At the table with
Woodrow Wilson.

THE HISTORICAL TABLE

A wartime Thanksgiving table

Wilson’s 1917 Thanksgiving menu included oyster soup, turkey with vegetables, and pumpkin pie. The meal also belonged to a period when food conservation had become a public responsibility. A presidential holiday table could celebrate tradition while responding to the pressures of war.

Turkey is the recorded centre of our menu. We adapt it as a smaller breast with herb stuffing for a home oven. Peach cobbler is a separate reconstruction from the fruit-and-baking traditions of Wilson’s Southern background, rather than a course from that Thanksgiving dinner.