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As many spend this week frantically cooking the “traditional” Thanksgiving meal of turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and cranberries, it might be surprising to discover just how much that “traditional” fare has changed over the years.
It’s not just the food that’s changed. What we now consider to be the original Thanksgiving feast was not a family affair at all: There’s no evidence that women were present at the dinner. Surviving writings mention a gathering of 50 Englishmen and 90 Wampanoag people, meaning the women likely did the cooking, but never took part in the party.
What exactly were these women able to cook up after surviving their first winter in New England? Although it’s hard to be 100 percent certain, there are numerous resources to help us make an educated guess.
To begin, historians have scoured old cookbooks and studied archaeological remains from the Northeast region and considered what animals and plants existed in New England during the fall of 1621. Perhaps most notably, surviving letters written by two colonists, Governor William Bradford and Edward Winslow, describe the feast in detail.
