Feature photograph courtesy Shiloh Museum of Ozark History / Orville Jr. and Susan Dulan Hall Collection (S-2010-102-9) “The image is of the Dulan family Thanksgiving dinner from November 30, 1950. People pictured: Left side from front: Susan Dulan Hall, Kathleen Dulan Alexander, Carol Hancock (on lap of Tom Smith). Back end of table, left to right: Harold Andrew Dulan, Bess Gunn Dulan holding Elizabeth Ann Dulan Sexton. Adults on right side, back to front: Ophelia Balkcom Hancock, Mabel Smith. The photo was taken at the Dulan home on Lafayette Street in Fayetteville. Carl Hancock and Tom Smith were teachers at the University of Arkansas Business School. They got together with other faculty members over holidays because so many teachers were far from their families. Carl and Ophelia Hancock were friends of the Dulans. Harold Dulan was a professor of finance at UA Business School.”
From oysters and consommé to green bean casserole and sweet potatoes, Arkansas Thanksgiving dinners tell a story of adaptation and enduring tradition.
Written by Kat Robinson
Thanksgiving dinner in Arkansas has a pretty standard set-up. For most of us, it involves turkey or ham, dressing (or stuffing), mashed potatoes, green beans or green bean casserole, rolls, and pie. Other dishes may make appearances, like a beloved hand-me-down recipe or extra side or two (broccoli cheese casserole and sweet potato casserole with pecans instead of marshmallows are two of my favorites) but the brace of dishes is pretty standard.
We can look back to many sources for the recipes involved in a Thanksgiving celebration, but sometimes it’s in our newspapers that we find the bones of a good holiday meal from the past century.
Newspaper Mentions and Restaurant Menus
While the original Thanksgiving Day was celebrated in New England in the seventeenth century, it wasn’t until the nineteenth century that the tradition made its way to Arkansas. Newspapers starting in the 1830s mention the day, with increasing occurrences through the rest of the century. Finding menus from before 1900 is difficult. But when they appear, they are stunning.
The Pine Bluff Daily Graphic recalls a grand repast from the Hotel Trulock with all sorts of fabulous creatures, from sea bass to quail, beef to turkey.
The Scroggins family of De Queen provided a Thanksgiving meal for employees of their dry goods store in 1904, highlighted in the De Queen Bee. Again, while the turkey was present, a cornucopia of other dishes were offered, including oysters and baked ham.
Restaurants offered meals they promoted in newspapers, a menu for Watkin’s Restaurant appeared in the Log Cabin Democrat in Conway in 1908.
Soup, oysters, and turkey were all served in 1909 at The Ohio Club Cafe in Hot Springs, now known as The Ohio Club. The cafe menu was published in the Hot Springs Sentinel-Record.
A decade later, the same newspaper printed a menu from a restaurant on Central Avenue known as “Frisby’s”, with a larger offering that included consommé alphabet (Alphabet Soup), calves brains, barbecue pig with sweet potatoes, prime rib, and of course turkey. The dessert course included three different pies, a layer cake, and chocolate ice cream, “Vanilla Cream” and Lady Fingers.
Frisby’s “artifact” found in a creek outside of Hot Springs, posted by Chuck Smith in History of Hot Springs. Frisby’s was located on Central Avenue in The Eddy Hotel.
Thanksgiving Meals at Home
The mention of Thanksgiving in newspapers usually referenced a special sermon being given at a local church, or individuals returning to their hometowns to visit family. Over time, Thanksgiving dinner became part of home festivities, usually presented as a meal and sometimes mentioned in the same breath as local football games. Menus used by home cooks in the early years of the twentieth century are hard to find.
The “In Society” column in the November 22, 1921 edition of Arkadelphia’s The Siftings Herald included a menu, though no note of where the food was to be served. The list included consommé, olives, celery, bread sticks, roasted turkey and mashed potatoes with giblet gravy, baked squash, scalloped oysters, hot rolls with butter, cranberry ice, head lettuce (likely iceberg lettuce) with Russian dressing, cheese straws, a choice of mince or apple or pumpkin pie, candy, and nuts. The later meal of turkey salad sandwiches, olives, ice cream, cake, and coffee is listed as a “lunch.”
