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Festive Christmas Fare
| Article
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20065 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1992 |
904 Words |
| Author
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Kay Shaw Nelson
Food and travel writer Kay Shaw Nelson has written for
numerous magazines and newspapers, including Gourmet, House
and Garden, Washingtonian, and the New York Times. The author
of thirteen cookbooks, she most recently published A Bonnie
Scottish Cookbook. |
The culinary traditions of Christmas center on Christmas dinner, for which, in many American homes, turkey has become customary as the main course. Other main dishes were associated with Christmas in olden time, however.
For centuries, the lengthy English feast featured a boar's head. Brought in on a large silver or gold platter, adorned with oranges and apples, its entry was heralded with music as all rose to salute it and sing:
The boars head in hand bring I
Bedecked with bays and rosemary
I pray you all sing merrily.
A more fanciful dish was the peacock, stripped of its plumage, stuffed with spices and sweet herbs, roasted, and re-sown with its colorful cloak. Carried by the lady of the house, it, too, was heralded with music.
By the time Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in 1843, roast goose was the symbol of the Christmas feast, the most notable dish at the Cratchit family dinner--which also included gravy, sage and onion stuffing, mashed potatoes, applesauce, and a wonderful pudding.
The hallowed plum pudding, "like a speckled cannonball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top," was originally made with raisins and was a great improvement over its predecessor, frumenty, a sweet porridge. Over the years, its content has increased in richness, but it remains a Yuletide favorite.
Another perennial favorite for dessert has been mincemeat pie. In medieval England, it was made in an oblong shape to simulate the manger, covered with a latticed top suggestive of the hayrack, and topped with a replica of the Holy Infant. The fruits and spices of the pie symbolized the gifts of the Wise Men, while the meat represented animals in the stable.
Mostly English Christmas customs and fare were enjoyed in early America. Over the years, however, we have acquired a marvelous potpourri of holiday traditions from many lands. Notable among them are delectable sweet temptations.
Among the repertoire are English fruitcakes and brandy snaps, Scotch shortbreads, German
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