Christmas Miscellany Read online

  Did you know . . .?

  When Treasure Island author Robert Louis Stevenson died in December 1894, he willed the date of his birthday, November 13, to a friend who disliked her own Christmas birthday.

  WHY IS TURKEY EATEN AT CHRISTMAS?

  What would Christmas dinner be without roast turkey and all the trimmings? (And what would the days following be like without the endless rounds of turkey sandwiches?) But how did this bird become the most intrinsic element of all festive fare?

  The turkey originally came from Mexico—not Turkey—and was brought back by Spanish adventurers. The bird was introduced into central Europe by Turkish traders and so became known as the turkey-cock, or simply, turkey. However, just to confuse things even more, the turkey was sometimes known as the Indian peacock (which is even stranger when you consider that India is where the peacock itself originally came from).

  This confusion regarding its origins—and hence the bird’s name—stemmed from the fact that when Christopher Columbus and his friends first discovered the Americas they were actually looking for an alternative route to India and the East. In their confusion they believed, at first, that they had found India, which is why the West Indies are so named. The first pilgrims indeed found a “great store of wild turkeys” or “Indian peacocks” during the autumn of 1621, famous for the “First Thanksgiving.” We don’t know for certain, however, that the Pilgrims enjoyed turkey at that harvest feast. This famous bird is now a traditional holiday feast-for-all-occasions.

  In other European countries this confusion over the turkey’s origins was reflected in its name as well. In France the turkey was called coq d’Inde (now corrupted to dinde), in Italy it was the galle d’India, in Germany its name was indianische henn, while throughout the Ottoman Empire it was called the hindi.

  Did you know . . .?

  A female domesticated turkey is called a “hen” and its chick is a “poult.” In the United States, the male turkey is referred to as a “tom,” whereas it Europe it is known as a “stag.”

  The turkey arrived in England some time after 1510, so it has actually been with us for nearly 500 years. From the sixteenth century, turkeys were reared in Norfolk, which still has strong connections to the bird. For many years the coming of autumn saw an annual migration of turkeys from East Anglia to London, as drovers walked them to market.

  Thousands of the birds would be herded in this way. The turkeys averaged only one mile a day, but this would, nonetheless, have soon made them lame—were it not for the fact that to overcome that very problem the farmers tarred their feet or, in some cases, even provided them with little leather boots!

  But even before the arrival of the turkey in the British Isles, poultry was still an important part of the Christmas menu. There were, after all, plenty of native British birds to dine upon, everything from pigeon, plover, and pheasant to capons, woodcock, and swan!

  Did you know . . .?

  Elizabeth I is recorded as having eaten turkey on Christmas Day, although there is some evidence to suggest that her father Henry VIII may have actually done so before her.

  It was the fashionable practice at court to present the birds as if they were still alive, sitting up on the platter as if they were quite happy that they were about to be eaten. To achieve this effect, a bird would be skinned with the utmost care (rather than plucked) before it was cooked. Once the bird had been roasted over the fire, its skin would be replaced and the cuts that had been made to remove it would be sewn up again.

  Roast swan was another popular dish among the aristocracy that was presented in this way. There were many different ways of preparing and serving swan. Here is just one of them:

  Roast Swan

  1 swan

  Olive oil

  First clean and gut your swan, then cover the outside of the bird with olive oil. Roast it on a spit or, failing that, in the oven. Baste frequently with its own juice and when it is done, carve and serve in pieces. If that’s too plain for you, then you can make a Chaudon sauce to accompany the bird, but for this you’ll need to have saved the swan’s giblets.

  Chaudon Sauce

  Swan giblets

  Red wine vinegar

  Broth

  Toasted breadcrumbs

  Salt

  Ginger

  Galingale

  Start by washing the giblets. While they’re still wet, salt them, before placing in a pot. Cover the giblets with water, and boil. Once they’re done, drain and cool, before cutting into small pieces. Combine the chopped giblets, breadcrumbs, spices, and broth in a food blender and whizz them up until the whole lot forms a smooth sauce. Bring to a boil in another pan, simmer, and add a little of the red wine vinegar to give it a sharp bite. Serve with the swan.

  Before heading off down to the local butcher’s to ask for swan, though, you should bear in mind that all swans are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981. The mute swan, however, is even better protected because the species is owned by the Crown, and has been ever since 1482. A small number of shooting licenses are granted to farmers each year, if they can prove that swans have damaged their crops, but in all other cases it is an offense to be in possession of a swan carcass, even if the bird died of natural causes!

  (In case you’re wondering, galingale is another plant of the ginger family.)

  The same treatment of dressing the roast bird in its own skin would have been applied to the peacock, another dish that was the preserve of the wealthy. In this case, the bird was presented with its full tail and its head crest and beak covered with gold leaf. A final touch was to put a wick inside the bird’s beak which would then be lit just before it was brought to the table. However, some medieval foodies felt that although it was supposed to be a delicacy, the peacock, like so many other wild birds, didn’t actually taste that nice. They therefore suggested sewing a roast goose up inside the peacock’s skin instead to make the dish more palatable.