The El Dorado Daily News held a contest in 1925, asking cooks to submit their perfect Thanksgiving menu to a panel of judges. The winning list, from one Mrs. Paul L. Wells, included oyster cocktail, olives, cream of tomato soup, celery, chow-chow, pickles, roast turkey (Southern style), cranberry sauce, rice, giblet gravy, buttermilk biscuit, buttered peas, marshmallow sweet potatoes, Charlotte, white cake, nuts, coffee, bonbons. The menu was determined to be superior by Mrs. Mildred Burgess, the director of nutrition at El Dorado High School.
Amongst the menus there were some similarities—roast turkey being almost universal, though there were two references to ham and one that called for suckling pig. Though geese, ducks, and chickens were advertised by the groceries of the area in this particular issue, it’s clear that turkey was viewed as the common Thanksgiving dinner meat. There was often a soup served as a first course along with a collection of finger foods: celery, pickles, olives and such.
The November 22, 1929 edition of the Calico Rock Progress included a veritable feast that started with a spiced cocktail (a fruit cocktail with spice with prunes and oranges), a relish tray of olives, celery, and pickles; a consomme with slices of boiled egg; oyster stuffing, roasted turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, creamed onions, mashed turnips, gingerbread, banana shortcake, pumpkin and raisin tarts, coffee and wassail bread. As a bonus, many of the suggested items are referenced with recipes in the same article.
Oysters, Soups, and Spiced Fruits
There is some wonder that so many of these menus called for oysters. Indeed, Arkansas being a landlocked state, their appearance seems unusual to the common eye. But it should be noted that oysters were cheap and plentiful in the early part of the twentieth century. They were considered the food of the working poor and middle class. Only towards the second half of the twentieth century did overharvesting impact the crustacean, and with that rarity came higher prices.
Soups as a first course were common. Consommé, cream of tomato, and cream of asparagus soups were often seen on menus in the 1920s, always as a starter. You would also see fruit cocktails mentioned. Unlike the canned standard we are used to these days, this would have been a recipe involving fresh or dried fruits combined in some manner, often cooked, more often spiced.
There were some things that probably wouldn’t fly with today’s Thanksgiving dinners. For instance, in the same 1925 paper where Mrs. Wells won with her menu, an honorable mention goes to Mrs. R.E. Seamans, who included as dessert “mince pie with cheese.”
Depression-Era Adjustments Left a Mark
The Great Depression changed a lot about what foods we consumed, but the Thanksgiving table was the last thing to be touched. The idea of families still coming together for a reunion celebrated with a large meal at the end of November each year continued, though in many places the menu was altered to fit with what was available and close by. For instance, this menu from the November 15, 1930, edition of the Arkansas Farmer substitutes guinea fowl for turkey but keeps many of the original trappings of the holiday.
And yet, a year later, those changes become more visible in the November 15, 1931, issue of the Arkansas Farmer. Gone are oysters from the dressing. The cocktail, the candy? Cut as the menu became more streamlined.
There was some recovery, but the menu seems to have slimmed down from this point. This menu, posted three years later, brings back the soup as a first course, but just a clear broth. Roast turkey, giblet gravy, and mashed potatoes still stand, along with celery (here, curled), olives, nuts, and cranberries – but few side dishes are offered, and just a single pie—pumpkin—stars as dessert.
Advertisements for menus at restaurants for Thanksgiving, and from home cooks, are hard to find after the 1930s. Perhaps it’s a change in the content newspapers wanted to serve up; maybe it’s a lack of newspapers in the archives that I’ve found. This is about the time that community cookbook printing really takes off and looking through those tomes gives us all sorts of other Thanksgiving traditions and sides – like green rice in the Arkansas Delta, which in the 1980s seems to have been replaced by broccoli cheese casserole as the use of Velveeta cheese spread. Cocktail foods popular in the 1950s started finding their place as a pre-game for the big meal, like jellies, tiny sandwiches, crackers and spreads.
