Think you'd want to share Thanksgiving dinner with the Pilgrims in 1627? Very likely not because the menu was not what the artists have shown us all these years.
"As the day of the harvest festival approached, four men were sent out to shoot waterfowl, returning with enough to supply the company for a week. Massasoit was invited to attend and shortly arrived..... with ninety ravenous braves! The strain on the larder was somewhat eased when some of these went out and bagged five deer. For three days, the Pilgrims and their guests gorged themselves on venison, roast duck, roast goose, clams and other shellfish, succulent eels, white bread, corn bread, leeks and watercress and other "sallet herbes" with wild plums and dried berries as dessert. All washed down with wine, made of the wild grape, both white and red, which the first Pilgrims praised as 'very sweet and strong.'"
There was no mention of "turkies, whose speed of foot in the woods constantly amazed the Pilgrims." There were cranberries by the bushel in neighboring bogs but the Pilgrims had not yet contrived a happy use for them. "Nor was the table graced with a later and more felicitious invention, pumpkin pie."
Q: If you choose to celebrate a "real" Thanksgiving, will you include "succulent eels" on your menu???
(Quoting from Saints and Strangers, by George F. Willison, 1945.)
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