Thanksgiving Cookery

Thanksgiving Day! What a wealth of images are evoked by this All-American holiday; a multitude of comforting sentiments that would require an American Dickens to do them justice. Valiant be-buckled Pilgrims and their dignified Indian neighbors sit down to dinner in the serenity of an eternal golden autumn afternoon. Radiant white churches welcome cheerful congregations from their rural homesteads supplying the bounty of the harvest. High school and college football teams defend their scholastic honor as preceding generations had under crisp blue autumn skies sensuously spiced with the faint aroma of burning leaves. Generations converge on old New England homesteads where white-haired grandparents welcome the youngest members of the clan. Shocks of corn and heaps of pumpkins dot the fields and fill the barns, and the strutting monarch of the farmyard, the fattened Thanksgiving turkey, marches to his unsuspected fate. Pies are drawn steaming from cast-iron stoves on which bubbling pots foretell the forthcoming feast. All of this would be recognized by generations of Americans as the essence of Thanksgiving.Elizabeth Brabb is the author of the first title in this series, American Chef's Companion. Ms. Brabb's research in culinary styles resulted in this compilation of modern Thanksgiving recipes gathered from all parts of the country. A graduate of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, she divides her time between Manhattan and Shelter Island where she lives with her husband and two children.Jim Baker was born into an old Plymouth, Massachusetts family, and grew up with the story of Pilgrims and the traditions of the town. After receiving his Masters' Degree, he accepted a position as librarian at Plimoth Plantation, becoming Head of Research the following year. From 1975 until 2001, he worked at the Plantation. Jim spent years learning period cuisine and becoming a practiced antiquarian cook, overseeing the preparation of feasts for groups such as the Plantation Trustees, the Culinary Historians of Boston, and a period Thanksgiving for Julia Child on ABC TV. He is now Curator for the Alden House Historic Site in nearby Duxbury.