While we at Washington Post Food always want to share well-tested, delicious recipes with you, our readers, it’s even more crucial come Thanksgiving. Thanks in part to its ability to transcend culture, language and religion, this November occasion might be the most popular U.S. holiday.
But herein lies the dilemma of food writers everywhere: How can we make Thanksgiving feel novel and engaging every year? As the saying goes, everything old is new again, and that is also true of recipes. While we love developing fresh ideas, our team shares a collective affection for dog-eared and splatter-marked recipes. So this year, we dove into The Post’s archives — as far back as the 1920s and all the way through the 1970s — to find dishes that really stood out. We then tested and tasted our selections to further whittle down which were truly worth your time and effort. We found some dead-simple winners, including a no-cook cranberry relish and a stuffing with an unexpected ingredient.
While we at Washington Post Food always want to share well-tested, delicious recipes with you, our readers, it’s even more crucial come Thanksgiving. Thanks in part to its ability to transcend culture, language and religion, this November occasion might be the most popular U.S. holiday.
But herein lies the dilemma of food writers everywhere: How can we make Thanksgiving feel novel and engaging every year? As the saying goes, everything old is new again, and that is also true of recipes. While we love developing fresh ideas, our team shares a collective affection for dog-eared and splatter-marked recipes. So this year, we dove into The Post’s archives — as far back as the 1920s and all the way through the 1970s — to find dishes that really stood out. We then tested and tasted our selections to further whittle down which were truly worth your time and effort. We found some dead-simple winners, including a no-cook cranberry relish and a stuffing with an unexpected ingredient.
Vintage recipes possess a certain nostalgic beauty, be they tried-and-true family favorites or a time capsule of a bygone era. With fewer gadgets and tools, they also skew less complicated and feature instructions that read downright spartan. “Toast bread and cut into small cubes,” directs the stuffing recipe we adapted for this year’s Thanksgiving lineup. The instructions assume the reader has enough kitchen experience to know at what temperature and for how long. (Never mind that you probably first want to cut the bread into cubes, then toast them.) “Brown sausage, stirring occasionally to break up meat,” reads the following sentence.
As we worked on this year’s menu, we updated cooking instructions to include more useful details and reflect what we now know thanks to food science and safety, ensuring all but guaranteed success in the kitchen.
Along the way, we found preparations that felt fussy, dated and heavy; dishes that raised our collective eyebrows (raisins seemingly in everything, including mashed potatoes); and sides such as Brussels sprouts and pearl onions boiled within an inch of their lives and blanketed with a thick sauce. But no dish had a more dated approach than the turkey. Many a recipe told the home cook to rinse it before cooking (please don’t); guaranteed moist meat via basting (which actually slows down cooking and might dry the meat out); or instructed to cook the turkey to 180 to 185 degrees, a temperature that would render even the juiciest bird sawdust-dry. No wonder the centerpiece of the Norman Rockwell platonic ideal of the holiday table has a misbegotten reputation for being stringy and bland.
Our goal: Bring each recipe into the 21st century while leaving the spirit of the dish intact. We also tried to keep them simple, straightforward and, for the most part, budget-friendly. We hope you enjoy this trip back in time with our Thanksgiving menu, whether you choose to make one or all of the recipes below.
The original 1970 recipe relied on a glaze made with equal parts apple cider, honey and butter, which was too rich and sweet for our palates. Still, we loved the idea of infusing the holiday bird with autumnal cider flavor, even if it meant forgoing the delectable crispy skin. We jettisoned rinsing the turkey, instead thoroughly patting it dry and seasoning it with salt, pepper and ground sage. (If you have time and refrigerator space, dry-brine one to three days in advance for a turkey that’s seasoned all the way through.) For the glaze, we reduced the cider by almost 90 percent to get a super-concentrated syrup.
Instead of roasting the turkey at 325 degrees, we blasted it at 500 degrees for 30 minutes to get nicely browned skin, then dropped the oven temperature to 350 degrees and covered the delicate white meat with foil. In lieu of basting every 30 minutes as the original recipe instructed, we glazed the bird just twice toward the end of roasting — enough to add gentle sweetness without slowing down the cooking. Finally, we removed the turkey from the oven when the probe thermometer registered 155 degrees, then let it rest on the counter until its internal temperature reached 165 degrees, the safe temperature for poultry. The result: After less than 3 hours of roasting, a moist, juicy, flavorful bird that got raves from everyone on our team. Get the recipe.
We’re well aware that raisins are, ahem, polarizing, so we expect many of you might have strong feelings about this stuffing. But we were so intrigued by a 1964 recipe that we had to try it for ourselves. And while we encountered (and rejected) many raisin-forward recipes in The Post archives — it appears they were quite en vogue circa mid-20th century — this one proved great after a few rounds of testing. We upgraded the presliced raisin bread to a crusty sourdough, which vastly improved the texture of the finished dish. This also allowed us to control the quantities of raisins and cinnamon so the result wasn’t cloying or overwhelmed by the potent spice. While the original recipe was stuffed inside the turkey, we baked it separately, and added broth and eggs for moisture and binding power. If you are 100 percent raisin-averse, feel free to sub in another dried fruit, such as cherries, cranberries or chopped apricots. Get the recipe.
We were equally enchanted by a 1975 recipe for buttermilk mashed potatoes and a 1967 Post recipe from Julia Child for Pommes de Terre Duchesse, the latter an old-school French dish of riced boiled potatoes, mixed with egg yolks and butter, and blanketed with cheese — so we combined the recipes.
We loved the tang of the buttermilk, increasing it for a bit more brightness — a welcome element in a meal that can skew heavier. And we found the use of white pepper to be a delightful surprise. Child’s duchesse preparation was a little too eggy for our taste, so we decided to present the buttermilk mashed potatoes duchesse-style, with a decorative piped edge and a shower of cheese to melt and brown in the oven. These might be our most irresistible mashed potatoes yet. Get the recipe.
Perhaps third to only turkey and stuffing, sweet potatoes — especially with marshmallows — are another mainstay of the Thanksgiving table. Don’t let the recipe name fool you. While these glistening jewel-toned chunks of sweet potato sound like dessert, a dark caramel sauce infuses the whole thing with a subtle, pleasantly bitter note for a dish that tastes familiar but far more nuanced and complex than you might imagine. A squeeze of lemon juice added to the caramel injects a sunny note to balance out the sweetness. Get the recipe.
Because many dishes require using the stove or oven (or both at the same time), we welcome any no-cook dish that comes together in minutes and can be made in advance, to boot. Enter this fresh-tasting cranberry relish bolstered by chopped apple and a whole orange, including some of the rind, all of which add texture, flavor and visual appeal to the tart berries. Originally titled “Mrs. Purefoy’s Raw Cranberry Sauce,” this 1951 recipe won our hearts — and palates. While we don’t know who Mrs. Purefoy was, we’re grateful to her for this lively contribution that might just become your go-to cranberry sauce, too. Get the recipe.
Editing by Becky Krystal and Matt Brooks. Photo editing by Jennifer Beeson Gregory. Art direction and design by Marissa Vonesh. Design editing by Christine Ashack. Copy editing by Rachael Bolek and Emily Morman. Photos by Scott Suchman/For The Washington Post. Food styling by Lisa Cherkasky.
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