no evidence that the colonists had butchered a pig by this time, though they had brought pigs with them from England.
  Sweet Potatoes/Potatoes: These were not common.
  Corn on the Cob: Corn was dried out by this time of year. Even dried corn, which is a regional favorite where I live, was not available to the Pilgrims. Dried corn such as we enjoy it now came with the Pennsylvania Dutch settlers.
  Cranberry Sauce: The colonists had cranberries but no sugar to sweeten it.
  Pumpkin Pie: This is not a recipe that existed at that point, though the pilgrims had recipes for stewed pumpkin.
  Chicken/Eggs: The colonists brought hens with them from England, but it’s unknown how many they had left at this point or whether the hens were still laying.
  Milk: No cows were aboard the Mayflower, though it’s possible that the colonists used goat milk to make cheese.
  

  
  
  

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  There are no holy days today aside from the secular celebration of Thanksgiving.

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  • 8:03 pm
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