The Plymouth, Massachusetts Museum Where You Can Eat Thanksgiving Dinner Amid 1600s Traditions

Have you ever wished that you could go back in time and see what the first Thanksgiving dinner was like? Well, time travel may not be possible, but the Plimoth Patuxet Museums in Plymouth, Massachusetts are offering the next best thing. The museums  feature immersive reproductions of a 17th century English village, cottages, grain mill, plantation, and the Mayflower ship.

It also offers annual Thanksgiving dining experiences that recreate many of the original foods and traditions that would have been present at the first Thanksgiving held in 1621. The museum promises "an immersive encounter with history where guests may experience first-hand the inspiring story of our Nation's most beloved holiday." It offers three ways to explore these traditions: The Story of Thanksgiving Dinner, a Thanksgiving Day Homestyle Buffet, and a New England Harvest Feast.

The Story of Thanksgiving Dinner is inspired by the Harvard Club's menu, served after President Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving a National Holiday in 1863. In addition to the meal, guests can enjoy speeches and presentations from educators and performers. Thanksgiving day tickets are sold out, but the museum still has spots open for two seatings on November 28, 2025. Rather than hosting your own Thanksgiving dinner, you can enjoy a hearty, historically-inspired feast.

The New England Harvest Feast is also inspired by historic 1600s recipes, and includes entertainment and songs. Tickets are still available for seatings on November 22, 26, and 28, 2025. The Thanksgiving Day Homestyle Buffet is a more modern communal Thanksgiving meal, and tickets are still available for three seatings on Thursday, November 27, 2025.

Though thanksgiving feasts were held in New England throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, the menu for the Plimoth Patuxet Museums' Thanksgiving dinner is inspired by a meal served by the Harvard Club some time after 1865 rather than a recreation of a Thanksgiving menu from the 1620s. It includes a lobster bisque appetizer, roast turkey, and side dishes including stuffing, mashed potatoes, winter squash, green beans, cranberry relish, dinner rolls, and cornbread. Dessert includes warm Indian pudding and pumpkin and apple pies.

Smithsonian Magazine spoke to the museum's culinarian, Kathleen Wall, to learn more about what foods would have been served at the first Thanksgiving. According to Wall, the meal may have included wild turkey, but it was more likely that it featured goose or duck along with venison, cornbread or porridge, eel, and shellfish like lobster and mussels. Despite the addition of more modern Thanksgiving classics like mashed potatoes and dinner rolls, the museum's menu is fairly accurate, which isn't surprising given its commitment to creating an immersive, historically-accurate experience.

The Wampanoag diet included nuts, berries, corn, beans, pumpkin, and squash. This means that it is possible that a communal meal between the Wampanoag and the colonists could have included some kind of berry or squash dish, but it is unlikely that it would have included cranberry sauce or winter squash. The colonists would not have had potatoes, the ingredients for pie crust, or wheat to make bread. So while The Story of Thanksgiving dinner menu includes classic Thanksgiving favorites, some weren't on the menu at the original 1621 meal.