A History of Thanksgiving Food, From Candied Yams to Cranberry Sauce

The Thanksgiving holiday meal that we know in the United States today has more specific foods associated with it than any other day of the year.

Although there are regional variations, most people connect Thanksgiving with roasted turkey, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, candied yams, stuffing cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pies. 

But how did these foods end up being so inextricably linked to the fourth Thursday in November? In this article, we’ll explore the history of Thanksgiving foods, including what was likely eaten at the first Thanksgiving and how the other foods of the holiday came to be.

Foods at the First Thanksgiving

In the United States, Thanksgiving is traced back to a harvest feast in 1621. Although it’s commonly romanticized as a friendly and gratitude-filled feast shared by the Wampanoag tribe of Patuxet and the English Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts, that story is incomplete and inaccurate.

The story of Thanksgiving that most people learned in grade school was created in 1863 when President Abraham Lincoln declared it a national holiday in order to foster unity and gratitude after the Civil War. But the story as we know it ignores Wampanoag voices and overlooks the profound effects of European colonization on Indigenous peoples in the several-hundred-year period before that. 

The relationship between the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims was much more complex than this simplified tale of unity, involving epidemic diseases brought by Europeans that decimated Wampanoag tribes, displacement, land theft, and so much more.

While there was, in fact, a shared meal, the first Thanksgiving in 1621 certainly did not have candied yams with mini marshmallows or green bean casserole made with canned cream of mushroom soup. They also did not roast turkey, bake pies, or mash up potatoes. 

So, what was on the menu that Thanksgiving day? 

Based on the few historical accounts available, including a letter written home by a Plymouth colonist, the only foods known to be on the table at first Thanksgiving were wildfowl, deer, cod, bass, and corn. However, based on the time period and region, several other foods were likely to have been present, including: 

• Meat: The main animal proteins were venison and wildfowl, likely ducks, pigeons, or geese. It’s possible wild turkey was there, but it’s not known for sure.
• Fish and shellfish: Due to the proximity to the ocean, fish (like cod and bass), eels, and shellfish, like clams, lobster, or mussels, were likely consumed.
• Corn: It’s likely that a native variety of multi-colored maize called flint was consumed and eaten as porridge, cornbread, or cakes called nokake. 
• Squash: All types of squash and pumpkin were cultivated in this time and region (and for many centuries before), likely boiled or roasted.
• Beans: Beans are the third component of the “Three Sisters” agricultural system (in addition to corn and squash) and were likely boiled. 
• Vegetables: Many other vegetables, such as carrots, onions, peas, and cabbage, may have been present at the table.
• Fruit: It’s possible that fresh cranberries or other wild berries were consumed, but sugar-laden cranberry sauce was certainly not. 
• Nuts: Fresh nuts, like chestnuts, walnuts, and beechnuts, may have been part of the Thanksgiving feast.

A Historical Look at Traditional Thanksgiving Foods

Many of the foods people eat at classic Thanksgiving dinner today are due to the influence of Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor of Godey’s Lady Book, a popular magazine in the 1800s. She’s the one who ultimately got Lincoln to name Thanksgiving as a national holiday in 1863, which is why she’s sometimes referred to as the “Mother of Thanksgiving.” 

In her magazine and many cookbooks, Hale printed recipes for Thanksgiving meals that are very similar to what we eat today (like roast turkey, mashed potatoes, pies, and mashed turnips).

Let’s take a closer look at how some of these foods came to be associated with Thanksgiving.

Turkey

It’s unknown if wild turkeys were part of the original Thanksgiving, but it’s definitely present at most tables across the country today.

Unlike today’s large and juicy farmed turkeys, a wild turkey from centuries before would have been much scrawnier. They are native to North America and were widely abundant in the 17th century, commonly consumed by both Indigenous peoples and early settlers. 

Roast turkey became a prominent part of the Thanksgiving meal in the mid-to-late 19th century, in large part due to Sarah Josepha Hale’s efforts to popularize the holiday.

Turkey was also a popular meat of the time because, unlike many other animals, turkeys don’t provide milk or eggs, so they wouldn’t have been as important to homesteaders to keep around. Plus, they tended to be bigger than other birds, allowing them to feed an entire (and often very large) family. 

Although Indigenous people of Mesoamerica were domesticating wild turkeys 2,000 years ago, larger-scale poultry farming wasn’t introduced to the United States until the 1920s.

