It was nearly 400 years ago that the Pilgrims sat down with the Wampanoag to share the feast that is immortalized as Thanksgiving. We don’t know the exact menu. According to Kathleen Wall, foodways culinarian at Plimoth Plantation, venison, fowl and corn were documented by attendees, but, beyond that, we can only speculate. I asked if we could speculate about chestnuts. 

“We can’t say for sure, but the odds are pretty good,” she says. “They’re right in season. Both cultures knew them and used them.” 

Susan Freinkel, in her excellent book “American Chestnut: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree,” describes how, in the fall, when the nuts were sometimes inches deep on the ground, families used to gather them for their own use and to sell. Livestock was let loose to eat their fill.  People who didn’t eat chestnuts often ate chestnut-fed venison or squirrel. Furniture, fence posts and utility poles were made of the long, straight, rot-resistant timber. In some places, one in four forest trees was a chestnut, and the tallest stood 12 stories high.