Traditional Thanksgiving Dinner
In 1962 a festivity dedicated to the harvest was marked by the colonists or the Pilgrims in order to express their gratitude towards God for He had helped them to escape the danger of loosing life and to endure the difficulties of their trip in Mayflower and several dry summers at Plymouth.
And then came so necessary rain and thanks to it the arid period finished, the crop of corn and other fruits and vegetables was saved. Happy people made a decision to mark this event every year, and the neighbor tribes of native Indians with their chiefs Massasoit and Wampanoags agree too.
They visited the Whites with their huge families, consisting of more then ninety members and remained for three days. The health of the colonists was not very good and the meals were prepared by only four married women.
So General Bradford ordered four soldiers to fowl, and they managed to bring so many birds, that it became possible the whole settlement have a food for some days. Wampanoags’ contribution was a considerable one and included five deer and many other items, necessary for the festivities. Winslow’s account contained such things as corn meal, various fishes, bass and cod among them, and wild fowls or turkeys.
Lobster, rabbit, chicken, squashes, beans, chestnuts, hickory nuts, onions, leeks, dried fruits, maple syrup and honey, radishes, cabbage, carrots, eggs, and may be goat cheese could be on the tables of Plymouth dwellers in that time but were on some reasons excluded from the account.
The inhabitants didn’t know potatoes as for butter and oils they were rather rare products. No ovens were built then that’s why women had no opportunity to cook any pumpkin pies, although people could eat pumpkin stew and pudding.
The cookers were born and educated in England, so may be they tried to their best in order to unite their manner of preparing food and the products they could find in the place. Meats and poultry was cooked with the help of spit above the open fire.
It was a conventional way to fry food, but very long and there must be a person to rotate continually the spit. Thus the meat of deer fried over the fire was put on the table with boiled fish and fowl or turkey.
Indian corns do not pop well so you couldn’t find any popcorns on the tables, but corn could be added into bread or sauces. It is known that the colonists could pick up a lot of cranberries, but the cookers hadn’t any opportunity to prepare cranberry sauce as they hadn’t any sugar.
They could use honey or syrup, but it always took a lot of time to obtain it, and it was impossible for four women to carry out all that difficult labor, as they had a complicated purpose to feed approximately 150 persons. We can deduce that on the festival table of the pilgrims there was
roasted venison, stewed or boiled fowl, lobster and fish, corn and wheat breads, stew of dried fruits and perhaps pumpkin, one or two boiled vegetables and only water to drink.