Reading, MA — Frazzled thinking about all you need to do for Thanksgiving at your house? Is the list a mile long?
If that sounds right, you’ll feel better after reading about the Reading Antiquarian Society’s biennial meeting presentation that showed members how easy we have it. Yes, for us, dinner preparation’s a picnic.
To prepare for a harvest feast around 1750, people began in the spring (really!). They needed to till and plant a vegetable garden — beans, squash, turnip, corn, pumpkin, etc. Once planted, seedlings had to be carefully tended, fertilized (using natural items, like fish), etc. Then there was watering. Without regular rainfall, it was off to the well with buckets — a tedious task. Heaven help them if the well went dry (and it sometimes did)!
When fall’s plentiful harvest happened, dinner work began. The man of the house would hunt a wild turkey or deer. And someone cleaned and prepped the animal. Cooking, which was done over an open fire – was a serious danger for women. Dying from a dress catching on fire was second only to childbirth in the colonial era.
Other difficulties included preparing things like squash. We often buy squash already peeled, seeded, and cut into chunks. Our ancestors had to cut open hard squashes with cleavers, knives used with hammers, etc. Perhaps that made apple pie more popular for some folks than a squash or pumpkin one! And there was no way to prepare anything ahead and freeze it. Such a thought was unimaginable!
Few recipes were available, and those that were often assumed a certain amount of knowledge. Cooking times and oven temperature? Nope! You had to do a lot by ear or eye — did it look right, did the temperature feel hot enough, and did the cake seem done? Hopefully, a woman’s mother or other female figure had taught her how to cook, as young girls no doubt helped their mothers with these and many other domestic tasks.
As for cleanup, well, without a dishwasher or even running water (forget about hot running water, unless it was heated over the fire), it must have been a dreadful nightmare after all the rest of the day’s exhausting work.
This Thanksgiving, be thankful you have recipes with foolproof measurements, can monitor your oven’s temperature, and can consult cookbook’s guidance about how long each item needs to cook.
It seems we have no excuses for not having everything turn out just right!
Happy Thanksgiving!