Turkeys started to become more widely available in grocery stores across the country in the 1930s and 40s, and Norman Rockwell’s iconic 1943 painting “Freedom from Want,” depicting a family gathered around a large turkey on Thanksgiving, sealed the turkey’s fate as the star of the holiday meal.

Sweet Potato Casserole or Candied Yams

Although some other root vegetables were present at the first Thanksgiving, the sweet potato was not, as they are native to Central and South America and had yet to reach the new Plymouth Colony. 

Although they are often used interchangeably, sweet potatoes and yams are not the same food. The earliest known record of sweet potato cultivation dates back to 2,500-1,850 BCE in Peru, while yams are native to Asia and West Africa.

Yams have rough, brown skin with cream-colored flesh, while sweet potatoes are reddish-brown or purple with orange, purple, or white flesh. True yams are actually very rarely sold in the United States. Still, many grocery stores call “soft sweet potatoes” (a type with copper skin and orange flesh) yams instead to differentiate them from “firm sweet potatoes,” which have golden skin and paler flesh.

So, if you are eating the common Thanksgiving side dish of marshmallow-laden candied yams this Thanksgiving, you are likely eating a “soft sweet potato.”

By the time the “new” Thanksgiving of 1863 came about, sweet potatoes had made their way across the country, becoming especially popular in the southern United States due to the warm climate that was ideal for growing them.

But where did the marshmallows come into play? Aren’t sweet potatoes already sweet enough? 

It’s thought that Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries started adding molasses, cinnamon, nutmeg, or sugar to sweet potatoes to create a dessert-like dish. The notable culinary expert of the time, Fannie Farmer, published a recipe for glazed sweet potatoes in her 1896 cookbook, and by the 1910s, candied sweet potato recipes were all over the country.

Then, in 1917, the Angelus Marshmallow Company (the same people behind Cracker Jack) published a recipe for “mashed sweet potato baked with a marshmallow topping” to promote marshmallows as an ingredient in everyday cooking. Well, marshmallows in everyday cooking didn’t quite catch on, but candied “yams” with marshmallows certainly did.

Mashed Potatoes

Potatoes are another South American staple, originating in the Andes region thousands of years ago.

Spanish colonists brought potatoes to Europe in the late 16th century, and they then made their way to North America with European settlers when they were farmed on a larger scale in the 18th century. Potatoes are versatile, hardy, and can last long winters, making them a valuable source of starchy carbohydrates and nutrition for both Indigenous people and settlers.

It’s thought that the oldest recipe for mashed potatoes comes from the English cookbook The Art of Cookery, written by Hannah Glasse in 1747.

Hannah’s recipe is quite simple, stating:

“Boil your potatoes, peel them, and put them in a saucepan. Mash them well; to two pounds of potatoes, put a pint of milk, a little salt, stir them well together, take care they don’t stick to the bottom, then take a quarter of a pound of butter, stir in and serve it up.”

Sarah Josepha Hale also published mashed potato recipes in her Thanksgiving-related magazines, making the humble potato a popular holiday side dish.

Mashed potatoes are cost-effective and can be made in large quantities, and their creamy, buttery flavors pair well with roast turkey, solidifying their place on the Thanksgiving table.

Now, mashed potatoes are often considered a comfort food and a symbol of warmth, and many families have their own unique takes on mashed potato recipes that get passed down through generations.

Stuffing or Dressing

Depending on the region of the country you are in, stuffing or dressing is another common side dish for Thanksgiving that has a long history.

As a quick aside, the term “dressing” should be used to describe a cubed bread dish cooked separately in a casserole pan, while “stuffing’ should be reserved for a mixture that is, well, stuffed inside. However, the words are often used interchangeably today.

Dating back thousands of years, stuffing birds or other animals with bread and herbs has been a tradition since the times of ancient Rome and Egypt.

It’s thought that European settlers brought stuffing recipes to North America, introducing the practice as a way to add flavor to meats and use up stale bread.

Potentially the first published stuffing recipe is found in the 1796 cookbook “American Cookery” by Amelia Simmons, advising you to: 

“Grate a wheat loaf, one quarter of a pound butter, one quarter of a pound salt pork, finely chopped, 2 eggs, a little sweet marjoram, summer savory, parsley and sage, pepper and salt (if the pork be not sufficient,) fill the bird and sew up.”

