PODCAST Seasonal Bonus 5: A Yankee Thanksgiving, 1895

Have you ever wondered what an old-fashioned, 19th-century, British-traditioned Yankee Thanksgiving was like? In the land of the original Pilgrims, did they really eat turkey? This episode draws on recipes from a November, 1895 issue of The Boston Globe and in it we’ll explore recipes that go all the way back to the 16th century in England. We’ll also learn whether mince pies really contain minced meat, whether there are plums in plum pudding, and we’ll see by comparison to a menu from El Paso, Texas in 1908 that there were similarities and marked distinctions between two very different regions of the country by the time a century or so had passed since the United States’ first Federal Census. There’s also a new section in the podcast this and every episode – The Genie News – and some of that news is about some developments in the Facebook group and its new connection to Patreon support! Enjoy a turkey sandwich as you listen in.

PS: THE PODCAST IS NOW ON IHEARTRADIO!!!!!!

Welcome to Bonus Episode 5 of the Family Cookbook, From Paper To People’s foodie branch. I’m instituting a new section in the show today – The Genie News. I’ll do my best to keep you abreast of interesting items, book releases, trends, and movements in genealogy and family history here, then we’ll get to the meat of the episode.

Today in the Genie News: Kenyatta Berry, one of the hosts of PBS’ Genealogy Roadshow, has just released a book for beginning US genealogists. It’s called The Family Tree Toolkit, and it’s an all-purpose, easy-to-follow guide for all kinds of online resources. It’s large-format and has a wonderful graphic layout that I find very easy to read and follow. I’m really glad I got a copy, and I’m not even a beginner!

Our own Christopher Harris, from episode 17 (listen to that interview if you haven’t – he’s such a great guy) is starting his own project. He says “It’s a group for Black Millennials to preserve their family histories, stories and legacies. We are the last generation born in the 20th Century to remember our Great-Grandparents, who remembered their Grandparent’s stories about slavery and sharecropping. I’m so afraid much of that history will be forgotten/not passed down by the end of this Century. It’s been in my heart for a good while now. My goal will be making genealogy accessible and real to Black Millennials, connecting them to resources to further enhance their skill sets and tool belts, with the mission to preserve 19th- & 20th-Century Black culture & genealogy.” If you are interested in getting involved with what Christopher is starting, please go to my website and let me know on the contact form. I will forward your information to him.

BlackProGen has a fantastic new resource icons for online tree profiles to help you denote who’s who. It’s especially helpful for trees including enslaved and free persons of color, Native Americans, and slaveholders. You can find them at goo.gl/ZwiAtX.

The New York Public Library has an incredible blog, as you would expect, and it has a Genealogy section, under the History section, with both NY-entered and more general articles. If you haven’t checked it out, head to https://www.nypl.org/blog/subject/778 to see what’s there. You might find something you need.

FindMyPast UK has JUST released over half a million marriage licenses online this weekend, so a great destination for those with UK ancestry is https://goo.gl/tX1y2i. The data request form is so simple, it’s really fantastic.

And last in the News, I am making some changes to end the first year of this podcast and launch into the second. The biggest one is that, from today on, the Facebook group is now accessible ONLY to those who join my Patreon Army for $1 per month or more. I wanted to be sure that I was giving my Patreon subscribers every perq that I could, and it seemed sensible, given the level of activity in the Facebook group, to make that a standard for them rather than a free option for anyone. We’ve got 125 members and the discussions are getting more lively all the time, so I hope you will consider supporting the podcast at patreon.com/ancestorsalive. And remember, if you join for $15 per month by December 15th, you will get SWAG for a New Year’s present!!!! Yes you will.

Now, for those of you who celebrated Thanksgiving, I need to know – have you finished your leftovers? Because I have NOT. I am still eating my andouille and cornbread dressing. The bittersweet chocolate pudding pie with just a hint of orange went fast, as did the turkey and the gravy made with pouilly fume, (yeah, I’m fancy), but I made SO MUCH DRESSING that there’s some in the freezer and I’m eating it as a main course. So I don’t feel guilty recording a Thanksgiving episode at the start of December.

How traditional was your meal this year? Do you have family traditions? Do you do the magazine traditions? Do you eat the foods that people claim the Pilgrims ate, or any of that classic propaganda? The food for this episode comes from the November 27, 1895 issue of the Boston Globe, and having compared it with a 1908 issue of an El Paso, Texas paper, I was really shocked at the regional differences in holiday food by this time in American history. It was only a little over a century after the country’s first census, but the differences, due to local tradition and probably weather, were striking.

