97 Fun Facts About Thanksgiving Food

Which people's leader Massasoit brought some ninety men and five deer to Plymouth's 1621 harvest feast?

Wampanoag. The one eyewitness letter mentions their venison and the colonists' 'fowl', which a Plimoth food historian suspects meant goose or duck, and never names turkey.

In his 1621 letter from Plymouth, Edward Winslow wrote that the bay was 'full of' which shellfish all summer?

Lobsters. He added that a hogshead of eels could be taken in one September night and that mussels lay 'at our doors', which is why food historians think seafood was probably on the table at the harvest feast.

The 1621 harvest feast had no pies because the colonists lacked butter and what else?

Wheat flour. With no pastry, pies and tarts were out; a Plimoth food historian thinks the gaps on the table were filled with 'meat, meat and more meat'.

Which amino acid in turkey is popularly blamed for the sleepy feeling after Thanksgiving dinner?

Tryptophan. Turkey has no more of it than chicken does; researchers point instead to the carbohydrate-heavy sides and desserts eaten alongside.

Which Founding Father called the turkey 'a much more respectable bird' than the bald eagle?

Benjamin Franklin. He never proposed the turkey as the national bird: the line comes from a letter to his daughter mocking an eagle design that looked like a turkey and calling the eagle a bird of 'bad moral character'.

Given their huge breasts, how do most Broad Breasted White turkeys reproduce?

Through artificial insemination. Bred for ever more breast meat, the toms have grown too large to mate without injuring the hens, so their semen is collected and the hens are inseminated.

According to Butterball, what do callers to its Turkey Talk-Line ask about most often?

Thawing time. A frozen bird needs a day in the fridge for every four pounds, which many callers learn too late; one family who left theirs outside overnight rang to ask how to find it under the snow.

What is the term for cutting out a turkey's backbone and flattening it so that it roasts faster?

Spatchcocking. The word turned up in 18th-century Ireland for a fowl killed and grilled on the spot, and it may be short for 'dispatch cock', though dictionaries call its origin uncertain.

Before it named the American bird, the English word 'turkey' was first used for which other bird?

Guinea fowl. The African birds were thought to reach England by way of Turkey and were called turkey-cocks; when the larger American bird arrived in the 1500s, people confused the two and the name moved over.

Deep-fried whole turkey spread across America from the outdoor cooking of which regional cuisine?

Cajun. A 1984 newspaper story on the oddity described a cook harnessing a 25-pound bird in rope and lowering it into boiling peanut oil, and said no other place could have invented it.

Which NFL broadcaster made the turducken famous by showing it off during his Thanksgiving Day telecasts?

John Madden. Handed his first one in the broadcast booth with no plate or cutlery, he ate it with his hands, and he went on showing the dish to viewers for years.

Cranberry growers flood their beds at harvest time because the ripe berries do what in water?

Float. Each berry holds small pockets of air, so once machines nicknamed 'egg-beaters' knock the fruit off the vines it bobs to the surface, where it can be corralled and pumped out.

After a contamination scare in 1959, what did President Eisenhower's Thanksgiving dinner serve in place of cranberry sauce?

Applesauce. Weeks before the holiday the government had warned that some of the crop carried traces of a weedkiller that caused cancer in rats, and sales of fresh cranberries collapsed.

Which everyday baking word, borrowed from Dutch, appears in Amelia Simmons's 1796 book of American recipes?

Cookie. Her recipes include a 'Christmas Cookey', from the Dutch koekje, 'little cake'; where British cookbooks said small cakes or biscuits, hers used the American word.

American Cookery (1796) taught American cooks to use pearlash, a forerunner of which kitchen staple?

Baking soda. Pearlash raised a cake chemically, without yeast, and set off a revolution in American baking; of the author, almost nothing is known beyond her title-page line, 'An American Orphan'.

Morton, Illinois, the 'Pumpkin Capital of the World', is home to which brand's pumpkin cannery?

Libby's. The cannery is there because a farmer named Dickinson brought his Kentucky pumpkin seeds to central Illinois, where they grew so well that a processing plant followed; it still cans most of America's pumpkin.

