Forget Thanksgiving. No three-day feast. No five deer arriving with Wampanoag guests. No special harvest celebration.
It’s Tuesday. You’re hungry.
What’s for dinner in Plymouth?
The answer is much more interesting than turkey and pumpkin pie. William Bradford’s writings and other early accounts describe a Plymouth food world filled with cod, bass, other fish, waterfowl, wild turkey, venison and—critically—Indian corn. Later visitors mention lobster, grapes, plums and nuts. The colonists brought English food traditions with them, but survival in New England increasingly required learning how to use foods native to the place where they now lived.
There is one important warning before we set the table: no daily menus or original recipes survive from early Plymouth Colony. Pilgrim Hall Museum explicitly cautions us about this. We know foods the colonists possessed, foods available locally, and a few dishes associated with particular occasions—but we cannot tell you what William Bradford ate for supper on a particular Wednesday.
So consider this our historically informed week at a Pilgrim table: not seven documented meals, but seven opportunities to explore what ordinary food in early Plymouth could actually have looked like.
Monday: Corn Is What’s for Dinner
Let’s begin with the food that became indispensable to Plymouth: Indian corn—or maize. Corn was already a staple food for the Indigenous peoples of the region. English colonists had to learn how to grow it and how to make this unfamiliar grain part of their own food traditions. Pilgrim Hall describes several Indigenous preparations recorded in early New England sources. Corn could be parched and ground into meal, boiled with water into porridge, or pounded into flour and formed into small cakes.
The English eventually adapted some of these preparations to their own tastes. Roger Williams later described samp as beaten and boiled Indian corn that English people ate hot or cold, sometimes adding milk or butter. That last detail is important. The English didn’t simply replace their own food culture with an Indigenous one. They adopted a new ingredient and adapted it to familiar eating habits.
So Monday’s imaginary bowl might contain corn porridge. Not glamorous. But potentially the difference between hunger and survival.
Tuesday: Gone Fishing
Today we’re having fish. Bradford gives us excellent evidence. Writing about Plymouth’s first year, he described colonists fishing for cod, bass and other fish, taking enough that every family received a portion. That abundance wasn’t automatic. Edward Winslow later warned prospective settlers that hearing about a land filled with fish, fowl and venison was one thing; possessing the means and skill to catch them was another. That observation is almost humorous in its practicality.
A lake full of fish isn’t dinner if nobody knows how to catch one.
The English colonists initially lacked some of the hunting, fishing and foraging skills needed to take advantage of New England’s resources. Becoming more competent at obtaining local food was part of learning how to survive.
Tuesday’s fish therefore represents more than food. It represents acquired skill.
Wednesday: Something Is Simmering in the Pot
Today let’s have pottage. Pottage was not one standardized recipe. Think instead of a broad family of soups, porridges and stews built from whatever grains, vegetables, herbs or meat were available.
And wonderfully, we have a documented example involving Edward Winslow.
In 1623, when Wampanoag sachem Ousamequin—Massasoit to the English—was gravely ill, Winslow was asked to prepare English pottage for him. There was a problem. Winslow admitted that he didn’t really know what he was doing. Without the fowl he wanted, he had a Wampanoag woman bruise corn. He cooked the broken corn in a small pot, went searching for herbs, found strawberry leaves, added them and then used a little sassafras root for flavor. Ousamequin drank the resulting broth. Winslow’s improvised dish is fascinating because it combined an English concept of medicinal pottage with locally available maize and plants.
Wednesday’s dinner therefore gets a pot on the fire. What goes into it? That depends on what you have.
Thursday: Fowl—But Don’t Automatically Say Turkey
Bradford recorded an abundance of birds as winter approached. There were waterfowl. There were also wild turkeys, which he specifically said the colonists took in considerable numbers. So yes, turkey really was available in early Plymouth. But don’t make the mistake of assuming every reference to “fowl” means turkey.
The famous 1621 harvest account says four men went fowling and returned with enough birds to help feed the company for nearly a week. The surviving account doesn’t identify the species. Pilgrim Hall notes that wildfowl at the harvest celebration could have included birds such as goose, duck or turkey. Our ordinary Thursday dinner might therefore be some kind of waterfowl when hunting was successful.
But there is an important phrase in that sentence: When hunting was successful.
Dinner depended upon season, skill and opportunity.
Friday: Fish Again
Yes.
Again.
Modern meal planning asks, What do we feel like eating tonight? Subsistence living asks, What do we have? Bradford’s reference to fish being apportioned among families reminds us that successful catches weren’t simply culinary inspiration. They were part of the colony’s food supply. And early Plymouth’s diet could be repetitive.
A visitor writing from the colony in the winter of 1623–24 complained about “very poor fare,” describing cold water and limited beef, with good quantities of fowl only occasionally. That account is useful because it prevents us from turning Plymouth into a seventeenth-century farm-to-table restaurant. New England contained abundant natural resources. That did not mean the colonists always ate abundantly. Food sufficiency remained a serious concern during Plymouth’s early years.
