It’s that time again to start planning for the seasonal dishes we love. We start making jokes about nervous turkeys and trying to remember where that cranberry stuff is located at Market Street. Time to start digging around for Grandma’s recipes and trading cooking secrets back and forth with neighbors. While I was growing up, my family had some crazy dishes, including oyster dressing, macaroni and tomatoes, and that greenish white jello salad stuff that I never ate because it always seemed to be looking back at me. (There was, however, a pink one that tasted like cherries.)
The 17th-century Pilgrims, as you know, joined the indigenous Wampanoag people to enjoy a feast that is echoed in our Thanksgiving tradition. But, depending on where you live, their little shindig may
not have been very much like your basic family holiday turkey, gravy and dressing.
For one thing, their protein dishes weren’t exactly the same. That Norman Rockwell turkey on a platter was likely not something you would have seen at the “first feast.” They ate deer meat. In addition to the venison brought by the Wampanoag, they most likely had duck and/or goose for their main dishes, and not turkey. I have never found a way to eat a duck, though I shot a few of them when I was younger. I quit hunting them because killing just for sport is against my belief system, and I found them inedible. I have had some tasty goose, but only on occasion. It is beyond me how to cook one.
Speaking of inedible, my research indicates that another coastal delicacy was likely at the first feast: eels. I would have to be in a very bad way before considering eels for dinner. Lobster? Definitely! Crab? Yes, though not quite as definitely. Eels? Big no. The Pilgrims came from across the pond, of course, where eels were a common dish. Eel pie? Another reason for American independence.
It’s interesting that many of the original feast dishes were contributed by the native people, and were only found, up to that point, in the New World. Corn (maize) was prevalent in the Americas, having found its way up from central Mexico centuries earlier, and was evidently developed from a form of wild grass called teosinte. Potatoes were also a new world crop, having been first developed by the Incas in what is now South America, but it is unlikely they were present in the first feast. Wild beans and tomatoes were also first found in the Western world. Pumpkins were included in what the pilgrims would have called “pompions,” their word for squash.
Those recipes were much more austere than our fancy casseroles and sweet dishes. They had no sugar as we know it, so their sweeteners were probably honey or maple syrup. So no candied yams or sweet potato casserole. Drag.
But some decadent holiday foods may have been present. Even 400 years ago, fry bread was an indigenous treat. Cheese curd dishes were starting to resemble modern-day pancakes and crepes. Fruit jam—sweetened with honey—may have made appearances.
No discussion of holiday foods would be complete without poking the elephant in the room. (Mixing metaphors is art if you do it on purpose.) I’m talking about the ever-present and often derided fruitcake. Though fruitcake may have started as early as ancient Egypt, it has become a popular staple treat in America around the holidays.
The idea of mixing dried fruit, berries and nuts with some natural sweetener goes back to the dawn of civilization, when it was a sort of pre-historic energy bar. To me, the bounty of a good harvest was originally reflected in what would have been considered luxurious dessert foods in survival days.
My other point is this: My grandmother made the best scratch fruitcake in mankind’s history, in two varieties—what she called white or dark. The dark one with molasses was my favorite. My beautiful mother-in-law still makes a delicious dark fruitcake, and guess who she gets extra visits from this time of year?
Happy holidays!