Most American canned pumpkin is the Dickinson variety, a look-alike of which squash?

Butternut. Tan and oblong rather than round and orange, the Dickinson belongs to the same species, and its dry, fine-grained flesh bakes into a far smoother pie filling than a carving pumpkin would give.

Which pie, a Southern speciality, is often served at Thanksgiving in place of pumpkin?

Sweet potato pie. Enslaved Africans, who knew the yam from home, likely took to the similar American root, and some call the pie made from it a cornerstone of soul food.

Pumpkin pie spice is mostly cinnamon, blended with ginger, cloves, allspice and which other spice?

Nutmeg. The mix is far older than the pie: medieval cooks used much the same sweet spices on meat, and a 1796 American recipe for 'pompkin' pudding already called for nutmeg, mace and ginger.

Dorcas Reilly created which casserole in a Campbell's test kitchen in 1955, now a Thanksgiving fixture?

Green bean casserole. A news agency had asked for a quick dish made from things any cook already had in the cupboard, and it first went onto the soup cans under the name 'Green Bean Bake'.

Campbell's says Dorcas Reilly's 1955 Thanksgiving casserole takes about 40% of its sales of which soup?

Cream of mushroom. The casserole took off once Campbell's began printing the recipe on that soup's own cans, and Reilly said later that she was 'shocked' to learn how popular it had become.

In 2002 Dorcas Reilly gave her original casserole recipe card to which institution, then based in Akron, Ohio?

National Inventors Hall of Fame. Its archive keeps the handwritten card with her notes on each trial run; in the same test kitchen she also worked up tuna noodle casserole and Sloppy Joes made with tomato soup.

Which instant stuffing mix did home economist Ruth Siems help invent for General Foods, launched in 1972?

Stove Top. The secret was the size of the dried bread crumb: too small and water turned it to mush, too large and it came out like gravel, and getting it right earned a patent in 1975.

Besides the heart and liver, which organ is traditionally among a turkey's giblets?

Gizzard. It is the thick-walled part of the stomach where a toothless bird grinds its food with swallowed grit; simmered with the neck and the rest, it flavours giblet gravy.

Stuffing baked in its own dish rather than inside the bird is often called what?

Dressing. Older cookbooks called the mixture 'farce' or 'forcemeat', and the US Department of Agriculture now advises cooking it outside the turkey anyway, because stuffing in the cavity can stay undercooked.

Which herb is the standard seasoning in classic American Thanksgiving stuffing?

Sage. Long before it reached the stuffing it was prized as a medicine: the name comes from the Latin salvus, 'healthy', for the healing powers once credited to the plant.

Traditional Southern cornbread differs from Northern versions by containing little or none of what?

Sugar. By one food historian's account, old stone-ground cornmeal was sweet enough on its own; steel roller mills, arriving after 1900, stripped out flavour, and newer recipes added sugar to make up for it.

A classic turkey gravy is thickened with which cooked paste of flour and fat?

Roux. The flour is stirred into the hot fat until smooth and cooked before any stock goes in; the longer it browns, the deeper the flavour, though a dark one thickens less.

Which president served his dinner guests 'a pie called macaroni'?

Thomas Jefferson. At an 1802 dinner one guest took the pasta for onions and found it 'very strong'; Jefferson had taken to pasta in France, where his enslaved cook James Hemings trained.

Parker House rolls were invented in the 1870s at a hotel in which city?

Boston. Legend blames their folded, dented shape on an angry pastry cook who flung unfinished rolls into the oven; the same Parker House hotel kitchen also lays claim to the Boston cream pie.

The makers of which syrup claimed pecan pie as a 1930s 'discovery' by a sales executive's wife?

Karo. The company's recipe did make the pie a national favourite, but recipes for pecan pie were in print years before Karo went on sale in 1902.

Which state, whose official tree is the pecan, also named pecan pie its state pie in 2013?

Texas. Early newspaper recipes were even headed 'Texas Pecan Pie', though the oldest one found so far, a pecan custard pie, ran in the New York magazine Harper's Bazaar in 1886.

