7 Traditional Dishes for Thanksgiving: A History (and Modern Recipes to Try This Year!)
Every single one of the traditional dishes for Thanksgiving has an origin story. Here’s how each dish became a classic, plus some modern recipes to try.
Everyone knows the general history of Thanksgiving dinner: the Wampanoag tribe of Native Americans helped the pilgrims at Plymouth survive their first year in the New World, and they all celebrated together in the Autumn of 1621 with a holiday feast.
But do you know the history of why we eat specific dishes for Thanksgiving? Why do we eat sweet potatoes and not French fries? Pumpkin pie instead of strawberry shortcake? Cranberry sauce instead of cherry marmalade?
When you make your traditional dishes for Thanksgiving, you can say thanks that these elements have come together to make one perfect holiday meal.
The Story Behind 7 Classic Dishes for Thanksgiving
1. Turkey
Fun fact: It’s actually not a certainty that there even was turkey at the first Thanksgiving dinner — a three-day autumnal harvest celebration in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Records of the feast are pretty minimal, so some of our ideas of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner are actually just guesswork.
One piece of evidence we do have is from a letter written by colonist Edward Winslow, mentioning that the colonists hunted for “fowl” for the feast1. The letter doesn’t describe what kind of fowl, so that’s where our guesswork comes in. However, wild turkeys were native to the New World and a staple of the local diet when the pilgrims arrived in 1620, so it seems like a fair guess.
That same century, the birds were taken to Europe and mistaken for guinea fowl — which had arrived on the continent by way of the country of Turkey, hence the name.
Thanksgiving became an official holiday in the 19th century, largely thanks to the efforts of writer Sarah Josepha Hale2. At the time, turkey was already a popular centerpiece for celebratory dinners because it was cheap and plentiful, and Hale also published several turkey recipes in association with Thanksgiving. From then on, turkey (which may or may not have even been at the first Thanksgiving dinner!) became forever linked with the holiday.
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2. Dressing and Stuffing
The concept of stuffing birds’ cavities with herbs and other chopped items has been around since ancient Rome, and probably even before. The word “stuffing” first appeared in print in 1538 and held fast until the 1880s, when the Victorians decided that they didn’t like that word and changed it to “dressing.”
Today “stuffing” is usually found inside the bird, while “dressing” refers to a separate pan of the bread, vegetable, and spice mixture. Recipes vary regionally — cornbread dressing is popular in the South, people with an Italian background probably add sausage to their recipe, while German-Americans prefer to mix in dried fruit, potatoes, or apples. Early American settlers likely stuffed their birds with herbs, chestnuts, and onions. It’s hearty and delicious, and it’s become one of the most popular sides for Thanksgiving Day.
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3. Cranberry Sauce
The first English settlers to the New World called this bright berry a “craneberry,” due to its flowers that resemble a crane’s head. Native Americans already knew about the berry’s health-promoting properties and often mixed it with pemmican, a dried meat mix, to preserve it for the long New England winters.
Cranberry sauce gained popularity after General Ulysses S. Grant served it to his troops during the siege of Petersburg, Virginia in the Civil War. In 1912, Ocean Spray began canning and selling cranberries to make them available for longer, and the rest was history. If you listen carefully at the end of the iconic “Strawberry Fields Forever,” you can even hear John Lennon repeating the phrase, “cranberry sauce.” If you’re thinking of what dishes to include as sides for Thanksgiving, don’t skip a versatile and punchy cranberry sauce.
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4. Green Bean Casserole
This side dish was invented by Campbell’s test kitchen in 1955 to promote their soups. In the ‘50s, smothering vegetables in a rich sauce was a popular trend — so it was the perfect time for Campbell’s to capitalize on the fad with their soup.
The original version of this casserole skyrocketed in popularity because it took advantage of midcentury pantry staples: canned onions, canned greened beans, and Campbell’s condensed cream of mushroom soup.
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5. Sweet Potatoes
Columbus brought this orange root vegetable to the New World from the Caribbean island of St. Thomas, and Virginia saw the first stateside cultivation in 1648. The white potato was not introduced for another hundred years.
The addition of a buttery marshmallow topping dates back to the 1920s and ’30s, when marshmallows — previously an expensive, handmade treat — became widely available commercially. Other great side dishes for Thanksgiving featuring sweet potatoes include sweet potato casserole and mashed sweet potatoes.
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6. Pumpkin Pie
The pilgrims probably didn’t have pumpkin pie at the first Thanksgiving, because they didn’t have an oven to bake the crust in. However, pumpkin, which dates back 9,000 years to Mexico, had been cultivated and roasted or boiled by the Native Americans for centuries.
The pilgrims might have made stewed pumpkin by filling the shell with orange flesh, milk, honey, and spices before baking it in ashes, but the first pumpkin pie did not appear until 1670. By the early 18th century, pumpkin pie was a Thanksgiving staple — in fact, Thanksgiving was famously postponed by a week in Colchester, Connecticut because there wasn’t enough molasses available for pumpkin pies3.
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7. Pecan Pie
The fossil records show that the pecan tree grew in Texas and New Mexico long before humans arrived. Some Native American tribes relied on its meat as a major food resource for almost a third of the year. These tribes introduced this hard-shelled nut to the French settlers of New Orleans, who quickly made it into “New Orleans Pie.”
The original New Orleans Pie was a simple dessert made with nuts, molasses, eggs, and vanilla. Pecan pie as we know it was popularized by the manufacturers of Karo corn syrup in the 1930s by including a pecan pie recipe on the labels of their syrup bottles. Since then, it’s remained a holiday classic and is one of the first treats that comes to mind when you think of recipes for Thanksgiving desserts.
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Modern Alternative Thanksgiving Recipes
Now that you know a little more about the origins of traditional dishes for Thanksgiving, here are some alternative Thanksgiving recipes that let you put your own spin on the classics.
Recipes with Sweet Potato
- Gluten-Free Vegan Sweet Potato Casserole
- Sweet Potato-Lentil Shepherd’s Pie From ‘Eat Feel Fresh: A Contemporary Plant-Based Ayurvedic Cookbook’
Recipes with Pumpkin
- Paleo Pumpkin Pie from Scratch: The Most Delicious Pumpkin DIY Ever
- Celebrate Pumpkin Spice Everything This Season With No-Bake Pumpkin Balls
- Gluten-Free Vegan Pumpkin Muffin Recipe
Recipes with Cranberry
- Lighten Up Your Seasonal Eats With This Cranberry Leek Quinoa Recipe
- Cranberry Sauce with Pomegranates and Persimmons for Thanksgiving Dinner
Sources:
- http://mayflowerhistory.com/letter-winslow-1621/
- https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/sarah-hale
- https://www.history.com/news/the-history-of-pumpkin-pie
