Blessing the Dressing

Can I tell you something?

I like turkey and cranberry sauce. I’ll grant you the meat is an odd combination of gamy and tasteless, which would explain the need for a super-tart fruit jelly, and it should be noted that nearly a third of Americans don’t like either one, but I find it comforting. Which is what comfort food is supposed to do, right?

And I fucking love dressing and gravy. There is a fair amount of confusion regarding the difference between stuffing and dressing, and I don’t really mind dressing used as stuffing, but I prefer my herby, buttery, bread cubes baked in a dish instead of the intestinal cavity of a large bird, thank you very much.

Oh, you can have your lumpy mashed potatoes, candied yams with marshmallows, and green bean casserole, and I don’t blame you for that. But other than some salted cashews, bread and butter pickles, and giant black olives eaten from the tips of my fingers, I want nothing more than turkey with cranberry sauce and dressing with gravy for Thanksgiving dinner.

But that’s not what I wanted to tell you.

The first Thanksgiving allegedly was in 1621 when some Wampanoag natives sat with a group of Puritans somewhere in New England for a fall feast to celebrate the fact that nobody had died of starvation that year.

The tribe had graciously taken it upon themselves to teach the colonists how to survive, something they no doubt regretted later, and they shared with them their bounty of land and sea which included deer, elk, fish, shellfish, vegetables and fruit. But as yet no turkey. Or cranberry sauce.

It is not clear when this celebratory meal became a tradition, but after Massachusetts Colony Governor John Winthrop declared a day of thanks in 1637 because his volunteer army slaughtered 700 Pequot people, it surged in popularity. And given that the majority of colonists were Calvanists, it stands to reason that Thanksgiving rapidly morphed into a day to thank God for getting rid of savages. And providing corn. It also stands to reason that Thanksgiving for native Americans rapidly morphed into a day of mourning and protest.

But that’s not what I wanted to tell you either.

Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863. Honest Abe did it primarily to take a breather from the Civil War so all the soldiers could stop killing their brothers and watch football for a day, but from that point forward it became a tradition with a permanent date on the calendar as the third Thursday in November. And by this time, turkey had become popular for the centerpiece of the Thanksgiving feast.

Where or when turkey became the choice for millions of Americans is up for debate, but since the Dutch claim to have invented April Fool’s Day and golf it was probably them. Whatever those clog wearing, tulip sniffing, pot smoking people think, it is most likely because turkeys are really big birds which don’t provide milk or eggs but have plenty of meat to feed a large crowd. And they don’t fly so they’re much easier to catch than say a goose or a duck.

Who was first to stuff the turkey with moistened stale bread before roasting is anyone’s guess but they had to be high so let’s give that one to the Dutch too. Assuming that’s correct, shortly thereafter someone who wasn’t so high said, “wouldn’t it be easier and less gross to just put that stuff in a greased baking dish?”

Everyone agreed but since you couldn’t in good conscience call it stuffing that raised the question of what the hell to call it.

Here again, there are differences of opinion as to the origin of the term dressing, but food historians – how did I miss that as my major? – seem to agree that people in Victorian England were offended by the crudity of the word stuffing and sought a more genteel way to describe it. And since those prigs wore dresses over skirts over bloomers over girdles, I suppose it made sense to call whatever you piled on the plate dressing.

But the real stroke of genius was when someone – again probably the flying Dutchman – noted that dressing, which was already laced with butter and salt, needed more deliciousness and poured a bunch of giblet gravy on it. Bam! Up another notch.

I don’t mean to give short shrift to cranberry sauce here. The canned version, which has been around since 1912, annually rescues millions of turkeys that have been roasted into oblivion. But let’s face it, the best part about canned cranberry sauce and why you should never make your own – I know Martha would strongly disagree but when you put a bunch of cinnamon and orange zest in it you might as well skip the pumpkin and make a pie – is the sound it makes when you disgorge it from the can.

But what I really wanted to tell you is this.

Regular readers may know by now I’m not big on celebrating holidays, but I do make an exception for Thanksgiving. And it’s not the food or the football.

I am truly thankful for my family and friends and want to take this opportunity to thank all of you for reading. Have a wonderful day, and when saying your blessing don’t forget the dressing. Pass the gravy, please.

Thanks for listening. Talk soon.