Tofurky was created by Seth Tibbott's Turtle Island Foods, a company based in Hood River in which state?

Oregon. To save money for the business, its founder rented four oak trees for $25 a month and lived in a treehouse he built in them; he turned to mock turkey only after his tempeh failed to catch on.

In 1953 Swanson reportedly turned 260 tons of unsold Thanksgiving turkey into which new product?

The TV dinner. A Swanson salesman said he borrowed the tray from airline meals, and the first ones sold for 98 cents; how much of the idea was really his has since been disputed.

Which president began the annual White House custom of granting a Thanksgiving turkey a 'presidential pardon', in 1989?

George H. W. Bush. Truman, often given the credit, ate at least some of his turkeys, and Kennedy spared one in 1963 with 'Let's keep him going'; Bush made the reprieve a yearly ritual.

Besides Gobbler and Puritan, what is New England's Thanksgiving-leftovers sandwich called?

Pilgrim. One Plymouth food historian's best guess is that it began after World War II at New England turkey farms with their own counters; on Friends, Ross's version had a gravy-soaked 'moist maker' slice in the middle.

A turkey's wishbone, pulled apart for luck after dinner, is formed from which two fused bones?

Collarbones. Joined into a springy fork, they brace the bird's chest against the strain of flapping; people have the same two bones, one on each side, but ours never fuse.

Which French red wine goes on sale each year on the third Thursday of November, a week before Thanksgiving?

Beaujolais nouveau. Made from Gamay grapes picked only weeks earlier, it is uncorked just after midnight; the date was fixed in 1985, and its makers have sold it in America as a Thanksgiving wine ever since.

Which drink's seasonal sales hit a first peak at Thanksgiving before a bigger one at Christmas?

Eggnog. Hardly anyone buys it in warm weather, so dairies make it for only about two months a year; sales climb to Thanksgiving week, dip, then crest in the week before Christmas.

A Newfoundland Jiggs dinner, a regional Canadian Thanksgiving meal, comes with a pudding made from what?

Split peas. The pease pudding boils in a cloth bag in the same pot as the salt beef and vegetables; the meal is named after Jiggs, a comic-strip Irishman who lived for his corned beef and cabbage.

Canadian Thanksgiving, fixed by a 1957 proclamation, falls on the second Monday of which month?

October. For a decade from 1921 it was held in November on the same day as Armistice Day, until 11 November was set aside for veterans alone and the harvest holiday moved back.

In Baltimore, a Thanksgiving tradition with German roots puts which side dish on the table beside the turkey?

Sauerkraut. The port was a main gateway for German immigrants, who made up about a quarter of the city by the 1860s, when Thanksgiving became a national holiday, and their descendants still set it beside the bird.

The Mexican state of Oaxaca is nicknamed 'the land of the seven' what?

Moles. The best-known kind, mole poblano, is traditionally served over turkey, and legend has convent nuns inventing it for an archbishop that way, so some Mexican-American families pour it over the Thanksgiving bird.

Puerto Rico's signature rice dish, a Thanksgiving staple there, is cooked with pork and which legume?

Pigeon peas. Arroz con gandules cooks in one pot with sofrito, and the turkey served beside it is often pavochón, a bird seasoned the way islanders season their roast pork.

Midwesterners of Norwegian descent often set the Thanksgiving table with which soft potato flatbread?

Lefse. Norwegian immigrants brought it over, rolled thin and cooked on a griddle; the Midwest almost always makes it with potato, though in Norway the name also covers kinds made with none.

What animal, sent to the White House for Thanksgiving dinner in 1926, did the Coolidges keep as a pet?

A raccoon. A Mississippi supporter sent her to be cooked; the Coolidges named her Rebecca instead, and that Christmas the president gave her an embroidered collar reading 'White House Raccoon'.

The shocking-pink cranberry relish that NPR's Susan Stamberg shared on air each Thanksgiving got its kick from which pungent root?

Horseradish. The recipe was her mother-in-law's, taken from one Craig Claiborne published in 1959; ground up with raw cranberries, onion and sour cream, it 'sounds terrible but tastes terrific', Stamberg used to say.

