第一個感恩節時，人們吃的什麼？
Today, the traditional Thanksgiving dinner includes any number of dishes: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, candied yams, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. But if one were to create a historically accurate feast, consisting of only those foods that historians are certain were served at the so-called “first Thanksgiving,” there would be slimmer pickings. “Wildfowl was there. Corn, in grain form for bread or for porridge, was there. Venison was there,” says Kathleen Wall. “These are absolutes.”
Two primary sources—the only surviving documents that reference the meal—confirm that these staples were part of the harvest celebration shared by the Pilgrims and Wampanoag at Plymouth Colony in 1621. Edward Winslow, an English leader who attended, wrote home to a friend:
“Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others.”
William Bradford, the governor Winslow mentions, also described the autumn of 1621, adding, “And besides waterfowl there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc. Besides, they had about a peck a meal a week to a person, or now since harvest, Indian corn to that proportion.”
But determining what else the colonists and Wampanoag might have eaten at the 17th-century feast takes some digging. To form educated guesses, Wall, a foodways culinarian at Plimoth Plantation, a living history museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts, studies cookbooks and descriptions of gardens from the period, archaeological remains such as pollen samples that might clue her in to what the colonists were growing.
Our discussion begins with the bird. Turkey was not the centerpiece of the meal, as it is today, explains Wall. Though it is possible the colonists and American Indians cooked wild turkey, she suspects that goose or duck was the wildfowl of choice. In her research, she has found that swan and passenger pigeons would have been available as well. “Passenger pigeons—extinct in the wild for over a century now—were so thick in the 1620s, they said you could hear them a quarter-hour before you saw them,” says Wall. “They say a man could shoot at the birds in flight and bring down 200.”
Small birds were often spit-roasted, while larger birds were boiled. “I also think some birds—in a lot of recipes you see this—were boiled first, then roasted to finish them off. Or things are roasted first and then boiled,” says Wall. “The early roasting gives them nicer flavor, sort of caramelizes them on the outside and makes the broth darker.”
It is possible that the birds were stuffed, though probably not with bread.(Bread, made from maize not wheat, was likely a part of the meal, but exactly how it was made is unknown.) The Pilgrims instead stuffed birds with chunks of onion and herbs. “There is a wonderful stuffing for goose in the 17th-century that is just shelled chestnuts,” says Wall. “I am thinking of that right now, and it is sounding very nice.” Since the first Thanksgiving was a three-day celebration, she adds, “I have no doubt whatsoever that birds that are roasted one day, the remains of them are all thrown in a pot and boiled up to make broth the next day. That broth thickened with grain to make a pottage.”
In addition to wildfowl and deer, the colonists and Wampanoag probably ate eels and shellfish, such as lobster, clams and mussels. “They were drying shellfish and smoking other sorts of fish,” says Wall.
According to the culinarian, the Wampanoag, like most eastern woodlands people, had a “varied and extremely good diet.” The forest provided chestnuts, walnuts and beechnuts. “They grew flint corn (multicolored Indian corn), and that was their staple. They grew beans, which they used from when they were small and green until when they were mature,” says Wall. “They also had different sorts of pumpkins or squashes.”
As we are taught in school, the Indians showed the colonists how to plant native crops. “The English colonists plant gardens in March of 1620 and 1621,” says Wall. “We don’t know exactly what’s in those gardens. But in later sources, they talk about turnips, carrots, onions, garlic and pumpkins as the sorts of things that they were growing.”
Of course, to some extent, the exercise of reimagining the spread of food at the 1621 celebration becomes a process of elimination. “You look at what an English celebration in England is at this time. What are the things on the table? You see lots of pies in the first course and in the second course, meat and fish pies. To cook a turkey in a pie was not terribly uncommon,” says Wall. “But it is like, no, the pastry isn’t there.” The colonists did not have butter and wheat flour to make crusts for pies and tarts. (That’s right: No pumpkin pie!) “That is a blank in the table, for an English eye. So what are they putting on instead? I think meat, meat and more meat,” says Wall.
Meat without potatoes, that is. White potatoes, originating in South America, and sweet potatoes, from the Caribbean, had yet to infiltrate North , there would have been no cranberry sauce. It would be another 50 years before an Englishman wrote about boiling cranberries and sugar into a “Sauce to eat .” Says Wall: “If there was beer, there were only a couple of gallons for 150 people for three days.” She thinks that to wash it all down the English and Wampanoag drank water.
All this, naturally, begs a follow-up question. So how did the Thanksgiving menu evolve into what it is today?
