What was not served at the first Thanksgiving?

Potatoes. Whether mashed or roasted, white or sweet, potatoes had no place at the first Thanksgiving. After encountering it in its native South America, the Spanish began introducing the potato to Europeans around 1570.
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What meat was not served at the first Thanksgiving celebration?

Wildfowl. First and foremost, there would be wildfowl—most likely duck or geese, but potentially carrier pigeons or swans. That's right—turkey might not have even been present at the first Thanksgiving.
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What was not served at the Pilgrims Thanksgiving meal?

Potatoes—white or sweet—would not have been featured on the 1621 table, and neither would sweet corn. Bread-based stuffing was also not made, though the Pilgrims may have used herbs or nuts to stuff birds.
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What food did the Pilgrims eat at the first Thanksgiving?

Turkey. There's a good chance the Pilgrims and Wampanoag did in fact eat turkey as part of that very first Thanksgiving. Wild turkey was a common food source for people who settled Plymouth. In the days prior to the celebration, the colony's governor sent four men to go “fowling”—that is, to hunt for birds.
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Was cheesecake served at the first Thanksgiving?

FOOD FACT DEBUNKED: Cheesecake was served at First Thanksgiving. When someone thinks about Thanksgiving dinner, the first things that come to mind are: turkey, gravy, stuffing, potatoes, and pumpkin pie.
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The First Thanksgiving: What Really Happened



Did the first Thanksgiving have dessert?

The Pilgrims put all the food on the table at once – soups, stews, bread, meat, vegetables, desserts. It didn't matter which you ate first.
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What was served at the first Thanksgiving?

Shellfish were common, so they probably played a part, as did beans, pumpkins, squashes, and corn (served in the form of bread or porridge), thanks to the Wampanoags. It's possible, but unlikely, that there was turkey at the first Thanksgiving.
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Did they serve turkey at the first Thanksgiving?

Turkey was not the centerpiece of the meal, as it is today, explains Wall. Though it is possible the colonists and American Indians cooked wild turkey, she suspects that goose or duck was the wildfowl of choice.
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Was there mac and cheese at the first Thanksgiving?

If you were to sit down at a Thanksgiving table in 1883, you would see the familiar turkey, cranberry sauce and pies. But, what might surprise you would be, first, macaroni and cheese, and next, how it was viewed as an 'upper-class' kind of dish. A lot has changed since 1883.
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Was lobster served at the first Thanksgiving?

While turkey is the staple for Thanksgiving today, it may not have been on the menu during what is considered the First Thanksgiving. The First Thanksgiving meal eaten by pilgrims in November 1621 included lobster. They also ate fruits and vegetables brought by Native Americans, mussels, bass, clams, and oysters.
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Was there pumpkin pie at the first Thanksgiving?

There was no pumpkin pie—they didn't have a baking oven in Plimoth Plantation—but there might have been pumpkin served other ways, since both the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag ate pumpkin and other indigenous squashes.
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Did they eat corn at the first Thanksgiving?

Corn was on the table at the first Thanksgiving dinner and continues to be a staple of the holiday today. Edward Winslow, one of the founders of Plymouth Colony, wrote that the spring before Thanksgiving, the settlers planted 20 acres of Indian corn (also known as flint corn).
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What did the Pilgrims really eat?

Fowl. Items such as waterfowl, wildfowl (yes, there were turkeys, but they were wild, not domestic), venison, chestnuts, shellfish, possibly porridge made from corn (sometimes sweetened with molasses, if available), and wild fruits graced that first table, where pilgrims and Wampanoag broke proverbial bread.
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What did the Pilgrims eat for breakfast?

Start your day with corn for breakfast!
  • Corn meal.
  • Fresh water.
  • Maple syrup (In 1620, made from the sap of local maple trees)
  • Walnuts, hazlenuts or sunflower seeds.
  • Blueberries, raspberries, strawberries or cranberries (cranberries can be fresh or dried, but in 1620 they would not be sweetened)
  • No salt! (
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What is Black Thanksgiving?

When the Pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving in 1621, most black families in America weren't invited to the festivities. In fact, legend has it that a particularly unruly enslaved African whispered to a Native Americans as they pulled up to the Plymouth Colony on Thanksgiving Day: Featured Videos. Ms.
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What utensil was not used at the early harvest feasts?

The pilgrims did not use forks.

Instead the pilgrims ate with spoons, knives, and their fingers.
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What is the biggest difference between the first Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving today?

The only thing that might be the same now is eating pumpkins, however not pumpkin pie. The first Thanksgiving wasn't one big feast but actually went on for a full week. Some days everyone would eat together and on other days they would eat separately.
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Did the Pilgrims have pepper?

Even though they didn't have much sugar, the Pilgrims did use many spices. They had salt at the table, and they loved cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and pepper. They liked onions, leeks, and strawberry leaves as well as watercress and yarrow. They also used herbs with unusual names like liverwort.
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Did the Pilgrims have salad?

Fruits and Vegetables

Local vegetables that likely appeared on the table include onions, beans, lettuce, spinach, cabbage, carrots and perhaps peas. Corn, which records show was plentiful at the first harvest, might also have been served, but not in the way most people enjoy it now.
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Did the Pilgrims eat fish?

The natives dried fish and smoked shellfish, as well as ate other fish, shrimp, oysters, and crabs. So, it's very likely that the natives present at the first Thanksgiving provided seafood for the pilgrims to eat.
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Did the Pilgrims eat each other?

The findings called into question the accepted history of the Pilgrim's first winter of 1620-21, including accounts written by the Pilgrims themselves. In none of these works was there any mention of cannibalism - a fact which was not exactly a surprise to anthropologist Mary Donner, also of Taunton University.
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Did they eat eagle at the first Thanksgiving?

Pilgrims ate eagle with their turkey at the first Thanksgiving.
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What beans did the Pilgrims eat?

Corn and kidney beans were staples of the Pilgrim diet. If these accounts are to be believed, Indian corn, seemingly a staple of the settlers' diet, likely would have been eaten during the three-day harvest feast with the Wampanoags that Winslow also described.
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Did they have apple pie in the first Thanksgiving?

While apple pie is considered to be as American as hot dogs (which aren't originally American either) and baseball, the popular pie actually originated in England in the 1300s — and it wasn't served at the first Thanksgiving either.
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Did the Pilgrims eat pies?

And finally – without flour or a stove – there were no breads or pumpkin pies. During their meals, the Pilgrims didn't use forks, and only ate with spoons, knives and their fingers.
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