In a Thanksgiving episode of Friends, Rachel ruins an English trifle by adding a layer of which meat?

Beef sautéed with peas and onions went in because two cookbook pages were stuck together, merging the trifle with a shepherd's pie. Joey happily ate every abandoned portion.

In A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, the friends' feast is toast, pretzel sticks, jelly beans and which other snack?

Popcorn made the menu because Charlie Brown admitted he could cook little beyond toast. Snoopy set up a ping pong table outside to serve as the dining table.

Which artist painted Freedom from Want, the 1943 image of a matriarch presenting a roast turkey to her family?

Norman Rockwell photographed his own cook carrying the bird on Thanksgiving Day 1942, painted it that day, and his family then ate it for dinner.

The French word for turkey, dinde, is short for a phrase meaning 'chicken of' which country?

India got the credit when the French first named the bird poule d'Inde, later trimmed to dinde. Several northern European languages name it after the port of Calicut instead.

What name do Indigenous farmers of North America give the trio of maize, beans and squash grown together?

The Three Sisters help one another: the maize stalk is a trellis for the beans, the beans feed the soil with nitrogen, and broad squash leaves shade out weeds.

Food chemist William A. Mitchell, who created Cool Whip in 1966, also invented which candy?

Pop Rocks came out of his failed 1956 attempt at an instant self-carbonating soda. He also invented Tang, the drink mix NASA began flying in 1962.

Which utensil only became popular in North America near the Revolution, so early Thanksgiving diners ate without it?

Fork use caught on in North America only around the American Revolution. In England the tool had long been viewed as an unmanly Italian affectation.

The first crew to spend Thanksgiving in orbit, in 1973, ate two dinners after a spacewalk aboard which station?

Skylab astronauts Gibson and Pogue spent over six hours outside that day, so the crew made up for a missed lunch with two meals at dinner time, neither with any holiday specials.

Harry Hoenselaar built a prototype from a tire jack, a pie tin and a washing machine motor to spiral-slice which meat?

Ham sliced in one spiral around the bone made his name: he said the idea came to him in a dream, and he founded HoneyBaked in Detroit in 1957.

The potato, mashed on nearly every Thanksgiving table, was first domesticated in which mountain range?

Andes farmers near Lake Titicaca tamed the potato some 7,000 to 10,000 years ago, and about 3,000 varieties still grow in those mountains.

Turkey legs are darker than the breast because the hard-working muscle holds more of which oxygen-storing protein?

Myoglobin lets muscle use oxygen efficiently for long, steady work, which is why geese and ducks, built for sustained flight, are dark meat all over.

Which part of a roast turkey has carried the nickname 'pope's nose' since 18th-century Britain?

The tail stump, built around the bird's last fused vertebrae, became the parson's nose in 1839, and later jokers swapped in bishops and sultans.

Jennie-O, the turkey brand that Earl B. Olson named after his daughter, is based in Willmar in which state?

Minnesota has housed Jennie-O since Olson bought a Willmar turkey plant in 1949; his family sold the business to Hormel, another firm from the state, in 1986.

Which oil, favoured for its high smoke point, did early turkey fryers switch to because lard spoiled too easily?

Peanut oil, once refined, can take about 450°F before it smokes, which is why it also fills the fryers that turn out French fries in bulk.

Succotash, whose name comes from a Narragansett word for corn kernels, pairs sweet corn with which legume?

Lima beans are the classic partner, though other shell beans will do. The Narragansett original is glossed as either broken or boiled whole corn kernels.

Soaking a raw turkey in salt water for hours before roasting, to season it and keep it tender, is called what?

Brining differs from marinating mainly in what is left out: a marinade usually carries a good dose of acid, such as vinegar or citrus juice.

Traditional mincemeat pie, an old Thanksgiving dessert that once held real meat, gets its richness from which hard fat?

Suet, the hard fat from around the kidneys of cattle and sheep, went in beside venison or other meat because spiced mincemeat began as a way of preserving it.

