Thanksgiving is a popular annual holiday celebrated by 90% of people in the US. It’s known for centering around the classic meal celebrated on thanksgiving. This meal is known for the classics such as turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, corn pudding, pumpkin pie, and stuffing. Even though most people enjoy this meal a lot, most people don’t know the specific origins of each dish.Before learning about each dish’s origins let’s review the origins of Thanksgiving.
The origins of the Thanksgiving Holiday date back to November 1621. In the fall of the previous year a group of Europeans boarded a boat called the Mayflower to America to seek religious freedom. After many months the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth where they started their work to establish a village. There was a harsh winter where only half the crew survived and in the Spring they were greeted by Native Americans. They taught them the ways of living in America and this shows the harmony and peace capable of European and Native Americans. In the following fall what we know as the first Thanksgiving occurs. This represented unity and peace among different cultures and tribes.
There is no exact and clear reason why turkey is always eaten at Thanksgiving but there are many theories. During the first Thanksgiving stories the pilgrims and native americans hunted for their food and it is said some of the fowl they hunted was turkey. Turkey is a wild native bird of America and so then Benjamin Franklin claimed that to be the better national bird instead of the eagle. Although he did this, the bald eagle still remains the national bird of America. Though turkey still has a whole day to itself;Thanksgiving.
Everyone knows pumpkin pie as the classic dessert served at the end of the thanksgiving meal and it has been a popular dish for many years. Amelia Simmons is the creator of the dish and she featured the recipe in her cookbook in 1796 in which it immediately became a popular dish served at thanksgiving meals. She saw that pumpkin and other types of gourd were common and plentiful in supply so it would be a creative way to make a dessert that had a common item and adding more of the uncommon and expensive items such as sugar to make it a nice treat but not out of budget for settlers.
After finding out the origins of these dishes we hope you can now know the origins of these dishes and hopefully you learned some things about the best meal of the year.
