Every Thanksgiving, families roast the turkey, prepare the stuffing, cook the vegetables, and decide what dessert will be. This meal is roughly nationwide. But what did the first settlers eat on their first Thanksgiving?
In the state of Pennsylvania, turkey seems like a fitting meal. There are plenty of wild turkey in the area and could be readily hunted by the colonists. But that isn’t the only bird that could have been served. The goose migration runs at about the same time as the Thanksgiving season. Duck also would have been an available waterfowl, even though you would need to collect a lot more ducks to account for the weight of a single goose. Pennsylvania also has plenty of grouse and pheasant. Why we settled on turkey as our traditional bird, I don’t know. There are also other options for meat other than bird. Rabbits and squirrels abound in the woods. Rabbit wouldn’t necessarily be suitable for winter because rabbit meat is incredibly lean, contributing no fat to the body. However, a stew of rabbit and squirrel would be a suitable meal for the settlers. In my opinion, the largest and most abundant game would have been deer. Deer would have been more useful to the settlers not only because one deer would feed more people than a turkey, but also the hides could be used for warmth through the cold winter.
Aside from which meat would be the main course, side dishes and desserts also need to be considered. Most vegetables that could be stored for extended periods of time without refrigeration, like corn and potatoes, seem like a plausible course. Stuffing to the settlers might have been similar to our stuffing. The idea behind their stuffing was to cube their most likely stale bread, then soften it up with the drippings left over from cooking. Other possible dishes would probably include some hard cheese brought over on the ship. In terms of desserts, different kinds of pie were served. The ingredients could have been collected during the fall foraging, like berries and squashes. The dough would have been a simple flour dough.
Thanksgiving meals seem to be standardized throughout the different cultures of America. In my opinion, people should eat the native foods of their region, like the settlers first did.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment