October of 1621 saw the original Plymouth, Massachusetts, feast that would later become known as the first Thanksgiving. However, very little similarity exists between that first fall festivity and the traditional commemorative meal we now enjoy in November. Even the duration of the celebration is different. If the thought of your Thanksgiving dinner stretching beyond a few hours while you try to tactfully send those third cousins once-removed home with a bag full of leftovers fills you with dread, remember that the original gathering lasted for three days. Three. Days. That is more than enough time to air every possible family grievance and probably create a few new ones. Even those third cousins once-removed were no doubt creeping toward the door.
While the exact specifics of what was served during those three crisp autumn days is unknown, the spread did not likely resemble our modern Thanksgiving buffet. Perhaps the first people to embrace a high protein, low carbohydrate diet, the Pilgrims and their guests ate enormous amounts of meat during the celebration. The Wampanoag people brought five deer as gifts. And while wild turkey may have been served, passenger pigeons, pheasant, geese, and ducks were far more prevalent, as was a variety of seafood, such as lobster, bass, and clams. Since the party raged on for a full three days, any shortage of the above was a good reason to excuse oneself from the table and forage for more meat.
Did stuffing accompany this cornucopia of carnivorous cuisine? Sadly, no.
Neither were other dishes served that are now thought of as being quintessentially Thanksgiving. Cranberries may have been served, but not as a relish and certainly without the much needed assistance of any type of sweetener. Walnuts, chestnuts, and squash were plentiful and probably graced the Pilgrims’ table but, unfortunately, with no butter or flour for pastries or an oven in which to bake them, absolutely no — horrified gasp! — pumpkin pie was included.
But lest you think that no Thanksgiving dessert was served, evidence shows that a custard may have been made from a combination of cottage-cheese-looking goat curds and the mussels that were harvested off the shoreline. Yum.
So how did Thanksgiving go from a three-day carb fest to the tasty turkey, cranberry, and, yes, stuffing based meal it is today? It didn’t happen overnight. After their initial bash, the Pilgrims did not celebrate the harvest for another two years — they probably needed the extra time to digest all of that protein — and it was another 166 years before Thanksgiving was declared a national holiday by President George Washington. Even then, it did not become an annual event for almost another century.
Without the dogged persistence of a woman named Sarah Josepha Hale, the true godmother of our annual Turkey Day celebration, Thanksgiving would surely not be what it is today. As the editor of a widely circulated women’s magazine, Sarah began pushing the idea of a nationally recognized annual Thanksgiving in 1827; she also published the original holiday recipes that have since become requisite on tables across the country.
Mussel custard did not make the cut.
Sarah spent more than 30 years goading, prodding, and petitioning 13 different presidents until finally, in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln took time off from the Civil War to make Thanksgiving an annually recognized federal holiday. Aside from bringing us this yearly celebration with its own carefully scripted menu, Sarah is also credited with writing “Mary Had A Little Lamb,” which may explain why turkey, and not mutton, is the centerpiece around which the meal is planned.
While Thanksgiving has mainly been celebrated on the fourth Thursday of every November, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the holiday to the third week for two years beginning in 1939 when he decided that depression-weary retailers might benefit from an extra week of holiday shopping. The change was hugely unpopular and became satiric fodder for many of the era’s popular radio comedy shows, which dubbed the holiday Franksgiving. As sales did not discernably increase during that time, FDR was forced to sign a bill in 1941 that moved Thanksgiving back to the last Thursday of the month, where it remains comfortably snuggled between Halloween and Christmas.
The dispute about when to celebrate Turkey Day may have been decided, but Thanksgiving controversy is far from finished. In kitchens, around tables, in courtyards, and on patios, another debate rages on: what to call the starch and vegetable dish that is traditionally placed right beside the turkey. Is it stuffing or is it dressing?
The term “stuffing” implies that the mixture is actually packed into something else — in this case a turkey before it is cooked — while “dressing” suggests a side dish prepared separately, then placed as an adornment to accentuate the bird’s appeal. In reality, these two terms refer less to the manner in which this dish is prepared and more to the geographical region in which it is served.
In the South, this faithful turkey companion is almost always referred to as dressing and is usually prepared with cornbread. It has been suggested that Southerners say “dressing” even when it is cooked inside the carcass, because “stuffing” sounds too crude, and we would much rather have the stuffing knocked out of us than appear vulgar in any way, thank you very much.
Our Northern neighbors tend to prefer the term stuffing, even when it is prepared several miles away from the turkey by those third cousins once-removed who will bring it over with Grandma’s special green bean casserole. Adding oil to the breadcrumbs of this contentious stuffing versus dressing controversy, some folks in Pennsylvania call it neither, referring to the dish as simply “filling.”
It’s tempting to think that the stormy seasoned breadcrumb debate started when Sarah first published the recipe in 1841 — she called it dressing, by the way. However, primitive stuffing side dishes found their way to tables long before the Pilgrims made it to Plymouth Rock.