Wall explains that the Thanksgiving holiday, as we know it, took root in the mid-19th century. At this time, Edward Winslow’s letter, printed in a pamphlet called Mourt’s Relation, and Governor Bradford’s manuscript, titled Of Plimoth Plantation, were rediscovered and published. Boston clergyman Alexander Young printed Winslow’s letter in his Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers, and in the footnotes to the resurrected letter, he somewhat arbitrarily declared the feast the first Thanksgiving. (Wall and others at Plimoth Plantation prefer to call it “the harvest celebration in 1621.”) There was nostalgia for colonial times, and by the 1850s, most states and territories were celebrating Thanksgiving.
Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of the popular women’s magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book, a real trendsetter for running a household, was a leading voice in establishing Thanksgiving as an annual event. Beginning in 1827, Hale petitioned 13 presidents, the last of whom was Abraham Lincoln. She pitched her idea to President Lincoln as a way to unite the country in the midst of the Civil War, and, in 1863, he made Thanksgiving a national holiday.
Throughout her campaign, Hale printed Thanksgiving recipes and menus inGodey’s Lady’s Book. She also published close to a dozen cookbooks. “She is really planting this idea in the heads of lots of women that this is something they should want to do,” says Wall. “So when there finally is a national day of Thanksgiving, there is a whole body of women who are ready for it, who know what to do because she told them. A lot of the food that we think of—roast turkey with sage dressing, creamed onions, mashed turnips, even some of the mashed potato dishes, which were kind of exotic then—are there.”現在的傳統感恩節大餐菜數不定，包括：火雞、餡料、土豆泥、蜜餞山藥、蔓越橘醬和南瓜餅。但如果我們要做一場和歷史上完全相同的盛宴，裏面只包含所謂的“第一次感恩節”時會吃的東西，且這些東西都要得到歷史學家的肯定，那麼菜的數量就會少很多。“其中會有野禽，還有粒狀的玉米，用來做麪包或粥，還有鹿肉。”凱思琳·沃爾說。“這些東西絕對存在。”
提及食物的唯一遺留下來的文件有兩個來源，其中確認說這些主食是1621年美國最初移民和萬帕諾亞格在慶祝豐收時共同分享的。愛德華·溫斯洛是活動中英國人的領導，當時參加了慶祝，並給家裏的朋友寫了一封信：
“我們正在進行收割，總督派了四個人出去打鳥，這樣，我們收收完勞動果實之後就能以一種特殊的形式舉行聚會。在一點點的幫助下，他們四個人在一天之內儘可能捕到可以讓大家吃一個周的鳥。那時，我們有許多娛樂活動，其中就包括伸展手臂，許多印第安人來到我們中間，其中包括他們最偉大的王馬薩索伊特和大約九十個人，我們招待和宴請他們三天，他們出去殺了五隻鹿，然後帶回到種植園裏，贈給我們的總督、船長和其他人。”