El Paso provided a menu of apple sauce, cranberry sauce, sweet and sour pickles, french peas, roast turkey, boiled ham, chicken salad, salmon salad, sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, and corn pudding, mince pie, brandied peaches, pound cake, and nuts. They even provided a table diagram, to show where to put what plate! It’s not a very British-influenced table, though…in fact, it sounds pretty modern to me.

Then, I read the Boston Globe. It is SO New England, so traditional. That’s why I chose it for our Thanksgiving episode. I hope you find it as interesting as I.

It starts with a discussion of various “cakes” which are actually more like cookies. The thing that I found intriguing when reading it was that the author harked back to a prior era:

“Thanksgiving Recipes. In old days, that is, half a century ago, the proper accompaniment for a dessert of sweets was a whip syllabub, or a snow cream, and the verbatim recipes given for both these dainties are of the same date as the directions given for the cakes and pies; all belong to the cuisine of 50 years ago. The absence of soda, saleratus (sodium bicarbonate) and baking powders !n the cake recipes will be noticed. Our grandmothers found them difficult to procure. Women were often forced to get cooking alkali by burning corncobs. Other cooks not so squeamish used clean white wood ashes, pressed fine and dissolved in boiling water. It is not singular, then, that their reliance was placed upon yeast and thorough mixing and beating of ingredients. Yet theirs were loaded tables, boards that ‘groaned’ with a weight of good things to eat. It was not at all remarkable to find each and every pie and cake set forth in these recipes, placed on the table at one time, at Thanksgiving, or even at quilting feasts, or carried out and served to 50 or till men at corn huskings In the great granary barns of those days, and all baked by the good wife herself and her daughters. Sweetened breads were as much made as were cakes proper.”

She was talking about baking in the 1840s! I don’t know about you, but I have no accounts of baking or cooking from the 1840s in my family. I thought that this was very interesting.

Someone in Somerville submitted this as a sample menu: Roast Turkey. Cranberry Sauce. Roast Goose. Apple Sauce Chicken Pie. Mashed Potatoes. Squab. Onions. Celery. Bread and Butter. Plum Pudding. Mince Pie. Apple Pie. Pumpkin Pie. Custard Pie. Pickles. Olives. Tomato Catchup. Raisins. Nuts. Tea and Coffee.

Recipes:

Thanksgiving Cranberry Jelly

Wash 1 quart cranberries; put into a porcelain kettle with pint of water and pound of sugar. Boil 20 minutes and press through a fruit strainer into a mold that has been rinsed with cold water. When cool this should form a perfect mold of crimson jelly.

Dressing for Turkey

Soak baker’s bread in water and milk 15 minutes or till soft. Add a pinch of salt, a piece of butter, little pepper, and 1 or 2 tablespoons of turkey seasoning, according to the quantity of bread: if the turkey is strong, after the dressing is in, before serving up, peel 1 onion and lay at the end of the turkey; it will absorb the odor.

Alt Dressing for Turkey

Mix stale bread or pounded cracker with butter, salt, pepper and an egg. Add summer savory, a little sage. If desired, chopped oysters may be added. Mix all together, adding a little warm water if necessary for wetting.

English Plum Pudding, 2 sauces

Chop 1/2 pound suet, rub to a cream, add a scant ½ pound sugar and 3 eggs well beaten. Mix teaspoon cloves. 1/2 teaspoon mace, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1 nutmeg grated with 1/2 pound flour; add this to the first mixture alternately with 1 cup milk; add 1/2 pound seeded raisins, ½ pound currants, ⅜ pound citron and ¼ cup of brandy: steam 6 or 8 hours. Cream the suet and sugar with the hands. Add the beaten eggs. Mix flour and spice together. Butter may be used as well as suet. Add flour and spice to the creamed sugar and suet and eggs. Turn into any kind of mold and steam, the longer the better. It will keep from Thanksgiving to Christmas (and longer if not eaten before) and only needs re-steaming to make it like new. Elegant and reliable.

Sauce for same

Cream 1/4 cup butter. add 1/2 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons wine, 2 tablespoons cream; warm slightly and serve; warm bowl by pouring hot water into it, leaving it there a minute; cream butter and add sugar. Using a wooden spoon, add thin cream very slowly. If you do not add wine use more cream. Sometimes it will curdle, but that will come out when warmed. Slower it is beaten the nicer it will be. When all cream is used take 4 tablespoons.