Wild rice, long used to stuff game birds, is not a true rice but the grain of four species of aquatic what?

Grass of the genus Zizania produces the grain, which also goes by water oats and manoomin and grows wild in shallow lakes around the Great Lakes.

Reddi-wip, the canned whipped cream Aaron 'Bunny' Lapin invented in 1948, is pushed out of its can by which gas?

Nitrous oxide, better known as laughing gas, propels the cream. Lapin had first made Sta-Whip, a substitute based on vegetable oil, and went on to patent his dispensing valve.

King's Hawaiian rolls grew out of baker Robert Taira's longer-lasting version of which country's sweet bread?

Portugal's sweet bread went stale notoriously fast until Taira, who opened his bakery in Hilo in 1950, worked out how to extend its shelf life and sell it to supermarkets.

Jiffy corn muffin mix, a boxed shortcut to holiday cornbread, is made in the town of Chelsea in which state?

Michigan's Chelsea Milling Company still makes it. The mix's creator, Mabel White Holmes, was grandmother to Howdy Holmes, who raced in the Indianapolis 500 before he took charge of the firm.

Which shellfish flavours a traditional Thanksgiving stuffing and opened the White House Cook Book's 1887 menu?

Oysters, served on the half shell, led that menu, ahead of cream of chicken soup, fried smelts and, eventually, the roast turkey.

Collard greens, a Thanksgiving staple on many Southern tables, belong to the same species as which vegetable?

Cabbage and collards are both Brassica oleracea; collards simply never form a tight head, which helps them shrug off humid weather.

The pecan, baked into a favourite Thanksgiving pie, is a species of which tree, also prized for smoking meat?

Hickory is the pecan's family tree, and botanists add that its 'nut' is really a drupe, a stone fruit wrapped in a husk.

Cooking an empty pie crust in the oven before the filling goes in, to stop it turning soggy, is known as what?

Blind baking is essential for pies with an unbaked filling, such as cream or pudding pies, because the shell gets no second trip to the oven.

Which sitcom's 1986 episode 'Thanksgiving Orphans' ends with the gang hurling their potluck dinner at each other?

Cheers staged the food fight at Carla's house, and TV Guide later ranked the episode seventh on its list of the 100 greatest of all time.

In which 2013 animated film do two turkeys travel back to 1621 to take their kind off the Thanksgiving menu?

Free Birds sends Reggie and Jake back in a stolen government time machine called S.T.E.V.E., landing three days before the 1621 feast.

In Puerto Rico the Thanksgiving turkey is often stuffed with mofongo, a garlicky mash of which fried fruit?

Plantains are picked green, fried, then pounded with garlic and broth in a wooden mortar called a pilón. The bird itself, seasoned like roast pig, is nicknamed pavochón.

The cornucopia, a Thanksgiving centrepiece, began in Greek myth as the horn of which animal that nursed baby Zeus?

A goat named Amalthea, in the best-known telling, fed the infant Zeus with her milk in a cave on Crete, so the Greeks knew the horn of plenty as the horn of Amalthea.

Mashed potato lovers can thank which state, grower of about a third of America's crop on its Snake River Plain?

Idaho leads the nation in potatoes. The country's most widely grown variety, the Russet Burbank, descends from a seedling Luther Burbank selected in 1873.

The cherpumple, a novelty holiday dessert inspired by the turducken, bakes three whole pies inside layers of what?

Cake in three flavours wraps cherry, pumpkin and apple pies, all held together with cream cheese frosting. Humorist Charles Phoenix invented the stack in 2009.

Crisco, the pie-crust shortening launched by Procter & Gamble in 1911, was originally made from the oil of which crop?

Cotton seed supplied the oil, and the brand name is a contraction of 'crystallized cottonseed oil', chosen after the makers rejected 'Krispo' and 'Cryst'.

Which process, first described by a French chemist in 1912, turns the skin of a roasting turkey brown and savoury?

The Maillard reaction joins amino acids with carbohydrates to make the compounds that flavour browned food. Louis Camille Maillard found it while trying to reproduce how the body builds proteins.

Loosening the browned bits in a roasting pan with stock or wine, the first step of many gravies, is called what?

