The fourth Thursday in November, most Americans across the country will sit down with family and friends to share nearly the exact same meal.<\/p>\n
But the Thanksgiving menu wasn\u2019t always so set in stone. At the holiday\u2019s inception, turkey was a mere part of the meal, not a necessary centerpiece. Mincemeat pie would have made an appearance. And green-bean casserole was undreamed-of.<\/p>\n
The story of how modern Thanksgiving came to be is filled with myth, commercialization, regional influences and a dash of pragmatism, food historians say.<\/p>\n
\u201cThanksgiving is based on a national myth,\u201d said food writer Cynthia Bertelsen.<\/p>\n
A brief history of Thanksgiving<\/p>\n
First, the basics: As you\u2019ve likely heard, the whole Pilgrims-and-Indians\u2019 first Thanksgiving tale is more legend than fact. Yes, English colonists and Wampanoag Native Americans got together for a harvest festival in 1621. Harvest festivals are a common tradition in many cultures, as a matter of practicality. In late fall, the crops are in, the livestock need to be slaughtered and it\u2019s time for one last feast before the lean times of winter.<\/p>\n
And so harvest festivals continued throughout the colonial days and early years of the United States, celebrated by different states at different points throughout the autumn. Northern states, in particular, celebrated the fall with harvest feasts, while the tradition was largely ignored in the South.<\/p>\n
These harvest celebrations would have set the table groaning with their variety, according to Sandy Oliver, a food historian and co-author of \u201c Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving Recipes from Pilgrims to Pumpkin Pie\u201d (Clarkson Potter, 2005). The turkey, a bird that matures for slaughter in the fall, would have made an appearance, as would chicken, pork, beef and goose. Semisavory, semisweet foods \u2014 such as plum pudding \u2014 would have made up the side dishes.<\/p>\n
Thanksgiving was a good excuse to serve mincemeat pies, which were filled with chopped meat, dried fruit and spices. At the time, mincemeat was strongly associated with Christmas, a holiday spurned by Protestants as too Catholic. Because of the hostility toward the holiday, Protestants broke the mincemeat-Christmas association by eating it on Thanksgiving instead.<\/p>\n
There was no official Thanksgiving holiday until Sarah Josepha Hale, a 19th-century writer, made it her mission to combine all of the states\u2019 harvest festivals under one national umbrella. Finally, in the midst of the Civil War, then-President Abraham Lincoln got on board, and Congress established Thanksgiving as a national holiday in 1863 \u2014 150 years ago.<\/p>\n
The turkey takes its place<\/p>\n
The foundation of Thanksgiving as an official holiday set off a process of myth making. Even though venison (deer) is the only meat confirmed to have been present at the Pilgrims\u2019 harvest feast in 1621, turkey gradually became the centerpiece of the new holiday, thanks, in part, to Hale.<\/p>\n
In her 1827 novel \u201cNorthwood, A Tale of New England,\u201d Hale rhapsodizes about the ideal Thanksgiving menu, including the turkey at a \u201clordly station\u201d at the head of the table. She also mentions beef, pork and mutton (sheep), however \u2014 not to mention pickles and preserves, vegetables, custards, cheese, cake and pies.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the 19th century, the turkey has the additional charm that most Victorians in Yankeeland were positive that the Pilgrims had it too,\u201d Oliver said. \u201c[The Victorians] were 200 to 300 years after the first settlement here, and they were romanticizing the past pretty energetically.\u201d<\/p>\n
The turkeys of the 19th century weren\u2019t like today\u2019s big-breasted Butterballs, said Andrew Smith, a lecturer on food history at The New School in New York City. There were six or seven varieties of wild bird that would have been consumed depending on the region of the country. In the last few years foodies have embraced the past with heirloom turkeys that boast more dark meat than modern farmed birds.<\/p>\n
A parade of sides<\/p>\n
Like the turkey, some Thanksgiving sides were associated with the meal from its official beginning. Stuffing poultry with bread chunks dates back to Roman times, Bertelsen said. Cranberries and pumpkins are both Northeastern crops that are ready in the fall, making their inclusion in a fall harvest feast a no-brainer. Potatoes\u2019 place in the meal reflects their general popularity.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe like having potatoes at Thanksgiving because people like having potatoes at every meal,\u201d Oliver said.<\/p>\n