In the 19th century, recipes for stuffing birds became commonplace, and of course, Sarah J. Hale played a role in getting recipes for stuffed turkeys out to the public. Then, in the 1970s, boxed stuffing mixes were introduced, making it even easier to make at home.

There are many regional differences in stuffing recipes based on locally available ingredients to the settlers or Indigenous people of the time that are still used today, like the addition of cornbread in the South, oysters on the East Coast, wild rice in Minnesota, or apples and sausage in Iowa.

Just like what you call it, the ingredients and preparation of stuffing/dressing can differ from family to family and region to region.

Cranberry Sauce

Indigenous peoples of North America—including the Algonquin, Chippewa, Wampanoag, and Cree, in what is today’s Wisconsin, Maine, Massachusetts, and New Jersey—have been using cranberries for food, medicine, and decorative purposes (including dyes) for centuries, making this fruit a vital part of our country’s history.

As cranberries are native to North America and grow wild in the Northeast from September to November, it’s likely that Indigenous people like the Wampanoag cooked them down to make sauces.

However, the cranberry sauce we know today would not have been present at the first Thanksgiving, as the Pilgrims had used up their sugar supplies by 1621. The first written record of a cranberry sauce recipe was not seen until 1796 in the cookbook American Cookery. If cranberries were at the first Thanksgiving meal, they might have been as pemmican, a mixture of cranberries, dried meat, and tallow (kind of like the first protein bar). 

Then, in 1912, the Cape Cod Cranberry Company (today’s Ocean Spray) started canning cranberries, making the fruit available year-round. The ultra-jiggly and highly divisive jellied canned cranberry came about in 1941 and quickly became popular due to its long shelf life. 

With their ultra-tart flavor, cranberries are excellent for cutting the richness of other Thanksgiving dishes, and homemade versions today might add orange zest and cinnamon (or you might just open a can, if that’s what you prefer!).

Green Bean Casserole

Green bean casserole has a much shorter history than many other Thanksgiving foods—but it’s no less entertaining. 

Green beans themselves were consumed and domesticated 8,000 years ago in Peru and Mexico—but mixing canned green beans, cream of mushroom soup, and fried onions is oh-so-American and has “1950s cooking” written all over it.

In an era defined by post-war convenience foods like tuna noodle casserole, TV dinners, and Jell-O “salads,” this meal making its way to the Thanksgiving table is no surprise. 

Just like marshmallows ending up on sweet potatoes, the green bean casserole is another win from the marketing team at a food company—and this time, it’s Campbell’s.

In the 1950s, the Campbell Soup Company was looking to promote its condensed soups to American homemakers to simplify their dinners. Dorcas Reilly, a home economist at Campbell’s, created the recipe for green bean casserole in 1955 to showcase Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup, mixing it with canned green beans, milk, and French’s fried onions. 

Due to the comforting nature of this side dish that could be prepared in minutes and in large quantities, green bean casserole started showing up on the Thanksgiving menu in the 1950s, and the nostalgia and ease of it have likely kept it popular in the decades since.

Pumpkin Pie

Last but not least, it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie! 

Pumpkins are a type of squash with a long history, dating from 8,300 to 10,000 years (6,000-8,000 BC) ago to the Oaxaca Highlands of Mexico in ancient Mesoamerica and Central America.

While pumpkins (and all squash) were essential parts of the Three Sisters trio mentioned earlier in Indigenous farming practices, they were commonly roasted, mashed, or in stews—although it’s possible sweeter dessert-like mixtures were made. 

After European colonists learned how to grow pumpkins in New England, variations of the pumpkin pie were brought about, including hollowing out a pumpkin, filling it with milk, honey, and spices, and baking it as a custard-like dish. Later, when flour and sugar were more widely available, pies of all sorts were made, including pumpkin.

As pumpkins are harvested in the fall, it’s not a far leap that pumpkin desserts became associated with the autumn holiday of Thanksgiving, and Sarah J. Hale further popularized pumpkin pie in her recipe magazines.

By the late 1800s and early 1900s, pumpkin pie was solidified as a holiday dessert—and the invention of canned pumpkin made things even easier. Companies like Libby started producing canned pumpkin in the 1920s, eliminating the time-consuming need to deseed, roast, and mash whole pumpkins. Now, pumpkin pie has deep roots on Thanksgiving and holiday menus, imparting cozy, warming flavors and nostalgic traditions. 

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