An Anglo-Saxon Thanksgiving? Perhaps

The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes lived a long time before the British and Dutch Separatists reached Plymouth Rock in America in 1621 and had their Thanksgiving dinner with the Wampanoag, but the Germanic tribes shared an affinity for eating and celebrating the harvest that is universal.

And during this American holiday season, it seems fitting to talk about Anglo-Saxon food and, specifically, recipes.

I refer to a wonderful little site titled COLLECTION: Medieval and Anglo-Saxon recipes, by Jennifer Newbury. The recipes are taken from the British Museum Cookbook, and they go a long way toward telling us what our Germanic forebears liked to eat.

Take, for instance, the recipe for Rabbit Stew. This recipe is quite old, as evidenced by the aside mentioning the heavy use of herbs, which were "one of the few flavourings available to cooks" in the 7th century. The stew, anyway, calls for hare, rabbit, chicken, or veal, along with leeks and garlic, garlic and barley, bay leaves and sage leaves. Sounds good to me, no matter which meat is in it. It also sounds like it would feed a hungry horde sitting down to harvest feast in late November. (Yes, they did that back then. The harvest did come around regularly, after all.)

Another fun-sounding recipe is Small bird and Bacon Stew with Walnuts or Hazelnuts. This fun recipe includes bacon (of course), garlic, mushrooms, real ale, bay leaves, and the meat of four pigeons or other small game birds. The ale naturally gives it a fulfilling taste.

And lest we think that the Germanic tribes ate only read or white meat, the site gives us a recipe for fish: Griddle Trout with Herbs. The herbs, specifically, are rosemary, thyme, and sage.

We even get a dessert recipe: Summer Fruit, Honey, and Hazelnut Crumble, which calls for "raspberries, loganberries, strawberries, currants, bilberries or whatever is available." Sounds like a good sweet chaser to herb-flavor-filled stew or fish.

Clearly, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes knew how to eat.

Did they have a Thanksgiving? Well, they didn't call it that. But one can't help but wonder about the possibility of an autumn festival to celebrate the bountiful harvest or the year's battlefield successes. One can almost see a local warlord and his charges sitting around a long table, stuffing Rabbit Stew in their faces while telling tales of conquest while, at the same time, farming families sit around their own table, giving thanks for another year of not starving. Possible? Certainly.

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