Brandy sauce: Cream 1/2 cup of butter and beat in gradually 1 cup of light brown sugar, then add slowly 1/4 cup of brandy. Just before serving heat the sauce a little over hot water, beat well. Add a slight grating of nutmeg, and serve at once. Measure the butter solid. If one hasn’t light brown sugar use powdered sugar. Have bowl in which to cream the butter by pouring in hot water and immediately pouring it out. Cream the butter with a wooden spoon. The juice of canned fruits and cream may be used instead of brandy. and a very delicate flavor obtained.

Baked Indian Pudding

The Thanksgiving pudding was oftener the baked Indian pudding, beloved of all New Englanders, than the plum pudding. The recipe was to boil a quart of milk and turn it on a pint of sifted Indian meal (corn meal), stirring in well so as to scald the meal, then mix 2 tablespoons of flour with a pint of milk. Turn it on the meal. Mix the whole well together. When lukewarm add 3 beaten eggs, 3 tablespoons of brown sugar, 2 of melted butter, or finely chopped suet, 1 teaspoon of salt and 2 of cinnamon. If the pudding is desired rich add 1/2 a pound of raisins, and in that case allow an extra pint of milk, as they absorb a good deal. If whey is desired, use skim milk, and molasses in place of sugar. Allow two hours in a slow oven for baking. If made without eggs, allow another hour.

Mince Pies

One and one-half pounds meat; after It is boiled chop fine. add 1½ pounds suet chopped, 3 pounds chopped apples, 1 pound sugar, 1 cup molasses, 1 pint boiled cider. 1 tablespoonful each of mace, allspice, cinnamon, ½ tablespoonful cloves. 1/4 cup salt, 1 nutmeg, 1½ pounds seeded raisins, 1½ pounds currants. Cook slowly until the apples are done, then add juice and grated rind of 1 lemon, 1/2 pound citron cut fine. 1 cup brandy and 1 cup wine. If one objects to the brandy and wine, coffee may be substituted, using lemon and orange juice for needed acid, or one may use more boiled cider. Use rather a deep plate: make pies with chopped paste (pastry). Before putting on top crust it is well to add a little butter, sugar and, raisins. Wet the edges of pastry before putting on top crust to keep liquor in. Wet the top around the edge and put on a narrow rim of puff paste. Put rim on rather loose, as it will shrink.

Chopped Paste, which is actually Chopped Pastry

Put 2 cups flour into a chopping bowl, add 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1 cup of butter. Chop well. Moisten to a stiff dough with ice water. Roll out and then roll up like a Jelly roll. Keep on ice until ready to use. Chop flour, butter and salt in tray until thoroughly mixed. Add the ice water. Pound with rolling pin until inch thick. Roll as thin as crust for any pie, as needed. One-half lard instead of butter may be used, which will need a little more flour.

Thanksgiving Pumpkin Pie Without Eggs

Cut the pumpkin in small pieces and – boil slowly till the pulp is dry; rub through a colander for 1 pie; take 1 cup of pulp, 1 large tablespoon of flour, 1 cup sugar. 1/2 pint of milk or cream; spice with nutmeg and ginger; a little salt.

Sweet Marlboro Pie

Procure sweet. mellow apples, pare and grate them. To a pint of the grated pulp put a pint of milk. 2 eggs. 2 tablespoons of melted butter, the grated peel of a lemon and a wineglass of brandy. Sweeten to taste with nice brown sugar; the eggs should be beaten to a froth, then the sugar stirred into them and mixed with the rest of the ingredients. Bake pies in a deep plate without upper crust.

The article also discusses non-baked desserts that were created in England before the first colonizers came over to the North American continent. One is a Whip Syllabub. According to Wikipedia, Syllabub is an English sweet frothy drink which was popular from the 16th to 19th centuries, and a dessert based on it, which apparently is still eaten. The Boston Globe had a recipe for Thanksgiving:

Whip Syllabub

Take good sweet cream. To each pint put six ounces of double refined powdered sugar, half a tumbler of white wine, and the juice and grated rind of a lemon. Beat the whole well together. Just jelly in glasses and fill them with the froth as fast as it rises.

Snow Cream came from 17th century England. I looked around for recipes, and it’s basically an early version of ice cream or a snow cone made with warmed milk and sugar and vanilla stirred in, then chilled until the snow was ready.

Here’s the Boston Globe’s recipe for Snow Cream, though they don’t mention any snow:

Beat the whites of 4 eggs to a stiff froth, stir in 2 tablespoons of powdered sugar, 1 tablespoon of sweet wine and a teaspoon of rose-water. Beat all together. Then add a pint of thick cream. Very delicious.

So, now we know what their leftovers looked like. Are you glad you have yours instead?