ISSUE 42, THANKSGIVING, Part 1: Thanksgiving before Thanksgiving

An Antiquarian’s Guide to Thanksgiving

The idea of reenacting the Wampanoag harvest feast with the settler of Plymouth Plantation first occurs in 1769 in the Old Colony Club of Plymouth Massachusetts. The Club exists because political wrangling has gotten so bad among Patriots and Tories, that the young men of the town decide they have to revisit the one shared legacy everyone possess—their Pilgrim ancestry.  They create a club, a holiday (not Thanksgiving, but Forefather’s Day), hold the feast indoors roasting meats on the original fire jack brought over on the Mayflower, sitting in Gov. Bradford’s Chair, and dining on the foods they thought had been served in 1621:

1.     large baked Indian whortle berry pudding—[that’s huckleberries]

2.     a dish of succotash

3.     a dish of clams

4.     a dish of oysters and a dish of codfish

5.     a haunch of venison roasted on the first jack brought to the colony

6.     a dish of sea fowl

7.     a dish of frost fish and eels

8.     an apple pie.

9.     A course of cranberry tars and cheese made in the old colony dressed in the plainest manner.

No turkey, no ham, no sweet potatoes, no pumpkin pie. No descendants of the Natives either.  But instead of bracing New England water, alcoholic beverages were served including cider and cider brandy. 

In the 1790 the individual states in New England began declaring public thanksgiving days in November or December, during which a morning sermon was delivered, a New England Feast held in mid-day, and a ball or frolic in the evening. The recollections of the Pilgrims began to attach to these days, since Forefather’s Day was a Massachusetts holiday, not one common to New England in general.

The menu of the Feast shifted in the last decades of the 18th century—Turkey supplanted venison—Pumpkin Pie muscled out apple—chicken pies and pork found a place at the table.  As the holiday spread inland, the emphasis on seafood in the Plymouth meal diminished.  At Plymouth, however, the seafood emphasis was maintained to the extent that the festivity was called “The Feast of the Shells.”

Another invariable feature of the New England Feasts were the puddings—plum, nesselrode, and hasty.

The pumpkin pie then was made out of pumpkins and distinguished from winter squash pies that had their own place at the table.  Now, of course, most canned pumpkin pie filling is made of winter squash.  The pies’ sizes reflected those of the assembly.  “Family Pie” was an enormous one. 

We tend to serve the pies at the end of the meal.  In the early republic up into the antebellum period they were part of the first course.  In an 1839 comic portrait of Thanksgiving published in Vermont, Mrs. Oilynose announces, “I intended to have punkin-pies and a great apple slump, and a leg of bacon and plum pudd’n for the first course—and then a roast turkey and a plenty of inyons and apple sauce—and I guess as how we had better have some boiled chickens too, and squash pies and things.”

Pies and puddings first (note that is also the case in the 1769 Forefather’s Feast).  No soups on Thanksgiving.

Finally, there were invariable experiments on the basic ingredients.  My favorite?

A pumpkin seed pie, the recipe for which was published in the Boston Courier in 1839.