Some Arkansas families still continue the tradition of having preserved finger foods like olives and pickles around before the main course of the meal and many of them call this the “relish tray.” Sectioned dishes are often brought out for this particular specialty, and in addition to the pickles and olives, other items like cream cheese covered in pepper jelly, assorted nuts, and slices or cubes of cheese are included. The real difference seems to be when this dish is served. Today, it’s presented as an appetizer or sideboard plate that’s something to graze on before the family sits down to the table, rather than being on the table and shared as the presentation of the turkey is anticipated.
Arkansas Thanksgiving Then and Now
A quick comparison does draw out the similarities. Most meals contain turkey, some form of dressing, a potato dish, a green dish, a sweet dish, and breads. Essentially, Thanksgiving dinner is a meal of celebration in itself; despite changes through time, it’s still recognizable as an event in itself with key components. What makes it stand out is where the differences lie, not only in time but in place. Oyster dressing and cranberry sauce may have come to Arkansas thanks to the New England traditions emulated here, but they are such outliers that they raise heads served at other meals and gatherings (Christmas notwithstanding).
There are also the changes we made along the way. While, for the most part, we ditched the oyster in the dressing, the dressing itself changed over time. Today, dressing tends to be made from cornmeal, which has long been readily available to all Arkansas cooks. A mention of “stuffing” usually calls back to breadcrumbs, or later, the use of StoveTop brand croutons and herbs literally used to (not usually safely) stuff a raw bird to be consumed later. Rice as a substitute for potatoes, sweet potatoes to replace pumpkin in our pies, jellied or pickled beets brought to the table when cranberry sauce wasn’t available – these are all accommodations once made in the name of economy that, for some, have become part of our Arkansas Thanksgiving table.
Preserving our Culinary Holiday Legacies
Another shift happened in our state in the 1990s, and continues today – the influence of the internet. There is a great flattening across our country of the base menu for Thanksgiving. While ham has gained in acceptance, many other items have not. The general, nationwide Thanksgiving dinner is mentioned to be that turkey, dressing, gravy, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and rolls wrapped up with pumpkin pie—and it’s sticking. Go order your Thanksgiving dinner at your local grocery store or restaurant, and it’s almost universal. The mere fact that so many of us now turn to these conveniences to supply our holiday table is, in itself, indicative of the times we are in.
Keeping our Arkansas- and family-specific dishes on the Thanksgiving table is part of our culinary legacy both to ourselves and those who come after. Whether it’s the inclusion of the relish tray, your grandmother’s mincemeat pie, a beloved side dish, garnish, or the way you make bread for your meal, all of these help keep the flavors of our past alive.
Arkansas Recipes from the Past
Below is a clipping collection of recipes from a century ago that would have appeared on Thanksgiving tables. Newspaper clips and photographs provided by Kat Robinson.
Cream of Tomato Soup from El Dorado Daily News on November 26, 1924.
Waldorf Salad from Stuttgart Southland Women’s Club “Talk About Good Cooks” cookbook.
Oyster Dressing from El Dorado Daily News on November 26, 1924.
Roast Stuffed Turkey from El Dorado Daily News on November 26, 1924.
Giblet Gravy from Arkansas Farmer on November 15, 1934.
Marshmallowed Sweet Potatoes from El Dorado Daily News on November 26, 1924.
Carrot Glace with Cream from Pulaskian on November 11, 1920.
Stuffed Eggplant from Yellville Mountain Echo on November 9, 1922.
Salted Nuts from Union Label on November 4, 1927.
Pumpkin Pie from Dermott News on October 23, 1930.
Kat Robinson is Arkansas’ original culinary traveler, with three PBS programs, thousands of articles, and thirteen books on food in The Natural State to her credit. The Emmy-nominated documentary host and food historian is currently working on a history of Arkansas barbecue.
Follow Kat: Facebook | Instagram | www.TieDyeTravels.com
