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Did they really eat turkey at colonial Thanksgivings?

Even in the 1600s, the holiday called for a certain excess

PORTLAND, Maine — Let’s fire up the Time Machine and travel back to the late 1600s and early 1700s when Thanksgiving, first celebrated in 1621, became firmly entrenched as an annual observance. We know what’s on your mind—what did they eat back then?

Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald, food historians and the authors of “America’s Founding Food: The Story of New England Cooking,” have done their homework when it comes to early Thanksgiving traditions, and they say that, if we were to travel more than three centuries back in time, we’d find some of the holiday dishes quite familiar. “There would be turkey,” Fitzgerald says. “There would be pies on the table. But how they would be balanced with other food, and how they would be displayed, would be different.” No one back then was speed dialing the Butterball Hotline for tips on how to make the main course look like something whipped up by Martha Stewart.

Here’s something else that would make us feel at home—the quantity of food. “They absolutely prided themselves on having a lot to eat,” Fitzgerald says.

Reassuring, isn’t it? No matter how much America has changed since the 17th century, one tradition endures. At the end of November, we still get together with family and friends, gather round the table--and eat way too much.

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