7 What’s That Smell? Oysters for Thanksgiving?

Imagine the smell of Thanksgiving. The meaty smell of the turkey browning in the oven. The sweet nutty smell of the glazed yams. The buttery smell of the still steaming rolls. Now image adding to that the fishy stench of sea food. That tough break was how all of my childhood Thanksgivings went. And it was caused by one small side dish that my mother loved but that I (and most of my family) despised. That dish would be my mother’s oyster dressing. A kind of stuffing not made in the bird and with the addition of canned oysters. You might ask ‘if everyone hated this dish so much why did she still make it?’ That was the exact question that led me to interviewing my mom, Melissa Sams (formerly McLaughlin) on a cold November day.

For much of my childhood (and to be honest my adulthood too) this dish was a source of complaint for much of my family. Even with the complaining, every year without fail my mother would make the dish. When asked why she still made it, I started to hear family stories that had been rarely spoken of since my grandfather (her dad) had died when I was five. She made it because the recipe reminds her of him. When thinking of childhood Thanksgivings she remembers, “My mom always had to buy an extra can because me and my dad would fight over them. And then when that can was gone, we would try to steal from the other cans as well.” (Sams, 2024).

But while she is who she thought of when she thought of the recipe, with some more questioning what I learned is that the recipe’s tradition was actually kept alive by the women who married into the family. According to her the one who brought the recipe to the family was my great grandma McLaughlin who married into the name and the family. She was southern but my mother doesn’t know from where. She brought it to Winchester, Illinois and when my own grandmother, Sandra, married into the family grandma McLaughlin taught it to her. From there grandma was the one to bring it to Indiana and taught it to my mom (along with other traditional dishes) during the first few Thanksgivings after she got married. And with this we see again how marriage can carry a recipe places.

While recipes are usually carried through women in families from generation to generation my family’s example shows that sometimes recipes are brought into a family stay for a generation and then marry into another. My mom wasn’t close to much of her family and so we always hosted my dad’s side for the holidays. While neither of her children will touch the dish it is liked by much of my father’s family.

My great grandma McLauglin was southern and brought the recipe with her when she moved to Winchester, Illinois to marry my great grandfather. This is an example of the Uplands South migration (Berquist, 1981). This can be seen not just by the known geographic history of the food but also by the way the recipe is taught. It is very much an oral tradition, relying on seeing the process of the recipe. For much of the recipe my mom said “you want it to be like [this] but not too much like [this], I will just have to show you”. Measurements are not in amounts but in how the food looks and feels when it is right.

The recipe is also an example of the rise of processed foods (Long, 2015; Madison & Sandweiss, 2014). The main ingredients are saltine crackers (measured by the sleave) and canned oysters. These are not foods that would have been easy to make or acquire fresh. It is the kind of recipe that was only possible once mass made processed food was available.

While this process started off as me trying to understand why this smell always ruined my Thanksgiving, it has come to show me that it is a representation of how families are created. Passed down from one wife to another; adopted by each family it touches. It shows me how through marriage everything about a person is pulled into an existing family and adopted. I think I will be looking at the dish a little differently this Thanksgiving.

Oyster Dressing

Ingredients

• 3 8oz cans of oysters
• 3 large sleaves of saltine crackers
• 1 egg beaten
• Pepper
• Milk
• ¼ cup unsalted butter

How to Prepare

1. Either in a plastic bag or in the sleaves crush the saltine crackers into large bits.
2. Drain 2 of the cans of oysters but keep the brine of the final can.
3. In the pan it will be baked in mix crushed saltine crackers, the beaten egg, the oysters and pepper to your taste. Do not add salt because the saltine crackers already have enough for the recipe.
4. The dish will already be wet due to the brine but add milk until all ingredients are thoroughly soaked. You do not want it to be soupy but it should be more than moist.
5. Once everything is combined even out the top of the dish.
6. Create a grid in your mind on the dish and drop lumps of the butter so that when melted it will evenly spread out. This will create a crust when baked.
7. Bake at 375 degrees until the top has a nice golden brown color. When fully cooked it should only have a light jiggle when shaken.

References

Bergquist, J. M. (1981). Tracing the origins of a Midwestern culture: The case of central Indiana. The Indiana Magazine of History, 1-32.

Madison, J. H., & Sandweiss, L. A. (2014). Hoosiers and the American Story. Indiana Historical Society.

Long, L. M. (2015). Green bean casserole and Midwestern identity: A regional foodways aesthetic and ethos. The food and folklore reader. London: Bloomsbury, 191-204.

Sams, Melissa. Interviewed by Elizabeth Sams. Indianapolis, IN, November 13, 2024.