So Friday? Fish. And be thankful for it.
Saturday: Venison—If Someone Has Been Hunting
Venison appears repeatedly in early Plymouth accounts. Bradford mentions it among the foods available to the colony. Ousamequin and his men famously brought five deer to the 1621 harvest celebration. At Bradford’s 1623 wedding to Alice Southworth, visiting Englishman Emmanuel Altham described an extraordinary quantity of venison, including venison pasties and roasted meat. That was a special occasion, not an ordinary Saturday dinner. But it confirms that venison was very much part of Plymouth’s food world.
For our imaginary ordinary meal, we should skip the elaborate wedding pasties. A simpler preparation of available venison is more appropriate. And once again, obtaining the food required somebody to possess the means and knowledge to hunt it. The landscape was the supermarket. But the landscape didn’t come with a checkout aisle.
Sunday: Something Familiar—Made From Something New
Sunday brings us back to corn. And perhaps that’s appropriate. Food history becomes especially interesting when cultures meet because people rarely adopt unfamiliar ingredients without changing them. Pilgrim Hall documents Indigenous corn preparations and later English adaptations. One Indigenous preparation involved finely ground corn mixed with water, formed into flat cakes and baked in hot ashes. Coarser meal could be boiled into porridge.
English colonists eventually incorporated maize into dishes more familiar to European tastes. The General Society of Mayflower Descendants likewise identifies flint corn among the foods grown in early Plymouth and offers educational material on foods available to the colonists. This is one of the most interesting transformations at the Plymouth table.
The settlers arrived with English ideas about food. New England presented different ingredients. Indigenous peoples possessed generations of knowledge about those ingredients. Over time, the newcomers began incorporating American foods into an increasingly distinctive colonial food culture.
What About Breakfast and Lunch?
Here our modern assumptions can mislead us again. We shouldn’t imagine a contemporary schedule of breakfast at 7:30am, lunch at noon and a large dinner at 6:00pm. Seventeenth-century English meal patterns differed from ours, and even ordinary English dinners could include multiple dishes when circumstances permitted.
At Plymouth, however, circumstances mattered enormously. Season. Harvest. Available grain. A successful fishing trip. A successful hunt. Stored provisions. Household resources.
And the year we’re talking about: Plymouth in 1621 was not Plymouth in 1641. That is why an honest historical reconstruction needs flexibility rather than a laminated restaurant menu.
The Pilgrim Table Wasn’t Really an English Table Anymore
Perhaps that’s the most interesting lesson. The people who stepped off the Mayflower were English. Their expectations about food were English. Their cooking traditions were English. But the land wasn’t.
Maize was not wheat. Local fish and wildlife followed unfamiliar patterns. Native plants required knowledge the colonists did not initially possess. The Wampanoag and other Indigenous peoples already knew how to obtain and prepare the region’s resources. Plymouth’s settlers had to learn. And gradually, their table changed.
Corn entered English-style dishes. Local fish became household food. Wild birds and venison supplemented imported or domestically raised foods. New ingredients were interpreted through old culinary habits. The result was not purely English food. Nor was it Indigenous food. It was the beginning of something new.
So, What’s for Dinner?
After our imaginary week, perhaps the better question is: What did the land provide—and did you have the skill to obtain it?
Maybe tonight there is cod. Tomorrow there may be corn pottage. Perhaps someone brings home a wild turkey. Perhaps there is venison. Perhaps the fishing is poor and dinner is considerably less exciting. There is no refrigerator filled with alternatives. No grocery delivery. No restaurant down the road. And definitely no Thanksgiving feast every Thursday.
The ordinary Plymouth table tells us something the famous harvest celebration sometimes obscures. Survival wasn’t one great feast. It was hundreds of ordinary meals. Someone planted. Someone harvested. Someone hunted. Someone fished. Someone pounded corn. Someone tended the fire. Someone stirred the pot. And then, if all had gone well enough that day, the household sat down and ate.
That’s what was for dinner in Plymouth.
The primary source for this article is Pilgrim Hall Museum — Plymouth Colony Menu. It is unusually valuable because Pilgrim Hall brings together Bradford, Winslow, Roger Williams, Emmanuel Altham and other early evidence while explicitly distinguishing documented foods from reconstructed menus. It supports the article’s discussion of cod, bass, other fish, waterfowl, turkey, venison, corn, pottage and Indigenous corn preparations.
For the harvest-era evidence, use Pilgrim Hall Museum — The First Thanksgiving. Bradford’s account specifically records fish being apportioned to families, waterfowl, wild turkeys, venison and Indian corn.
For a useful educational reference on foods documented or considered available in early Plymouth, use General Society of Mayflower Descendants — What Did Pilgrims Eat or Use at Plimoth?. It includes grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts and other foods while also identifying foods that would not initially have been available.
These articles make ordinary life interesting without fictionalizing it.
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