broad-breasted white turkeys

Why Your Thanksgiving Turkey Has a Cornell Pedigree

In the mid-1900s, one CALS department changed our holiday tables—and an industry

By Corey Ryan Earle ’07

President Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863, two years before Cornell’s founding.

And—with the exception of a couple wartime years in the 1940s—it’s one of the few holidays that has been observed since the University opened to students.

For the first half of the 20th century, the closest thing Cornell had to a holiday tradition was its annual Thanksgiving Day football game against Penn, first played in 1895.

An illustration of Corey Earle with the title Storytime with Corey

The event became an end-of-season tradition for the two teams and their alumni.

It often attracted crowds numbering in the tens of thousands to Philadelphia; estimates for the 1938 game put the attendance at 70,000 (for an anticlimactic 0-0 tie).

a scene from the 1936 Cornell-Penn football gameRare and Manuscript Collections
The 1936 Cornell-Penn game.

Perhaps the biggest legacy of the Cornell-Penn game? Campbell’s soup cans.

A company executive allegedly attended one of those first Thanksgiving games and was inspired by Cornell’s red-and-white colors. The new branding debuted in 1898.

Since 2007, Thanksgiving weekend for the Big Red has been focused on men’s ice hockey.

The Red Hot Hockey showdown with Boston University is held biennially in Madison Square Garden, with the alternating years dubbed the Frozen Apple, played against other teams since 2012.

Campbell's tomato soup cans
Wikimedia Commons
A Big Red legacy?

Make sure to get your tickets for this year’s game!

But even if you aren’t attending a Big Red sporting event, your Thanksgiving feast may well have a Cornell connection: the turkey.

James Rice 1890 is believed to be the first person to write a bachelor’s degree thesis on poultry.

Prof. James Rice with bird chicks
Rare and Manuscript Collections
Chick magnet? Prof. James Rice 1890.

Then hired by what’s now CALS, he taught the first college course dedicated to poultry in spring 1892 and was eventually appointed chair of poultry husbandry—the first such department in the U.S.

Rice would organize the first poultry judging school; conduct the first poultry extension work; help found the Poultry Science Association; and publish books such as Practical Poultry Management.

As one of the most influential leaders in the field, he was an inaugural inductee of the Poultry Science Hall of Fame in 1953.

Cornell’s poultry science building opened in 1912 without a name—but was later rededicated in Rice’s honor.

Cornell’s pioneering department would graduate the first PhD student with a thesis on poultry and have an enormous impact on the field and industry.

Renamed the Department of Poultry Science (and later of Poultry and Avian Sciences), it eventually closed in 1991, with faculty dispersed to Animal Science, Food Science, Nutritional Sciences, and Veterinary Medicine.

Rice Hall in 1912Rare and Manuscript Collections
The future Rice Hall the year it opened.

But not before changing our Thanksgiving tables.

In the 1940s, Cornell opened a turkey farm east of campus—coincidentally, on what was already named Turkey Hill Road.

Associate Professor Earl Smith supervised the farm and a breeding program, developing what he considered the ideal turkey while leading state and national efforts to improve the birds’ health, productivity, and more.

In the 1940s, Cornell opened a turkey farm east of campus—coincidentally, on what was already named Turkey Hill Road.

Hoping to better both the meat quality of the White Holland variety and the reproductive ability of the Broad Breasted Bronze, he bred the two together to create the Empire White, the first type of Broad Breasted White turkey.

(The white feathers were considered more attractive by consumers, thus increasing market value.)

Smith was also a pioneer in the artificial insemination of the birds—since the out-of-proportion shape of the new breeds made them unable to procreate without assistance.

Prof. Earl Smith, right, and research associate Mary Holmes Moon ’56 hold an Empire White at the Cornell turkey farm in 1953Rare and Manuscript Collections
Prof. Earl Smith (right) and research associate Mary Holmes Moon ’56 with an Empire White at the turkey farm.

His new breed was first available for Thanksgiving nationally in 1953.

By the following decade, the Broad Breasted White became the commercial standard, according to The Turkey: An American Story. It still is today.

Cornell’s efforts helped make turkey economical as a year-round food, not just for holidays.

Cornell’s efforts helped make turkey economical as a year-round food, not just for holidays.

(Of course, the best-known star of Cornell’s poultry program was the famed Professor Robert Baker ’43, whose chicken sausage, chicken hot dogs, chicken patties, or other innovations might make an appearance in any celebratory feast.)

If you’re looking for inspiration for your Thanksgiving side dishes—or perhaps a meatless alternative to turkey—two outstanding options would be a pair of Cornell-bred squashes: the Bush Delicata and the color-changing honeynut.

two honeynut squashEmily Rodekohr
The honeynut squash begins as bright green, turning orange to signal peak ripeness.

The delicata offers a sweet and nutty flavor combined with fungal resistance and a long shelf life, created through open-pollination instead of hybridization.

Entering national markets in 2015, the honeynut is a hybrid of butternut and buttercup squash, with improved nutrition and texture, thanks to the efforts of plant breeder Michael Mazourek, PhD ’08.

Big Red potato researchers—including professors Robert Plaisted ’50 the late Nell Mondy, PhD ’53, both honorary life members of the Potato Association of America—have also contributed generations of work to improve disease resistance, flavor, and storage.

So your mashed potatoes have likely benefitted from Cornell expertise as well!

And once you’re done with the main course, the University’s apple breeding program offers a range of options for dessert. If you’re baking a pie, might I suggest using Empire, Jonagold, or Liberty?

Prof. Nell Mondy
Rare and Manuscript Collections
Prof. Nell Mondy, PhD ’53.

Bon appétit!

Top: A flock of broad-breasted white turkeys. (Wikimedia Commons)

Published November 13, 2024

Comments

  1. Linda Chesman Byard, Class of 1968
    19 Nov, 2024

    I remember when the turkey farm on Turkey Hill Rd. suffered a fire (one could smell roasted turkey for miles) and that was the end of that yearly treat. Those turkeys tasted so delicious, and in all the Thanksgivings since, I have not eaten any nearly as good.

    Reply
  2. Sara Britting
    26 Nov, 2024

    I wonder what James Rice would think about the horrific factory farms and mistreatment of animals today?

    In his groundbreaking book Animal Liberation, philosopher and bioethicist Peter Singer…..
    “This small but powerful book is full of riveting facts, including some jaw-droppers. Readers will be left wondering how, if cruelty to animals is a crime (and it is), anyone can be excused for subjecting a turkey to a raft of pain and misery so that he—invariably he—can be reduced to a carcass for the carving. Consider the Turkey promises to convert many a Thanksgiving dinner into a celebration of life.”

    —PETA President Ingrid Newkirk

    Reply
  3. Gerald Rehkugler, Class of 1957
    26 Nov, 2024

    Wonderful story. I had the honor of collaborations with Bob Baker regarding egg handling and processing. A great colleague and enjoyed lunch many times in his lab tasting his latest innovation. We are both good old farm boys from Wayne County, New York! Both coming from fruit farms.
    Also, learned a heap about turkey and will take a look at the new squash!

    Reply
  4. Roy Curtiss, Class of 1956
    26 Nov, 2024

    For the 1956 Farm & Home Week, with guidance from Bob Baker, the Poultry Club ground up breeder Tom turkeys in the basement of Rice Hall to make turkey burgers which we grilled in our stand on the Ag quad and sold with cranberry sauce on a hamburger bun for 35 cents. Roy Curtiss ‘56

    Reply

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