It’s hard to believe, but we’re on the cusp of the holiday season.

In less than three weeks, most of us will be celebrating the quintessential American holiday, Thanksgiving.

Roasted turkey with stuffing, bowls of sweet and white potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pies will fill our tables.

While we consider this delicious fare traditional for the Thanksgiving feast, the truth is that what we serve on this day has evolved over time. What the Pilgrims and Indians ate in 1621 New England bears little resemblance to what we serve today.

In 1841, more than 200 years after what we now refer to as “the first Thanksgiving,” New England historian Alexander Young discovered a letter from Edward Winslow, one of the original colonists, mentioning the 1621 feast. It was Young that gave that feast the moniker mentioned above.

Winslow describes four hunters killing enough fowl to feed the camp for a week. While turkey was plentiful in North America – and eaten by the colonists and Wampanoag Indians – it’s speculated that the “fowl” mentioned in the letter consisted of seasonal waterfowl such as ducks and geese.

Turkey eventually became the fowl of choice on Thanksgiving menus, but not right away. A menu for a New England Thanksgiving dinner circa 1779 mentions roast turkey, but only as one of the meats offered at the meal, not as the star. Also listed are venison, pork, pigeon and goose.

In contrast, this year more than 240 million turkeys will have been raised as the mainstay of our Thanksgiving dinners.

What about the stuffing? Historians tell us that the practice of stuffing the cavities of fowl and other animals with mixtures of breads, spices and other items is ancient. Romans and Arabs employed this cooking technique. The terms “stuffing” and “dressing” as they relate to cookery derive from Medieval European culinary practices.

The English settlers and Wampanoag did occasionally stuff birds and fish, but if stuffing was used, it likely consisted of herbs and onions, rather than bread.

Any cranberries served at the harvest celebration were likely only in Wampanoag dishes. They enjoyed them raw or sweetened with maple sugar.

It would be 50 years before an Englishman mentioned boiling this New England berry with sugar for a “sauce to be eaten with … meat.” Since sugar was expensive in England in 1621, it’s quite possible that there was not any of this imported sweet in New Plymouth at that time.

Today turkey and cranberries are a much-loved food marriage.

The tradition of serving fruit with meat, particularly citrus fruit with fatty meat, goes back thousands of years, likely originating in the Middle East. Examples are found in many cultures and cuisines.

The acid in the fruit cuts the fat in the meat. In the case of lean meats such as turkey and chicken, cranberries add flavor to what is generally considered a bland food.

Other classic meat and fruit combos include pork and applesauce, goose and cherry sauce, fish and lemon, and duck l’orange.

It’s hard to imagine Thanksgiving without mashed potatoes, but the original feast didn’t include them.

Potatoes, which originated in South America, had made their way across the Atlantic to Europe, but had not been generally adopted into the English diet. The potato was virtually unknown there in the 17th century. At that point they were not included in the diet of the Wampanoag Indians, either (though they did eat other varieties of local tubers).

Today’s Thanksgiving meals typically include a version of a sweet potato (or yam) dish, but that wouldn’t have been included in the original harvest meal.

The sweet potato, which originated in the Caribbean, had also made its way to Europe, but was rare and available only to the wealthy.

King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain liked them and had them planted in their court gardens. King Henry VII of England liked them as well, and considered them to be an aphrodisiac.

Yams are native to Africa and are often confused with sweet potatoes. Most sweet potato dishes – pies included – are just as successfully made with yams.

Like the white potato, neither yams nor sweet potatoes were part of the diet of the Wampanoag Indians or, for the most part, the English at the time of the first feast.

Have you ever wondered why marshmallows are so often paired with sweet potatoes on the Thanksgiving table?

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, marshmallows were very trendy. They were mass produced, plentiful, and very inexpensive, and were aggressively marketed by the companies that manufactured them.

The earliest recipes found pairing marshmallows and sweet potatoes date to the 1920s. There were typically casseroles where marshmallows were layered with the potatoes. To a lesser extent, they were also paired with candied yams.

Often signature dishes from the 1920s were very sweet, and some historians speculate that this is a reaction to Prohibition.

Pumpkin, native to the New World, was likely available as part of the harvest feast, but not in the form of pie. It may have been baked, possibly by placing it in the ashes of a dying fire, then mixed with animal fat, maple syrup, or honey, and made into a soup, a common way of using it by American Indians.

As for our beloved Thanksgiving pumpkin pie, recipes for stewed pumpkin tempered with sugar, spices and cream wrapped in pastry have roots in Medieval times, when similar pies were made with squash and gourds.

Corn was part of the earliest Thanksgiving feast, though it was hard Indian corn, unlike the corn we know today. American Indians were cooking with corn long before European settlers arrived, and the English colonists learned to grind it for use in breads, pancakes, porridge and puddings as a substitute for the grains they were used to.

While we don’t know exactly what was served at the first Thanksgiving, historians can be pretty certain that it included at least some of the bounty available to them, such as cultivated parsnips, carrots, collards, turnips, parsley, spinach, cabbage, sage, thyme, onions and marjoram, as well as native cranberries, pumpkin, nuts, grapes, lobster, oysters, other seafood and, of course, local fowl.

The recipe I offer today is my mother’s orange-cranberry relish which has been offered at our holiday table for as long as I can remember. She served it in hollowed out orange-skin halves, which make for a pleasant and colorful presentation.

A former chef and restaurateur, my mom did organic, locally grown food in our family restaurant before it was cool. She was a true pioneer.

Like me, she cooks in a rather free-form fashion, so my apologies if the recipe seems a bit vague. Please feel free to contact me through Lake County News if you have questions.

The cooking of the oranges three times is to ensure they’re not bitter, since the skins are left on.

Danni’s Orange-Cranberry Relish

2 to 3 oranges, finely chopped with skins on
1 and ¼ cup sugar, divided
12-ounce package of fresh cranberries

Cover oranges with water in saucepan. Bring to a boil and allow oranges to simmer for a few minutes.

Drain oranges in colander and repeat process with fresh water.

Drain oranges again and put in saucepan with fresh water to generously cover them, along with ½ cup sugar.

Bring to a boil and simmer until liquid reduces somewhat and oranges get candied a bit in the sweet water.

Drain them, reserving the cooking liquid, and set aside.

Using the cooking liquid and fresh water, measure 1 cup of liquid into a saucepan.

Add ¾ cup sugar and bring water and sugar to a boil.

Add cranberries, return to a boil, and cook until their skins pop.

Remove from heat and stir in oranges.

Allow mixture to cool and refrigerate until served.

If serving in orange skins, they may be refrigerated after filling.

Recipe by Danielle Loomis Post.

Esther Oertel is a writer and passionate home cook from a family of chefs. She grew up in a restaurant, where she began creating recipes from a young age. She’s taught culinary classes in a variety of venues in Lake County and previously wrote “The Veggie Girl” column for Lake County News. Most recently she’s taught culinary classes at Sur La Table in Santa Rosa, Calif. She lives in Middletown, Calif.