  Goose was the most popular bird eaten by the smaller households at Christmastime, with chicken and capon popular alternatives. Such domesticated fowl were, of course, more readily available. However, in the north of the country, it wasn’t goose but roast beef that was the meat of choice for Christmas dinner.

  The Victorians had a goose club, which was a savings club. By saving a little each week you eventually had enough to buy a goose to eat on Christmas Day. In Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, the Cratchit family were preparing to sit down to enjoy a Christmas goose before Ebenezer Scrooge bought them the best turkey in the shop.

  Did you know . . .?

  A Christmas Carol wasn’t the only festive-themed story penned by Charles Dickens. His other Christmas books include The Chimes (1844), The Cricket on the Hearth (1845), The Battle of Life (1846), and The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain (1848).

  The growth of industrialized farming has helped to make turkey many people’s first choice for Christmas dinner, as it is now very cheap to produce, while the bird itself offers the consumer a large amount of meat for their money. Before the Second World War turkey was still something of a luxury as far as most households were concerned.

  Did you know . . .?

  Samuel Pepys, that font of so much seventeenth century social knowledge, wrote of a sauce to accompany turkey, the recipe for which was invented by the then Duke of York (later to become King James II). It was “made from parsley and dry toast beat together in a mortar, together with vinegar, salt and a little pepper,” and sounds not unlike a parsley and breadcrumb stuffing.

  And what would any roast poultry—whether goose, chicken, turkey, or peacock—be without stuffing? The term “stuffing” didn’t appear until 1538; before that time it was called forcemeat and, unsurprisingly, its list of ingredients is slightly different to what we know as stuffing today.

  There are some who believe that the recognized antiseptic properties of herbs such as thyme, marjoram, and sage, as used in stuffing, could have helped offset any nasty side effects of
eating badly cooked or slightly dodgy poultry. However, there are some more reasons for it having become an important part of the Christmas meal.

  Firstly, the addition of stuffing helped to make the meat go further and fill up the stomachs of hungry diners. Secondly, putting the stuffing inside the bird helped it to keep its shape during cooking, and even made it easier for the carcass to stay on the spit while it was being roasted over the fire.

  Did you know . . .?

  Around 10 million turkeys are eaten every Christmas in the United States, which amounts to over 19,000 tonnes of the stuff being cooked. 6,711 tonnes of that are fresh whole turkeys, with the other 12,472 tonnes being frozen whole birds.

  Forcemeat

  175 g/6 oz. breadcrumbs

  50 g/2 oz. ham (or lean bacon)

  2 eggs

  1 tsp sweet herbs, minced

  Salt

  Pounded mace

  100 g/4 oz. suet

  1 onion

  1 tsp parsley, minced

  ½ a lemon, rind only

  Cayenne

  Olive oil (or lard)

  To make enough forcemeat to accompany one turkey, start by shredding the ham (or bacon); chop the suet with the lemon rind and the herbs, making sure that everything is finely minced. Mince the onion just as finely and add this too. Add some salt, cayenne, and mace, and blend it all together with the breadcrumbs. Take the eggs, beat them and then strain them, and finally mix them with the other ingredients. Shape the forcemeat into balls before frying them in olive oil (or lard, if you’re after a more authentic flavor). An alternative to frying is to place the forcemeat balls on a baking tray, before baking them for 30 minutes in a moderate oven.

  However, despite the fact that turkey had been on Christmas menus for so long, up until 1851 Queen Victoria still ate swan for Christmas dinner. Then, when she did get turned on to turkey, she (or rather, her cooks) really went to town. The turkey was roasted in a rich pastry and stuffed with ... three other birds! Inside the turkey was a chicken, inside that was a pheasant, and lastly, inside that, was a woodcock, all with their bones removed—for convenience, of course.

  But four birds baked together was nothing compared to the legendary ten-bird roast championed by celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. A turkey is stuffed with a goose, duck, mallard, guinea fowl, chicken, pheasant, partridge, pigeon, and woodcock. When cooked it weighs 22 pounds and contains around 10,000 calories (the average turkey contains 3,000 calories). It also takes over nine hours to prepare and cook.

  But if all this talk of turkey has got you thinking along the lines of, “What’s the perfect way to roast my Christmas turkey this year?” then look no further.

  Traditional accompaniments for roast turkey are both cranberry sauce and bread sauce. Cranberry sauce was once restricted to northern rural areas, where wild cranberries grew in abundance. In the south, or the cities, until cranberries became more readily available towards the end of the twentieth century, bread sauce had to suffice. Sausages wrapped in bacon—known by the rather twee term “pigs in blankets”—are also served with the bird.

  Did you know . . .?

