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Year after year, arguments about the best and worst Thanksgiving dishes rage on: People tend to feel strongly about things like jellied cranberry sauce, for example, a canned substance that is classically popular but undoubtedly strange. A few years back, writer Maya Kosoff’s Thanksgiving “seafoam salad” baffled the internet — it’s made with lime Jell-o, cream cheese, and pears. Some Minnesotans are fond of “hotdish,” composed of ground turkey, frozen green beans, cheddar, and tater tots.

There are perennial debates about stuffing (or dressing, depending on who you ask), and sweet potato preparation, and whether to have a turkey at all — is it delicious, or is it a dry waste of time? (Vice President Kamala Harris’s recipe is heavy on thyme, butter, and white wine to offset just that.)

I spoke to Donovan Conley, a food researcher and associate professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, whose work focuses on the cultural and social aspects of food and taste. During the pandemic, we all leaned on our favorite comfort foods to get us through a strange holiday season. This year, I imagine, some of us will probably be doing the same thing.

Melinda Fakuade: What does the classic American Thanksgiving say about American culture?

Donovan Conley:  The clichéd American Thanksgiving plate is buttery, savory, rich —  turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes. It’s not particularly complicated or nuanced food. Aside from that, it’s a roll of the dice in terms of any family preferences.

I used to hate Thanksgiving because I love to cook a lot and I like to push myself. I can whip together Thanksgiving with my eyes closed. Thanksgiving food is broad-appeal food, and even the best version of it is still pretty mundane. But frankly, I think Thanksgiving food is just meant to be comfort food. We love the ritual. The food is part of the formula, even if we don’t particularly love the food itself.

I feel like if our food memories and our emotions around food are about preserving our favorite parts of the past, that’s accentuated in a time of radical uncertainty and fear and anxiety. You hang [on] even tighter to the things that matter the most. 

Can you tell us a bit about your views on the strong feelings people have toward holiday recipes and how your expertise informs it?

Thomas Keller of the French Laundry, a really major food presence in America, always describes food and its appeal as about memory. It connects you to some of your most cherished past moments.

When you scratch at that question of memory a little more, what it gets at is the fact that food is extremely intimate, right? When we’re growing up, we become attached to the things that are familiar to us.

My wife and I both had previous marriages. She doesn’t cook, but she made salmon every year for the kids for Thanksgiving.

And so I come on the scene, and I have all these lovely memories of roast turkey. I make this beautiful bird and gravy, and the kids couldn’t care less. I’ve made peace with the fact that every Thanksgiving I have to make a turkey and a salmon, which is fine. But it’s interesting that it speaks to how we latch onto our positive feelings from our past, and these come to us through our domestic experiences. 

The other thing to remember is that recipes are like accents. It’s about your rootedness and connectedness to a particular place and time.

I think that’s why people get really defensive about this way or that way of preparing something. Because it’s not just about the flavor, it’s about your sense of belonging, and who you are, and what you care about.

I was reading some Aristotle, and he writes this in Sense and Sensibilia: “The faculty of taste is a particular form of touch. This explains why the sensory organ of both the touch and taste is closely related to the heart.” So taste is a form of touch, and eating is a form of contact with our immediate world.

Can people internalize that in the reverse and become averse to certain foods? 

Yeah, it’s very easy to go from “this is just the way we do it and therefore good,” to “others do it differently and therefore it’s not as good.” That weird judgment thing kicks in.

I don’t watch Food Network anymore, but I used to get so exhausted by it every summer. Everyone had to do their barbecue episode. And then it’s like, “Oh, there’s fights over who has the best barbecue.” It’s so boring. And that question about New York pizza versus Chicago pizza. These are regional-specific differences, and fantastic barbecue comes from all over the place. But it’s really about that history of practices that are specific to a certain kind of culture.

There’s something very American and ingrained in us about Thanksgiving and the holiday season that I find so fascinating. This is the one thing that we cannot really let go of.

I think for a lot of people, it’s not just the food itself, but the total context of sitting down with this plate of dry food or whatever, but there’s a game in the background, or there’s the smell of candles, whatever it is. That total configuration of elements is something that means a lot to all of us. 

One of the things that’s really fascinating to me about food is the way it interfaces between this biological necessity, right? We all have to eat, but then it also interfaces with cultural values and meaning-making. I’m really fascinated by that whole historical dynamic.

But for Americans, [we want] Thanksgiving in a particular way, and Christmas in a particular way. But I think every culture has their version. I lived in China for a while. We can’t touch what they do for Chinese New Year. 

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A high-stakes flavored vape case: In early December, the Supreme Court will hear a case on the FDA’s long-delayed attempt to regulate flavored nicotine vapes to prevent marketing to children. The most right-wing appeals court in the federal system took a position that is unusually favorable to tobacco companies — and the author of that decision, Andrew Oldham, is widely considered to be a strong contender for a Supreme Court nomination.

Welcome to the age of shameless oligarchy: It’s unusual for a relationship between a politician and a financial backer to be so brazenly public. X owner Elon Musk’s closeness to President-elect Donald Trump is an oddity among the billionaire class, who tend to use their influence quietly. He’s showing the ultra-wealthy a bold alternative to stealth politicking.

Gratitude makes you more generous: Recent neuroscience research has shown that there’s a deep neural connection between gratitude and giving. They share a pathway in the brain, so when we’re grateful, our brains become more charitable. Here are some ways to actively practice gratitude in your everyday life.

The long, quirky history of people gawking at people doing things: The celebrity look-alike contests sweeping the US and the UK feel like a relic of a pre-internet era. Societal anxiety makes people long for community and simple sources of fun. We spoke to a historian and folklorist who said that these crazes tend to spring up amid times of intense technological and social change. 

What does “holding space for ‘Defying Gravity’” even mean? The meme of the moment is tied to the Wicked movie press tour. Actors Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivio have had a tendency to cry and be overly sentimental in their press junket interviews for the film, which has been garnering attention online from fans and critics. Here’s how the movie promo tour became a source of drama and speculation.

Two families, connected by a horrific mistake: When a Los Angeles-area couple realized the baby girl they’d birthed via IVF was not their child at all, but was the result of a fertility-clinic mixup with another couple’s embryo, it set off an incredibly difficult journey for two families forced to reckon with an unthinkable question: Should they return the children they’d carried and raised? Or did the very real bonds they’d forged matter just as much as genetics? [New York Times Magazine] 

Two federal cases against Trump dropped: Special counsel Jack Smith, whom President-elect Donald Trump stated he would fire when he returns to office, has moved to drop the federal election subversion and mishandling of documents cases against the former president before he is inaugurated, citing policy that disallows the prosecution of a sitting president. He noted that the decision was “not based on the merits or strength of the case against the defendant.” [CNN]

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Elon Musk, co-chair of President-elect Donald Trump’s new “Department of Government Efficiency,” has said he can cut $2 trillion out of the annual federal budget. If that were possible, it would wipe out the US’s $1.9 trillion deficit and put the country into surplus for the first time since the 2001 fiscal year. But it will be very hard for Musk and his partner Vivek Ramaswamy to identify $2 trillion to cut. 

Over half of the budget comprises Social Security, interest payments on federal debt, and defense spending —  but cuts are unlikely to be made in any of these categories. You can read more about the myth of government spending waste here.

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Today’s edition was produced and edited by staff editor Melinda Fakuade. We'll see you tomorrow!

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