A 3,700-year-old Sumerian tablet contains recipes for a roasted chicken dinner, including a side dish made from softened bread that sounds remarkably like modern stuffing. And evidence exists that in the first century A.D., the Romans enthusiastically stuffed all types of animals that they dined upon, everything from suckling pigs to dormice. And while the latter probably required a minute amount of stuffing, it is a delicacy that hopefully vanished with the Roman Empire.
The science of assembling the proper amount of stuffing base, creating the perfect seasoning, and cooking it to the precise level of fluffy softness was greatly advanced when in 1972 Ruth Siems created Stove Top Stuffing. Using rehydration techniques, she perfected a standard, uniform stuffing that is ready to eat in anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes. The mystery remains, however, as to why she chose to market it is as stuffing rather than dressing, because it is not to be cooked inside of any cavity — not a turkey, not a chicken, and certainly not a dormouse.
Today, there are as many different types of stuffing recipes as there are uniquely varying Thanksgiving traditions. In the South, dressing tends to be cornbread based, with occasional pieces of pork or bacon added. Southwesterners sometimes incorporate hatch chilies into their dressing, while San Francisco folks often make use of their abundant sourdough supply as their base. The Pennsylvania Dutch “filling” is a mixture of potatoes, eggs, butter, and bread served alongside their Thanksgiving bird.
While mussel custard mercifully no longer makes an appearance on the modern Thanksgiving table, some celebrants enjoy a different mollusk — the oyster — as part of their holiday meal. The tradition of stuffing a bird with oysters was originally practiced in England and then became popular in America at a time when oysters were cheaper and more plentiful than they are today. In fact, the turkey itself was a much more expensive item, so cooks used oysters to increase the volume of protein served with each meal. However, in the early 1900s overfishing and pollution greatly decreased the oyster population, causing costs to skyrocket, and oyster stuffing lost its appeal with all but the most die-hard of oyster fans.
Chestnuts, once a popular addition to holiday stuffing, suffered a similar fate when a 1904 blight wiped out most of the nation’s chestnut trees. The trees are making a comeback, but the popularity of chestnut stuffing has not reclaimed its former glory, in part because shelling and peeling a chestnut takes considerably more effort than simply adding water to a breadcrumb and seasoning mix.
Some families enjoy their annual giblet stuffing, although the definition of “giblet” leaves one to ponder why that hasn’t gone the way of the stuffed dormouse. The liver, heart, digestive organs, kidneys, neck, feet, and wing tips can all be brought under the umbrella term of giblet, and the little bag that accompanies the turkey may contain organs that come from many different birds. Those who love it, love it, but it might be wise to have an alternative side dish on hand for guests who find giblets difficult to stomach.
Oysters, chestnuts, and giblet stuffing dishes might sound exotic, but far zanier variations are currently circulating. For example, a Cheez-It stuffing is made by crushing those puffy, salty, orange little snack crackers and mixing them with butter, salt, and a bit of turkey juice, and then baking the whole mishmash to rust-colored completion. That would certainly add color to any table.
An actual published recipe for stuffing made from Twinkies features the sponge cakes sliced, the creme filling scooped out to be used as baste for the bird, the slices cubed and toasted with apples and corn muffins, and the whole concoction roasted inside the turkey. Only the bravest hostess serves Twinkie stuffing to family and friends.
Other out-of-the-stuffing-box ideas include the use of tortilla corn chips, popcorn, pepperoni, mozzarella, and hamburger sliders, all in an effort to make unique and hopefully tasty holiday dressings while simultaneously ensuring no lull in the conversation. Cheez-It stuffing certainly warrants plenty of lively discussion.
The following dressing ideas are more traditional (no Twinkies needed) and can be served whenever you want to bring a bit of homey autumn freshness to the dinner table. Each is fragrant, fluffy, and absolutely delicious and would have kept Pilgrims smiling and stuffed to the gills.
Savory Sage Stuffing
The smell of Thanksgiving will permeate the kitchen, and anyone in nose shot will be ready to eat, shop, wrap, and warble with the best of them! The bread can be made stale over the course of a few days or, if you’ve procrastinated a bit, toasted and used immediately. If necessary, this stuffing can be assembled the night before serving and baked the next day.
1 to 1 1/2 pounds of crusty French or Italian bread, cut into 1 inch cubes
1/4 cup unsalted butter
1 cup onions, diced
1 cup celery, diced and chopped
1/4 cup parsley, minced
1/4 cup fresh sage leaves, finely chopped
2 large eggs
2 cups chicken broth
1 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
Leave bread out two or three days and cut into cubes or spread out cubed bread on a cookie sheet and bake for 1 to 1 1/2 hours in 225 degrees F, stirring frequently, until crispy. Remove and turn oven up to 350 degrees F.
