Americans sound off on traditional Thanksgiving dishes they really don't like (2024)

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Americans sound off on traditional Thanksgiving dishes they really don't like? ›

Also up on the high dislike list were green bean casserole (28%), the turkey itself (nearly 28%), and stuffing/dressing (nearly 27%). About a quarter of respondents said they didn't like the traditional dessert of pumpkin pie. Only about 14% said they liked all the items on the list.

For the third year in a row, cranberry sauce took first place as the most-disliked Thanksgiving food. Roughly 31 percent of those surveyed expressed disapproval. The survey didn't specify jellied canned cranberry sauce, homemade cranberry sauce, or if cranberry sauce haters indiscriminately dislike all cranberry sauce.

Cranberry sauce

For the third year running, cranberry sauce comes in as the most-hated Thanksgiving food, receiving a dislike from 31.49 of participants. But despite not wanting to eat the stuff, Americans seem to believe that no holiday table is complete without it.

Along with turkey, stuffing, and cranberry the "traditional" table now included white bread, apple pie, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, and various fruit pies.

While 80% of people love next-day turkey and fixings, the other 20% are indifferent or hate them.

Certainly, rolls and stuffing are staples of the American Thanksgiving dinner but beware. These starchy foods are full of sugary carbohydrates, which build up bacteria in the mouth and can lead to cavities. If you still want to indulge, just make sure to have a few drinks of water afterward to wash away food debris.

The first Thanksgiving banquet consisted of foods like venison, bean stew and hard biscuits. And while corn and pumpkin had their place on the table, they hardly resembled the cornbread stuffing and pumpkin pie we feast on today.

The classic Thanksgiving dinner includes old-time favorites that never change: turkey, gravy, stuffing, potatoes, veggies, and pie. But the way these dishes are made or added to is everchanging because of food trends and different dietary requirements.

Turkey. Some would say a turkey is the most important food item at the table. A turkey is the center of the traditional Thanksgiving dinner. In fact, 88 percent of Americans eat Turkey on Thanksgiving, with 46 million Turkeys eaten on the holiday.

Do Americans like cranberry sauce? ›

Six in ten Americans say cranberry sauce has and always will be on their Thanksgiving table. More than a third (39 percent) go as far as saying they “can't live without it!” 54 percent of Americans serve their sauce sliced along the ridges.

Roast turkey and ham are popular for Christmas dinner throughout the country, but depending on the region, so are tamales, roast goose with red cabbage, crawfish jambalaya, roast pork or “seven fishes” seafood salad.

Most Americans who celebrate Thanksgiving—about 9 in 10, according to a 2021 poll—eat turkey with their holiday meal, perhaps alongside other favorite dishes such as mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and pumpkin pie.

For one thing, macaroni and cheese is definitely not a traditional Thanksgiving food, nor did the Pilgrims and Wampanoag have oven-safe dishes for baking green-bean casseroles. Or marshmallows.

It is also worth noting what was not present at the first Thanksgiving feast. There were no cloudlike heaps of mashed potatoes, since white potatoes had not yet crossed over from South America. There was no gravy either, since the colonists didn't yet have mills to produce flour.