Deglazing dissolves the browned residue that chefs call fond, French for 'base'. Milk and cream are poor choices for the job, as dairy may curdle over high heat.

The Bourbon Red, a heritage turkey with reddish-brown plumage, takes its name from a county in which state?

Kentucky's Bluegrass Region bred the bird in the late 1800s, and it was an important commercial meat turkey until broad-breasted industrial birds took over.

Which Seattle company launched a Turkey & Gravy flavoured soft drink in November 2003 that sold out within two hours?

Jones Soda saw empty bottles fetch over $10 each on eBay, so it returned with a holiday pack that added Mashed Potatoes with Butter and Fruitcake flavours.

Which president's 1947 food-saving drive urged 'Poultryless Thursdays', alarming turkey farmers before Thanksgiving?

Harry S. Truman relented on turkey after the poultry industry lobbied him, but 'Eggless Thursdays' stayed, so the White House served no pumpkin pie that year.

On parts of the West Coast, which seafood, in season from early November, may replace the Thanksgiving turkey?

Dungeness crab takes its name from Dungeness Spit, a sandy hook on Washington's Strait of Juan de Fuca that shelters a shallow bay full of them.

Capon, which some Italian American families serve as their Thanksgiving main course, is what kind of bird?

A castrated rooster grows bigger and more tender. Romans took up the practice after a law of 162 BC banned fattening hens in order to save grain.

Chitterlings, served with collard greens on some Southern Thanksgiving tables, are which part of an animal?

Intestines need rigorous washing before they are boiled or stewed for hours, and many cooks then slice and fry them until crisp.

The pumpkin behind Thanksgiving's favourite pie is, to a botanist, a type of berry known by which name?

Pepo is also the species name of the classic field pumpkin, Cucurbita pepo, among the oldest domesticated plants: Mesoamericans grew it at least 7,500 years ago.

The Beltsville Small White, a compact turkey bred by the USDA from 1934, is named after a town in which state?

Maryland's Beltsville research center bred it because shoppers wanted a small bird with more white meat and no dark pinfeathers. By 1954 it made up about 28 percent of US turkeys.

Which editor, who campaigned for a national Thanksgiving, gave the dinner a whole chapter of her 1827 novel Northwood?

Sarah Josepha Hale put the roast turkey at the head of the table and called pumpkin pie indispensable. She also wrote the nursery rhyme about Mary and her lamb.

Around 1800, Americans at Thanksgiving usually drank alcoholic punches and which other orchard drink?

Hard cider is the American name for the fermented kind; by the 19th century plain 'cider' could mean apple juice either before or after fermentation.

Brussels sprouts, a common Thanksgiving vegetable, take their name from the capital of which country?

Belgium grew them near Brussels from the 13th century. Their modern comeback owes much to Dutch breeders, who in the 1990s tracked down the chemicals that made them bitter.

Apple pie, a Thanksgiving favourite, depends on a fruit whose wild ancestor still grows in which region?

Central Asia is still home to Malus sieversii, the wild tree that gene sequencing points to as the most likely ancestor of the orchard apple.

Thanksgiving in Hawaii falls within which months-long traditional Hawaiian season of feasting and giving thanks?

Makahiki honoured the god Lono, and warfare was forbidden while it lasted so that nothing would harm the new crops.

A 1935 Thanksgiving menu for which New Deal work programme ended with French drip coffee, cigars and cigarettes?

Civilian Conservation Corps diners first worked through roast turkey, snowflake potatoes, creamed asparagus tips, mince pie and fruitcake before the smokes came out.

Which country's ships first carried the turkey from the Americas to Europe in the early 16th century?

Spain shipped the birds home from Mexico, and their European descendants later crossed back over the Atlantic to become the ancestors of today's farm breeds.

The flash-freezing behind supermarket frozen turkeys was inspired by which Arctic people's way of freezing fish?

Inuit fishers in Labrador showed Clarence Birdseye, there from 1912 to 1915, that fish frozen fast in Arctic air kept its texture and flavour far better than slow-frozen food.