( Mental Floss ) -- When Americans sit down with their families for Thanksgiving dinner , most of us will probably gorge ourselves on the same traditional Thanksgiving menu , with turkey , cranberry sauce , stuffing , and pumpkin pie taking up the most real estate on our plates . Pumpkin pie did n't make an appearance at the First Thanksgiving , though pumpkins were probably served . How did these dishes become the national `` what you eat on Thanksgiving '' options , though ? Are they holdovers from the First Thanksgiving , or did they gradually sneak in ? The Pilgrims may not have had turkey . Turkey may not have been on the menu at the 1621 celebration by the Pilgrims of Plymouth that is widely considered the First Thanksgiving ( though fans of Virginia 's Berkeley Plantation might quibble with the `` First '' part ) . There were definitely wild turkeys in the Plymouth area , as colonist William Bradford noted in his journal . However , the best existing account of the Pilgrims ' harvest feast comes from colonist Edward Winslow , author of `` Mourt 's Relation : A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth . '' Winslow 's first-hand account of the First Thanksgiving included no explicit mention of turkey . He does , however , mention the Pilgrims gathering `` wild fowl '' for the meal , although that could just as likely have meant ducks or geese . So why do we chow down on turkey , then ? It helps to know a bit about the history of Thanksgiving . While the idea of giving thanks and celebrating the harvest was popular in certain parts of the country , it was by no means an annual national holiday . Presidents would occasionally declare a Thanksgiving Day celebration , but the holiday had n't completely caught on nationwide . Many of these early celebrations included turkey ; Alexander Hamilton once remarked that , `` No citizen of the U.S. shall refrain from turkey on Thanksgiving Day . '' Mental Floss : Manly ways to prepare turkey . When Bradford 's journals were reprinted in 1856 after being lost for a century , they found a receptive audience with advocates who wanted Thanksgiving turned into a national holiday . Since Bradford wrote of how the colonists had hunted wild turkeys during the autumn of 1621 and since turkey is a uniquely American ( and scrumptious ) bird , it gained traction as the Thanksgiving meal of choice for Americans after Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863 . Moreover , there were pragmatic reasons for eating turkey rather than , say , chicken at a feast like Thanksgiving . The birds are large enough that they can feed a table full of hungry family members , and unlike chickens or cows , they did n't serve much utilitarian purpose like laying eggs or making milk . Unlike pork , turkey was n't so common that it did n't seem like a suitable choice for a special occasion , either . An interesting 2007 piece in Slate discussed these reasons for turkey 's prominence , but also made another intriguing point . The publication of `` A Christmas Carol '' in 1843 may have helped force along the turkey 's cause as a holiday delicacy when Scrooge magnanimously sends the Cratchit family a Christmas turkey . Mental Floss : 10 things that deflated the Macy 's parade . There was no cranberry sauce , either . While the cranberries the Pilgrims needed were probably easy to come by , making cranberry sauce requires sugar . Sugar was a rare luxury at the time of First Thanksgiving , so while revelers may have eaten cranberries it 's unlikely that the feast featured the tasty sauce . What 's more , it 's not even entirely clear that cranberry sauce had been invented yet . It 's not until 1663 that visitors to the area started commenting on a sweet sauce made of boiled cranberries that accompanied meat . There 's the same problem with potatoes . Neither sweet potatoes nor white potatoes were available to the colonists in 1621 , so the Pilgrims definitely did n't feast on everyone 's favorite tubers . But they had plenty of venison . Winslow mentions in his writings that the governor sent out a party of four men to do some fowling for the feast , but the Pilgrims and Wampanoag also enjoyed five deer as part of their feasting . The meat supposedly arrived at the celebration as a gift from the Wampanoag king Massasoit . On top of the venison , other meats probably included lots of fish and shellfish , which were staples of the Pilgrims ' diets . So if you want to wolf down a lobster or some oysters in lieu of turkey on Thursday , nobody can fault you for being historically inaccurate . And pumpkin pie did n't cap things off . It may be the flagship dessert at modern Thanksgiving dinners , but pumpkin pie did n't make an appearance at the First Thanksgiving . The Pilgrims probably lacked the butter and flour needed to make a pie crust , and it 's not clear that they even had an oven in which they could have baked a pumpkin pie . That does n't mean pumpkins were n't available for the meal , though ; they were probably served after being baked in the coals of a fire or stewed . Pumpkin pie became a popular dish on 17th-century American tables , though , and it might have shown up for Thanksgiving as early as the second celebration of the holiday in 1623 . Mental Floss : 10 Thanksgiving traditions . For more mental_floss articles , visit mentalfloss.com . Entire contents of this article copyright , Mental Floss LLC . All rights reserved .
First - hand accounts of the First Thanksgiving includes no explicit mention of turkey . It 's also unlikely that the feast featured cranberry sauce . ` ` A Christmas Carol '' may have helped turkey become a Christmas delicacy . Pumpkin pie was a popular dish on 17th - century American farms .