Jay Anderson

“ Harvest Home is as ecological as it is historical. It celebrates both land and man and the fruits of their labor together. This menu and its recipes are, therefore, very organic and very old, and if we violate the letter of the Pilgrims’ first feast—few of us seed our corn with fish—its spirit will still be there.
Roast Goose To roast a goose (or any cut of meat) properly, you have to sear the outside, quickly, changing the meat’s surface sugars into crunchy brown caramel thereby creating a natural bag that seals in the fowl’s juices. Inside, the goose literally cooks itself. ”

“ It is doubtful that any kern dolls were fashioned at Plymouth; Puritans did not take kindly to graven images of the Mother Earth or Mary sort. But they had muskets and fowling pieces, and under the command of Miles Standish, a professional soldier, they acquired some of the noisier martial skills. Harvest Home gave them a chance to demonstrate these to each other and to Massasoit’s Indians. The turkey shoot held in many rural communities before Thanksgiving is a modern survival of this harvest custom. Another traditional recreation was athletics. Englishmen were serious sportsmen. ”

“ Outside, all you need to do is baste the skin with fat to prevent it from burning, and if you are using an open fire, regularly turn the bird so that it is heated evenly. An oven solves the latter problem, and although Englishmen had bake ovens in 1621, the Pilgrims didn’t. But a decade or so later they built them into their Plymouth fireplaces and used them regularly for roasts as well as breads. So if you don’t have an outdoor grill with a spit or a fireplace that could be converted into an open hearth, an oven will do fine. ”

“ An available milk supply might have existed, if goats were among the livestock brought on the Mayflower. While there is no specific mention of any animals being brought on that first ship, Winslow’s statement that “if we have once but kine, horses and sheep ... men might live as contented here as in any part of the world” suggests that goats and pigs may well have crossed the Atlantic with the Pilgrims.
The Pilgrims also had an American pudding—which later, encased in a pastry crust, became the Thanksgiving dish pumpkin pie. ”

“ Save for the higher social classes, which were not represented in the group, the English people of the time were products of a medieval world whose legacy was still felt in the first years of the seventeenth century. It is easy to forget that 1620 is further removed in time from the American Revolution than it is from Columbus’ discovery of the New World in 1492. So it was that the church members—“saints,” as they styled themselves—carried the strong tradition of East Anglican yeoman culture to the New World, its peasant customs deeply rooted in the soil and its bounty. ”

“ However, none of these foods are high in energy, and the typical English farmer was accustomed to a diet that gave him almost six thousand calories a day. To get these calories, he ate a normal daily diet of one pound of meal or peas cooked up in a porridge, pudding, or bread, over a pound of butter and cheese, and a full gallon of strong, dark ale. Some dried or corned meat and fish were also eaten but usually only in small amounts—quarter pound a day. The Englishmen in the 1620s certainly did not live on flesh alone. ”

“ Thus, the corn yield was unexpectedly high. Each Pilgrim could look forward to two pounds of corn meal every day.
It might have seemed appropriate for the Pilgrims to formalize their thanks to God with a solemn day of thanksgiving. Instead, they opted for an older mode of thanksgiving known as Harvest Home. Most of them as boys had experienced the secular revelry of Harvest Home, when, after the main grain crop was ingathered, it was cakes and ale and hang the cost. ”

“ In England villagers customarily marched through the fields of stubble, singing the old harvest songs, waving handfuls of grain often plaited into kern or corn dolls. The men would then demonstrate their prowess with firearms or longbows. ”

“ Just rub the goose all over with animal fat (bacon drippings, chicken or goose fat, or butter) and sear close to an open fire or at 450 degrees in an oven. When the skin is brown (after about twenty minutes) , lower the [Pg 18] heat by roasting your goose farther from the open fire or turning down the oven to 325 degrees. Baste regularly with the goose fat that escapes. When the legs move easily in their sockets, it is done. ”

“ But by far the most important recreation was feasting. In fact, to Elizabethans the word recreation itself primarily meant enjoying a leisurely, well-prepared meal and so re-creating or renewing mind and body. ”

“ This first corn crop was to assume a critical role in their life before the year was out.
The Pilgrims were genuinely surprised that the Indians wished to live at peace with them. Their reasons for doing so were doubtless complex. In the first place they were not the fearsome people the Pilgrims had been led to believe inhabited the land. The history of European-Indian relations before the coming of the Pilgrims is marked by trust and friendliness on the Indians’ part, all too often betrayed. ”

“ The meal could only have been the remains of the stores brought on the Mayflower, for Bradford added, “or now since harvest, Indian corn to that proportion.” But with the memory of the past winter painfully fresh, the Pilgrims could ill afford to rest and rely on providence to supply them. It was critical that they produce a crop to insure an adequate surplus for the coming winter. To this end they planted their fields with a mixture of English and [Pg 7] Indian crops. ”

“ This “humble” smorgasbord, totaling forty-eight dishes, from the first popular English cookbook, Gervase Markham’s The English Huswife (1623) , was for the housewife more ideal than real. The typical harvest feast was more modest. A Yorkshire farmer, Henry Best, wrote that
“it is usual, in most places, after they get all the pease pulled or the last grain down, to invite all the workfolks and their wives (that helped them that harvest) to supper, and then they have puddings, bacon, or boiled beef, flesh or apple pies, and then cream brought in platters, and every one a spoon ”

“ The cut can be roasted bone in or out; both methods were popular in 1620. If you do take the bone out, make sure to stuff the roast with bacon, as the loss of its bone tends to dry it out. And the smoky bacon taste is a positive addition, especially if you are oven-roasting your lamb. It can also be imparted to a bone-in roast if you make a dozen half-inch cuts in the tough surface skin and stuff raw bacon in each.
ADRIAEN VAN OSTADE
Stuffing Elizabethans were fond of a rich, sweet stuffing that was more like a bread pudding than the dry, herbed variety we commonly prepare today. ”

“ In Plymouth, mace, nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves were common, along with berries, currants and apples, and a little porter or dark beer in place of honey or sugar. Egg yolks were also added if the frumenty was too thin. And brandy. It was served hot or cold and was the symbolic harvest dish. The fourteenth verse of Leviticus 23 in the English 1551 Bible, for example, admonishes: “And ye shall eat neither bread, nor parched corn, nor frumenty of new corne, untill the selfe same daye that ye have brought an offeringe unto your God.” Frumenty has soul. ”

“ In communities where labor was pooled at harvest and families helped each other, there would be a round of these meals—in form and function similar to small parish tureen suppers today except that one hostess at a time would assume overall responsibility, excepting neighborly help from other wives. ”

“ Simply clean out, peel, and dice a medium pumpkin—a recycled jack-o-lantern is fine. Simmer the diced flesh in a heavy casserole with a cup of dark beer or porter, two or three tablespoons of malt vinegar, salt, pepper, and spices to taste. It will take a couple of hours over a low heat. As a tart “spoon meat” stewed pumpkin balances the fatty goose and bacon-larded mock venison. Similar sweet-sour side dishes can be made with squash, turnips, and parsnips, all common crops in Plymouth that October 1621.
Ale
It’s still against federal law to brew beer or ale in your home. ”