威廉·布拉德福德就是溫斯洛提到的總督，也描述過1621年的秋天，他補充的內容是：“除了水禽，還有存有大量野火雞，他們抓了很多，其他的還有鹿肉等等。此外，他們每人一週吃一次大餐，或者像現在由於豐收了，主要吃的是玉米。”
但是，要確定17世紀時殖民地居民和印第安萬帕諾亞格人過節時吃什麼，還需要一些深入的挖掘。爲了使猜測有理有據，普利茅斯種植園的飲食文化廚師以及馬薩諸塞州普利茅斯的活生生的歷史博物館——沃爾研究了那個時期的食譜和菜園描述，以及考古遺物，比如花粉樣本，她有可能從中找到一些線索來探究殖民地居民以什麼爲生。
我們的討論始於那隻禽類。沃爾解釋道，那時火雞不像今天一樣，是這頓大餐的主菜。雖然殖民地居民和印第安人有可能做的是野火雞，但她懷疑這個野禽也有可能是鵝或鴨。根據她的研究，也有可能是天鵝或候候鴿。“候鴿一個世紀以前就已經滅絕了，但在17世紀20年代，它們分佈十分密集，他們說你在見其身一刻鐘之前就能聞其聲，”沃爾說。“他們說一個可以打下飛行中的鳥，並打下200只。”
小鳥通常是用叉子叉住烤來吃，而大一點的鳥則可以煮着吃。“我還認爲有些鳥是先煮熟然後再烤，你可以看到許多食譜都是像這樣的。或者還有一些是先烤了再煮。”沃爾說。“先烤一下使它們味道更好，然後在它們外面刷上一層類似焦糖一樣的東西，使肉湯變得更黒。”
有可能禽類裏面還填了餡料，雖然餡料也許不是麪包（麪包是用玉米麪不是小麥做的，有可能是這道菜的一部分，但具體是怎麼做的還未知）。相反，最初移民們在野禽裏面填了洋蔥塊和草藥。“17世紀時，有一種非常棒的天鵝填充餡料，就是剝了殼的粟子”，沃爾說。“我在想，就是現在，這種填充餡料聽起來也不錯。”因爲第一次感恩節是一場爲期三天的慶祝會，她又補充說，“我毫不懷疑，當野禽被烤了以後，剩下的部分都被扔到鍋裏，第二天將其煮沸做肉湯，再在那個湯裏面加穀物使之變稠就做成濃湯了。”
除了野禽和鹿，殖民地居民和萬帕諾亞格人還可能吃鰻魚和貝類，如蝦、蛤蜊和貽貝。“他們弄乾貝類和並用煙燻其他魚類。”沃爾說。
根據沃爾所說，萬帕諾亞格人像大多數東方林地居民一樣，“飲食多樣且極好”。森林裏面有栗子、核桃和山毛櫸堅果。“他們種的硬粒玉米（多色印度玉米）就是他們的主食。他們還種豆類，從又小又綠到成熟，任何時候的豆子都可以食用。”沃爾說。“他們還有不同種類的番瓜或南瓜。”
我們在學校裏面學到的內容是，印度人教殖民者怎樣種植當地作物。“英國殖民者在1620年和1621年月3月都種了菜園，”沃爾說，“我們不能確定他們當時具體在園子裏面種了什麼。但在之後的文獻中，他們談到了他們所種植的蘿蔔、胡蘿蔔、洋蔥、大蒜和南瓜之類的東西。”
當然，從某種程度上說，重新組織1621年慶祝會上的食物種類的活動成了一個排除的過程。“看看現在英格蘭的英國式慶祝。餐桌上有些什麼？第一道菜你會看到許多餡餅，第二道菜是肉和魚肉餅。做火雞餡餅也十分常見。”沃爾說，“但好像，對，沒有糕點。”殖民者們當時還沒有做餅和果餡餅皮的黃油和麪粉。（對啦！沒有南瓜餅！）“對於英國人來說，沒有南瓜餅就像是空白了一塊。那麼，他們是用什麼代替的呢？我想應該除了肉，還是肉，更多的肉。”沃爾說。
沒有土豆的肉，就是這樣。“馬玲薯源自於南非，蕃薯源自於加勒比海，當時都還沒有傳遞到北美洲。還有，當時也沒有蔓越橘醬。在那50年之後，纔有英國文獻寫到把蔓越橘煮沸加糖，使之成爲醬料，和着肉吃。”沃爾說。“如果當時有啤酒，也只有夠150個人喝三天的幾加侖。”她認爲要足夠所有人的量，英國人和萬帕諾亞格人喝的是水。
自然，這一切引出一個後續問題：那麼那時的感恩節菜單是怎麼樣演變成它今天的樣子的？
沃爾解釋說，如我們所知，感恩節確立於19世紀中期。愛德華·溫斯洛的信本來印在一本叫做《莫特的族譜》的小冊子和佈雷德福總督的手稿上，但當時又被再次發現並發表了出來。波士頓牧師亞歷山大·揚把溫斯洛的信印在了他的《移民之父記錄》中，在信的腳註中，他隨意地把那場盛宴稱作第一次感恩節。（沃爾和普利茅斯種植園的其他人更願意稱之爲“1621年的豐收慶典”。）殖民地時期的人們比較懷舊，到了19世紀50年代，大多數州和領地都開始慶祝感恩節。
薩拉·約瑟法·黑爾是流行女性雜誌Godey’s Lady’s Book的編輯，經營家庭的真正時尚引領人，她是將感恩節作爲年度活動來慶祝的過程中的主要倡導者。從1827年開始，黑爾一共向13位總統請願，最後一位總統是亞伯拉罕·林肯。在內戰中期，他向林肯總統闡述了感恩節是使全國團結的方法的觀點，之後，1863年，林肯將感恩節確定爲一個全國性假日。
黑爾不停的請願期間，她在Godey’s Lady’s Book裏面印刷了感恩節的食譜和菜單。她還在連續出版了十幾本食譜。“她真的是把這個想法根植到許多婦女的腦海裏，使之成爲她們想做的事情。”沃爾說。“所以，當最後出現在感恩節這個全國性節日時，許多女性已經準備好迎接了，她們知道應該要做什麼，因爲黑爾教過她們。我們想到的許多食物——塗了醬料的烤火雞、奶油洋蔥、蘿蔔泥、甚至一些外來的土豆泥餐——都包含在裏面。”
