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 America.Also, 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 with...Meat.” 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(xiàn)在的傳統(tǒng)感恩節(jié)大餐菜數(shù)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,里面只包含所謂的“第一次感恩節(jié)”時(shí)會(huì)吃的東西,且這些東西都要得到歷史學(xué)家的肯定,那么菜的數(shù)量就會(huì)少很多。“其中會(huì)有野禽,還有粒狀的玉米,用來做面包或粥,還有鹿肉。”凱思琳·沃爾說。“這些東西絕對存在。”
“我們正在進(jìn)行收割,總督派了四個(gè)人出去打鳥,這樣,我們收收完勞動(dòng)果實(shí)之后就能以一種特殊的形式舉行聚會(huì)。在一點(diǎn)點(diǎn)的幫助下,他們四個(gè)人在一天之內(nèi)盡可能捕到可以讓大家吃一個(gè)周的鳥。那時(shí),我們有許多娛樂活動(dòng),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(gè)人,我們招待和宴請他們?nèi)欤麄兂鋈⒘宋逯宦梗缓髱Щ氐椒N植園里,贈(zèng)給我們的總督、船長和其他人。”
有可能禽類里面還填了餡料,雖然餡料也許不是面包(面包是用玉米面不是小麥做的,有可能是這道菜的一部分,但具體是怎么做的還未知)。相反,最初移民們在野禽里面填了洋蔥塊和草藥。“17世紀(jì)時(shí),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(xiàn)在,這種填充餡料聽起來也不錯(cuò)。”因?yàn)榈谝淮胃卸鞴?jié)是一場為期三天的慶祝會(huì),她又補(bǔ)充說,“我毫不懷疑,當(dāng)野禽被烤了以后,剩下的部分都被扔到鍋里,第二天將其煮沸做肉湯,再在那個(gè)湯里面加谷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。“他們弄干貝類和并用煙熏其他魚類。”沃爾說。 根據(jù)沃爾所說,萬帕諾亞格人像大多數(shù)東方林地居民一樣,“飲食多樣且極好”。森林里面有栗子、核桃和山毛櫸堅(jiān)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(shí)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。”
當(dāng)然,從某種程度上說,重新組織1621年慶祝會(huì)上的食物種類的活動(dòng)成了一個(gè)排除的過程。“看看現(xiàn)在英格蘭的英國式慶祝。餐桌上有些什么?第一道菜你會(huì)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(diǎn)。”殖民者們當(dāng)時(shí)還沒有做餅和果餡餅皮的黃油和面粉。(對啦!沒有南瓜餅!)“對于英國人來說,沒有南瓜餅就像是空白了一塊。那么,他們是用什么代替的呢?我想應(yīng)該除了肉,還是肉,更多的肉。”沃爾說。
黑爾不停的請?jiān)钙陂g,她在Godey’s Lady’s Book里面印刷了感恩節(jié)的食譜和菜單。她還在連續(xù)出版了十幾本食譜。“她真的是把這個(gè)想法根植到許多婦女的腦海里,使之成為她們想做的事情。”沃爾說。“所以,當(dāng)最后出現(xiàn)在感恩節(jié)這個(gè)全國性節(jié)日時(shí),許多女性已經(jīng)準(zhǔn)備好迎接了,她們知道應(yīng)該要做什么,因?yàn)楹跔柦踢^她們。我們想到的許多食物——涂了醬料的烤火雞、奶油洋蔥、蘿卜泥、甚至一些外來的土豆泥餐——都包含在里面。” (譯者 jasminezy 編輯 丹妮) |