  Christmas Day 1870 saw the city of Paris under siege by the Prussian army. However, the fact that the enemy had stopped any food getting into the city for 99 days (and counting) wasn’t going to stop Café Voisin, 261 rue Saint-Honoré, from serving a fabulous, slap-up Christmas dinner. If you had been fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to be there yourself, you would have enjoyed the splendid repast on page 25.

  Christmas Turkey

  1 oven-ready turkey

  200 g/8 oz. bacon

  6 bay leaves

  150 g/6 oz. butter

  1 lemon

  Salt and pepper

  Christmas Stuffing

  2 large onions

  1 tbs dried sage

  85 g/3 oz. dried apricots

  85 g/3 oz. dried cranberries

  900 g/2 lb. pork sausage meat

  4 tbs white breadcrumbs

  1 egg

  Salt and pepper

  Preheat the oven to 425°F and while you’re doing that, make the stuffing. In a large bowl combine the breadcrumbs with the sage and one of the onions (finely minced), adding a little boiling water before mixing thoroughly. Next in goes the dried fruit; give it another stir. Then add the sausage meat and egg to the mixture, adding a little salt and pepper to taste. Stuff the turkey with the stuffing, pushing it into the neck end and tucking the neck flap back under the turkey. The rest of the stuffing then goes into the body cavity along with one whole, peeled onion. Place the turkey in a deep roasting dish. Smother it with the softened butter combined with the zest of the lemon. Layer the slices of bacon on top, using them to keep the bay leaves next to the skin. When it comes to actually roasting the bird you need to allow 20 minutes per 1 pound, cooking it for another 20 minutes on top of that. A 14 pound bird will feed fourteen people comfortably.

  Hors-d’oeuvres

  Butter-Radishes

  Stuffed Donkey’s Head

  Sardines

  Soups

  Purée of Red Beans with

  Croûtons

  Elephant Consommé

  Entrées

  Fried Gudgeons

  Roast Camel English

  Style

  Jugged Kangaroo

  Roast Bear Chops au

  Poivre

  Roasts

  Haunch of Wolf,

  Venison Sauce

  Cat Flanked by Rats

  Watercress Salad

  Antelope Terrine with

  Truffles

  Mushroom Bordelaise

  Buttered Green Peas

  First service

  Latour Blanche 1861

  Château Palmer 1864

  Second service

  Mouton Rothschild

  1846

  Romanée Conti 1858

  Grand Porto 1827

  Dessert

  Rice Cake with Jam

  Gruyère Cheese

  Wines

  And where did they get all the fresh meat from? Let’s just say a trip to the zoo after Christmas would have been a bit of a letdown.

  WHERE DOES THE CHRISTMAS TREE COME FROM?

  It would be hard to imagine Christmas without the familiar conical form of the festive tree. From December onward (if not before) they can be found everywhere, from homes and schools to department stores and pretty much anywhere people will spend any amount of time during the Christmas period, whether it be a hospital or an office. But where does the tradition come from, and has it always been such an important part of the Christmas celebrations as we know them?

  Well, in some ways it is one of the more recently established Christmas traditions, with the decorated tree as we know it rising to popularity during Queen Victoria’s reign. And then, in other ways, the tradition is older than Christmas itself. At its root, it’s really just another example of an evergreen brought into the home during the cold dark days of winter by our pagan forebears, along with the Yule log, boughs of holly, and mistletoe. But it was actually the Romans who got there first, as they did with so much that has become modern-day Christmas tradition. During the festival of Saturnalia, held in honor of Saturn, the god of agriculture, Ancient Romans decorated trees with small pieces of metal.

  The first Christmas trees were decorated with apples, as a symbol of Man’s fall in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. As a result, they were called Paradise trees. In time other decorations were added, in the form of nuts and even red ribbons or strips of paper. Ultimately the apples were replaced by Christmas baubles.

  In the Middle Ages, the Paradise tree went up on the feast day dedicated to Adam and Eve, December 24, and to this day, purists believe that you should wait until Christmas Eve to erect your own tree, and then take it down again on Twelfth Night.

  Possibly the earliest depiction of a Christmas tree dates from 1521 and comes from Germany. The painting shows a p
rocession of musicians accompanying a horse-riding holy man—who may be a bishop or even Saint Nicholas—parading through a town. One of the men in the procession is holding high a tree decorated with what look like apples.

  A candle-lit fir was also erected in a London street in the fifteenth century, but such trees remained as outside decorations and there are no records from the time stating that they were ever taken into the home. Evergreens in other forms were used to decorate houses, though, so it is quite possible that some homes also included a tree, rather than simply being adorned with bits of one.

  However, according to some historians, the first recorded mention of an actual Christmas tree appears in a diary from Strasbourg, dated 1605. This particular tree was decorated with paper roses, apples, sweets, and gold foil—the first tinsel.

  Did you know . . .?

  The people of Latvia like to claim that the first Christmas tree to be erected in public was in their capital city of Riga in 1510. Little is known about the event other than that men in black hats held a ceremony in front of the tree, before burning it. Ah yes, the good old traditional Christmas tree-burning ceremony!