In a large saucepan, melt butter over medium-high heat, add onions and celery, and cook, stirring frequently until soft, about 8 minutes. Add parsley and sage, cooking and stirring for another 2 minutes, then remove from heat. In large bowl, beat eggs, add chicken broth, thyme, salt and pepper, cooked vegetables, and then fold in bread cubes. Turn into greased 3-quart baking dish, cover with foil, and put into refrigerator for the next day or place directly into oven. Bake for 30 minutes or 40 minutes if stuffing has just come out of the refrigerator. Remove foil and bake for another 10 minutes until crusty. Serve immediately.
Southern Style Cornbread Dressing
This is a classic Southern favorite with so much savory flavor, you’ll want to serve it paired with a roasted bird year round. The cornbread can be made several days ahead, and don’t worry about sneaking a sliver and enjoying it doused in honey.
1 16 ounce package of dried cornbread mix
3 pieces white toast, crumbled
12 tablespoons butter (1 1/2 sticks)
1 large onion, diced
4 stalks of celery, chopped
2 cups chicken broth
3 large eggs
1 tablespoon fresh sage, chopped
2 tablespoons parsley, chopped
1 teaspoon poultry seasoning
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
Prepare the cornbread according to the packaged directions; set aside. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. When the cornbread is cool, crumble in a large bowl and add the toast. Melt 6 tablespoons of the butter over medium-high heat, add the onion and celery, and cook until soft, about 6 to 8 minutes, stirring constantly. Pour into bowl with cornbread and toast. In another large bowl, combine chicken broth, eggs, sage, parsley, poultry seasoning, salt, and pepper. Melt the remaining 6 tablespoons of butter and whisk it into the chicken broth mixture. Pour this butter-chicken broth mixture into the bowl with the cornbread and toast; stir to combine. Place mixture in a 9-inch by 13-inch baking dish and bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until lightly brown and cooked through. Serve immediately.
Ye Ole Oyster Dressing
Seafood and poultry might sound like a weird combination, but hey, the Pilgrims enjoyed it at their first Thanksgiving (mussel custard, anyone?). The bread can be made stale over the course of a few days or toasted and used immediately. This dressing can be assembled without the oysters and without baking the day before and then covered and refrigerated. Once served, it will make even the most squeamish guests at the table oyster dressing believers.
1 to 1 1/2 pounds of crusty French or Italian bread, cut into 1 inch cubes
1/4 cup butter
1 cup onion, chopped
1 cup celery, chopped
3 tablespoons fresh thyme, chopped
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped
1 tablespoon fresh sage, chopped
1 tablespoon garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 eggs
2 cups chicken broth
1 cup oysters, shucked, drained and chopped
Leave bread out two to three days and cut into cubes or spread out cubed bread on cookie sheet and bake for 1 to 1 1/2 hours in 225 degrees F oven, stirring frequently, until crispy. Remove and turn oven up to 325 degrees F.
Melt 6 tablespoons of the butter over medium-high heat, add the onion and celery, and cook until soft, about 6 to 8 minutes. Add thyme, parsley, sage, garlic, salt, and pepper, and cook 2 more minutes, stirring constantly. Transfer to a large bowl. Whisk in eggs and chicken broth, and then fold in the breadcrumbs.
If prepared the night before, cover with foil and refrigerate and then bring mixture to room temperature the following morning. Add oysters and stir gently to combine. Place mixture in 3-quart buttered casserole, then bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until top is toasted and inserted knife comes out clean. Serve immediately.
Holiday Cheery Chestnut Stuffing
Cooking with chestnuts can be intimidating, but master this dressing, and you’ll be just one step away from Jack Frost nipping at your nose. If fresh chestnuts seem too daunting, substitute canned, peeled, and roasted chestnuts — we won’t tell and your guests probably won’t be able to as well.
1 to 1 1/2 pounds of crusty French or Italian bread, cut into 1 inch cubes
2 cups whole fresh chestnuts
1/2 cup butter
1 cup onion, chopped
1 cup celery, chopped
3 tablespoons fresh thyme, chopped
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, chopped
1 tablespoon fresh sage, chopped
1 tablespoon garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 eggs
2 cups chicken broth
Leave bread out two to three days and cut into cubes. Spread out cubed bread on cookie sheet and bake for 1 to 1 1/2 hours in 225 degrees F oven, stirring frequently, until crispy. Remove and turn oven up to 350 degrees F.
Using a sharp knife, cut an X on the round side of each chestnut. Place chestnuts in medium saucepan, cover with water, and bring to a boil. Cover saucepan, reduce heat to medium and simmer for 25 to 30 minutes, until soft. Drain, and set aside until they are cool enough to handle. Peel, discard skins, and coarsely chop the chestnut meat. If preferred, you can substitute 2 cups of canned chestnuts, drained, and chopped.
Melt butter over medium-high heat, add the onion and celery, and cook until soft, about 6 to 8 minutes. Add thyme, rosemary, sage, garlic, salt, and pepper; cook 2 more minutes, stirring constantly. Transfer to a large bowl. Whisk in eggs and chicken broth, then fold in the bread crumbs and chestnuts. Place mixture in a 4-quart buttered casserole, cover with foil, and bake for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake for an additional 30 minutes until top is crisp and lightly browned. Serve immediately.