Dessert at the First Thanksgiving? Not Pie! (2024)

FAQs

Dessert at the First Thanksgiving? Not Pie!? ›

It turns out that the desserts on the big day were more likely sweetened by something else entirely: Dried grapes and raisins! According to If You Were at the First Thanksgiving, Anne Kamma's history book for kids: Perhaps you would have eaten cornmeal pudding sweetened with dried strawberries or grapes.

The Desserts

Some records say that the pilgrims filled hollowed out pumpkins with milk, honey and spices and baked it in hot ashes to form a custard.

Both the Pilgrims and members of the Wampanoag tribe ate pumpkins and other squashes indigenous to New England—possibly even during the harvest festival—but the fledgling colony lacked the butter and wheat flour necessary for making pie crust. Moreover, settlers hadn't yet constructed an oven for baking.

So, to the question “What did the Pilgrims eat for Thanksgiving,” the answer is both surprising and expected. Turkey (probably), venison, seafood, and all of the vegetables that they had planted and harvested that year—onions, carrots, beans, spinach, lettuce, and other greens.

Massasoit sent some of his own men to hunt deer for the feast and for three days, the English and native men, women, and children ate together. The meal consisted of deer, corn, shellfish, and roasted meat, different from today's traditional Thanksgiving feast. They played ball games, sang, and danced.

There are only two surviving documents that reference the original Thanksgiving harvest meal. They describe a feast of freshly killed deer, assorted wildfowl, a bounty of cod and bass, and flint, a native variety of corn harvested by the Native Americans, which was eaten as corn bread and porridge.

The first Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1621 over a three day harvest festival. It included 50 Pilgrims, 90 Wampanoag Indians, and lasted three days. It is believed by historians that only five women were present. Turkey wasn't on the menu at the first Thanksgiving.

The mixture that stuffed the fowl cooked for the first Thanksgiving wouldn't have included bread. Onions and nuts were the main ingredients of the breadless stuffing the Pilgrims enjoyed.

Thomas Jefferson was famously the only Founding Father and early president who refused to declare days of thanksgiving and fasting in the United States.

So while our Thanksgiving dinner table has a big ol' turkey plated in the center, the first Thanksgiving table was likely filled with ducks, geese, eels, lobster, and venison. Maybe there was a turkey, but it was either missing or too dry for anyone to literally write home about it.

What did pilgrims drink? ›

Suggesting that the Pilgrims might have had a tipple at their first Thanksgiving, Mancall says that the Pilgrims came from more urban places in England, where beer or cider was always preferred over water because it was more sanitary.

The eels were probably a slimy side course at the 17th-century version of the Thanksgiving feast. We're not sure how the eels were prepared, but they were plentiful. Another possible side dish was seal. But the most likely centerpiece of the first Thanksgiving meals was deer.

During the Mayflower's voyage, the Pilgrims' main diet would have consisted primarily of a cracker-like biscuit ("hard tack"), salt pork, dried meats including cow tongue, various pickled foods, oatmeal and other cereal grains, and fish.

Following a successful harvest in the autumn of 1621, the colonists decided to celebrate with a three-day festive of prayer. The 53 surviving are said to have eaten with 90 indigenous people in what became known as the first Thanksgiving.

Why Thanksgiving Is Also a National Day of Mourning. It's important to know that for many Native Americans, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning and protest since it commemorates the arrival of settlers in North America and the centuries of oppression and genocide that followed.

Did they eat turkey? We don't think so. The Wampanoag guests brought five deer with them, so venison was on the menu. The English brought fowl, "probably migrating waterfowl like ducks and geese, which were plentiful in autumn," says Beahrs.

So while our Thanksgiving dinner table has a big ol' turkey plated in the center, the first Thanksgiving table was likely filled with ducks, geese, eels, lobster, and venison.

During the Mayflower's voyage, the Pilgrims' main diet would have consisted primarily of a cracker-like biscuit ("hard tack"), salt pork, dried meats including cow tongue, various pickled foods, oatmeal and other cereal grains, and fish. The primary beverage for everyone, including children, was beer.

While turkey is the staple for Thanksgiving today, it may not have been on the menu during what is considered the First Thanksgiving. The First Thanksgiving meal eaten by pilgrims in November 1621 included lobster. They also ate fruits and vegetables brought by Native Americans, mussels, bass, clams, and oysters.