Potatoes originated in South America and were taken to Europe by Spanish explorers. They made their way back to the United States with Scots-Irish settlers, ethnic Scots who were resettled in Ireland and then immigrated to the Americas, Smith said. White potatoes didn\u2019t become a keystone of the American diet until about 1872, Bertelsen said, when botanist Luther Burbank developed the Russet potato that is ubiquitous today.<\/p>\n
Some Thanksgiving staples, however, reflect a non-Northern heritage. The South took its time jumping on the Thanksgiving bandwagon, as the holiday was seen as a Yankee invention. When the Southern states joined, though, their influence was felt far and wide. Cornbread stuffing (or dressing, as Southerners call it) hails from the South, as do sweet potatoes. In fact, both dishes reflect African American cultural heritage, said independent culinary historian Michael Twitty.<\/p>\n
\u201cSweet potatoes were one of the many root crops that were a staple in the West Indies,\u201d where enslaved Africans were pressed into service on sugarcane plantations, Twitty told LiveScience.<\/p>\n
Slaves were given small plots of land unfit for sugarcane production on which to grow food to feed themselves, Twitty said. Some of these slaves worked as sugar-boiling men, who took harvested sugarcane and boiled it down into molasses to make rum. These men would take a cast-iron dish of sweet potatoes to the boiling house and spoon ladles of the molten sugar over the dish. The boiling sugar was so hot it cooked the potatoes as it cooled.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you think about one of our favorite dishes at Thanksgiving \u2014 candied yams \u2014 that started out as food for slaves,\u201d Twitty said. (Sweet potatoes are often called yams, but they\u2019re actually different plants.)<\/p>\n
Cornbread is a Native American food adapted by European Americans and African Americans alike, Twitty said. West African meals typically include \u201cmushes\u201d like couscous or other grains, he said. Cornmeal played that role for enslaved Africans, who would mash up day-old cornbread with pepper, salt and herbs.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople loved it,\u201d Twitty said. \u201cIt came to be part and parcel of the enslaved table and the table of their owners as well. So, it was a clear influence on how we eat.\u201d<\/p>\n
The modernization of Thanksgiving<\/p>\n
In many ways, Thanksgiving remains a throwback to old ways of eating: Whole roast birds, a giant meal at midday instead of a big evening dinner, foods cooked from scratch. But modernization has influenced the holiday meal, to some extent.<\/p>\n
Green-bean casserole \u2014 usually made with mushroom soup and fried onions on top \u2014 was a 20th-century invention. In 1955, a Campbell Soup Co. home economist named Dorcas Reilly invented the recipe, which was made with Campbell\u2019s Cream of Mushroom Soup and French\u2019s French fried onions. It caught on.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbout 50 percent of French fried onions are sold during Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter because of that casserole,\u201d Oliver said.<\/p>\n
Canned cranberry sauce is relatively new on the scene, too. In 1912, the Cape Cod Cranberry Company started selling canned cranberry sauce under the now-familiar Ocean Spray name, Bertelsen said. Cranberries had long been associated with the holiday, but now there was a convenient food that made serving them as easy as wielding a can opener.<\/p>\n
Of course, various regions have their own spins on Thanksgiving. The South prefers its sweet-potato pie to the pumpkin variety, Twitty said, and pecan pie has Southern roots as well. Norwegian Americans make a potato flatbread called lefse, which they serve with meatballs, Bertelsen said. The deep-fried turkey is catching on around the country, perhaps inspired by Southern ways of cooking.<\/p>\n
\u201cI speak as a connoisseur: The deep-fried turkey has a flavor all to its own,\u201d said Smith.<\/p>\n
It remains to be seen how Thanksgiving will evolve next, but individual menus are usually open to at least a little bit of change. As people join new families by marriage, they bring their Thanksgiving traditions along with them, Oliver said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wouldn\u2019t be Thanksgiving without … fill in the blank ,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s one of the most interesting things anyone can ask.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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