The Old Family Relish Tray

No governor has declared it but I am here to tell you that October and November are our de facto National Food History Months. Thanksgiving looms largely for food writers, poor crazed souls who have already been through turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, creamed onions, pumpkin pie, etc. in previous years and now--not again!--need a hook for the annual holiday story. And Thanksgiving with all its historic overtones, at least in New England, evokes the "what is the history of mashed potatoes anyway" response.

All of us who work at examining our past food habits are deluged with phone calls and emails and interview requests. The most intriguing question I've had so far this season had to do with the relish tray on the holiday table: the oval glass or perhaps metal serving dish in which celery, olives, and pickles are presented. Does anyone eat them? Who knows, but the dish spells festival” when set down next to the cranberry sauce.

A quick check into history showed that there was a patent for a new style relish tray in the 1880s, and I surmise that celery, formerly an expensive item presented on fashionable tables in special glass celery vases or glasses (patent date of ca: 1840) designed to make the leafy stalks tower over the diners, had come down in price and stature and could now appear horizontally on holiday tables, together with the increasingly available olives being produced in the U.S. (California, of course) just after the turn of the twentieth century.

I own my grandmother’s pink Depression glass relish tray. It has three sections, and the locavore that I am, I put dilly beans in one, homegrown carrots in another, and bread and butter pickles in the third. I also own my mother’s heavy, undivided, clear glass relish tray that I recall seeing full of green, pimento stuffed olives. I loved olives as a child, still do, and used to suck the pimento out to eat separately from the green olive.

I still put a relish tray on holiday or special occasion tables, though I observe it is increasingly a ceremonial move, and I see little attrition in the pickle selection.

Sandy Oliver, Food Historian, Author, MF&L columnist: The Way Things Were