I have my great aunt’s notes from her cooking class in college back in the 1890’s. I have many old hand written recipes from the early 1900s too. All the women in my family were excellent cooks. I cook the exact same Thanksgiving and Christmas meal that I had growing up, which my great grandmother, born in the 1880s served. Boiled custard is a must at Christmas and jam cake. All very old, but still delicious.
One side of the family comes from Massachusetts and New Hampshire - traces us back to the Mayflower and are big DAR supporters.
After WWII a couple of the boys moved down south, to the Florida coast and to the MS coast.
Suddenly none of the recipes for Thanksgiving or Christmas would work properly.
Something about storing the cooked birds, pies and cakes on the back porch to cool down ... doesn’t work so well next to a tropical swamp.