The Thanksgiving Table

The American Thanksgiving belongs first to New England, where the harvest observances of the English colonists at Plymouth, set beside the older foodways of the Wampanoag, gave the holiday its founding image. James Beard, in James Beard's American Cookery, treats the festival as a table of the northern farm: a roast bird, a stuffing, cranberries, squash and pumpkin, and pies at the close. The day was later fixed as a national observance, and its menu spread from the New England kitchen to every region, each of which added its own dishes.

The centre of the table is the turkey, Meleagris gallopavo, a bird native to North America and long the natural choice for a large household. The method is the plain roast: a bird well seasoned, stuffed or left empty according to the house, basted and brought to a skin of deep gold. The cook who keeps to that order, with the bird rested before carving, serves the dish as it ought to be served. Around the bird stand the dishes that fix the meal as American. Cranberries, Vaccinium macrocarpon, are a fruit of the northern bogs, cooked with sugar into a sauce whose sharpness answers the richness of the meat. Squash, turnip and potato appear as separate vegetables, often mashed, and onions are served creamed or glazed. The stuffing is where households differ most: bread, sage and onion in the New England manner, with oysters, chestnuts or sausage added according to the coast or the cook's inheritance. The pies close the meal and carry much of its meaning. Pumpkin, from the squashes that the Native nations of the continent had cultivated long before the colonists arrived, is baked as a spiced custard in a pastry shell. Apple and mince stand beside it, and in the southern states the pecan, Carya illinoinensis, takes the place that the northern orchard fills elsewhere. These are regional habits rather than a single canon, and the table is the richer for it. The Thanksgiving table is an institution because it is cooked once a year by many hands, and its dishes are passed from household to household as much as from book to cook. A family that adds cornbread dressing, a dish of greens or a rice pilaf keeps its own history on a national occasion. Around the fixed centre of bird, sauce, vegetables and pie, every kitchen sets its own variations.

The flavours of the table are those of autumn: sage, onion and butter in the stuffing, the sharp fruit of the cranberry against rich roast meat, and the sweet spice of pumpkin at the close. The meal is built on contrast, with each sweet or sour dish set against the savour of the bird, and the cook who balances them serves the whole table well.