The History Behind Thanksgiving Stuffing
You can't have a Thanksgiving feast without stuffing right?! Turkey just isn't the same without it.
So how did this dynamic food combination come to be on everyone's Thanksgiving table?
Well, according to History:
"There’s no way of knowing whether the Pilgrims actually served stuffing at their original harvest feat. But given the abundance of both wild game and rice, it’s likely that the first Thanksgiving dinner featured some kind of bird with a wild rice dish alongside it. New Englanders continued to take cues from their environment when it came to stuffing, and chestnuts became a popular addition"- History.
With the dish varying on what ingredients were readily available, cities like Boston changed their 'stuffing' to have Oysters and no bread crumbs; which heavily reflects the fishing culture's influence on their food.
The name for the dish also tends to vary geographically.
People in the northern United States tend to call it stuffing while in the south it's typically called dressing. Yet some in Phillipheila, PA claim that it is filling.
In southern made 'dressing' cornbread or stale biscuits were typically used as the base instead of white bread followed by adding either salted pork or bacon.
Regardless of what you call it or put in it, it's definitely a dish to be thankful for this year.
Source: History
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