How To Serve An Authentic Thanksgiving Dinner

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Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Amélie Rousseau, GoLocalPDX Contributor

The original three day feast was initiated by the Wampanoag people to celebrate their annual corn harvest, and the Pilgrims joined in, eager to give thanks for surviving their first winter in the New World and their first harvest in the fall of 1621. Are you one of those foodies who uses Thanksgiving as a chance to show off your culinary prowess, to riff on classic staples that we Americans hold so dear? Then consider the very first American feast of feasts as your inspiration this year. Interested in serving an ‘authentic’ Thanksgiving? Here’s what you’ll need to know: 

The Meat

At the first Thanksgiving, it was all about the meat. Colonist Edward Winslow wrote of the feast in a letter to a friend in merry Old England. He tells of Captain Miles Standish sending a party of men to shoot fowl for their harvest celebration. They came back with enough to feed the whole colony for a week. Wild turkeys were plentiful in the New England forests, but so were ducks, geese and even swans. Depending on their size, the birds were either roasted on spits, boiled, or some combination of both. Rather than our bready stuffings of today, historians believe that the Wampanoag people and the Pilgrims stuffed birds with fresh herbs and onions. Winslow writes how the Native Americans “went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain” (Winslow, 1621). Venison steaks and stews were surely enjoyed by all that autumn.  Being on the coast, the Pilgrims undoubtedly pigged out on fresh shellfish like mussels, lobsters, eels, oysters and clams. Consider a seafood element at your table, like steamed clams in white wine as a tantalizing amuse-bouche. Sub out the Stouffers’ for a Louisiana-style oyster cornbread stuffing. Sweet and savory, this stuffing is the perfect marriage of land and sea. 

The Sides 

I’m sorry to say, but your authentic Thanksgiving menu will have to forgo the well-loved potato. The humble spud wasn’t yet an English staple when the Mayflower set sail. The colonists did plant gardens full of carrots, onions, beans, lettuce, spinach and cabbage. The Native Americans would also have introduced the Pilgrims to native turnips and groundnuts. The Pilgrims quickly adopted the Wampanoags’ staple crop of corn into their own gardens, grinding it into cornmeal as a wheat flour substitute for porridge, bread and griddle cakes. For your table, think creamed spinach with caramelized onions and tangy cranberries, or maple-glazed carrots with roasted chestnuts. 

The Dessert

So after all that meat and trimmings you’ve still managed to save room for pie, right? Yet the pilgrims’ pumpkin ‘pie’ might surprise you. With no luxurious resources like butter or sugar to make pie crust, pilgrim women had to improvise. Filling a hollowed out pumpkin with milk, honey and spices, the whole gourd was roasted in a pit of hot ashes until soft and cooked through. You might want to try a test-run of this showstopping act of food history before the big day. (Just imagine your chortling in-laws pointing from the window as you struggle to lift a scalding 20 lb pumpkin out of a pit of coals.) Try it this year, I foodie dare you. 

The Drink

The bad news is the Pilgrims likely had little in the way of mind-altering grog to enjoy with their meals. The whole surviving starvation and sickness thing leaves little time for homebrews, I guess. The good news is that that means you get to drink whatever you and yours desires. 

Let us reflect and and be thankful for how far American life has progressed in 400 years, while remembering how the simple pleasures of friends, food and family are what matter most. Happy Thanksgiving.

An urban farmer and master gardener, Amélie Rousseau writes for fellow explorers and eaters of the plant kingdom. It's a jungle out there.

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