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Several holiday dishes associated in the popular imagination with the "Olde English Christmas" were in fact medieval holdovers still being enjoyed during the seventeenth century. Christmastime in England during the seventeenth century was always heralded by a flurry of baking, brewing and other preparations for overflowing holiday tables. Much like it still is today except, of course, during the gloomy days of those bad ol' Putty-tats, er, Puritans...sorry, during the Commonwealth period, when Christmas was banned. In fact, certain desserts popular in Shakespeare's day -- such as mincemeat pies and plum puddings -- continued to symbolize Christmas cheer well into Dickens's England.
Mincemeat Pies A relic of days when most meat dishes were chopped, highly spiced and sweetened, was considered an absolute necessity at Christmas. An old Shropshire custom held that, as the twelve days of Christmas were a mirror of the twelve months of the year, a person would enjoy one happy month in the new year for each mince pie they had eaten at a neighbor's house during this time. Such a tasty and optimistic custom could not help but fall under suspicion from the Puritans. They felt that the innocent pie smacked all too much of popery and superstitious practice (it was argued that the rectangular "coffin" or crust represented Christ's sepulcher, and the spice in the filling, the gifts of the Magi; some sources also claim that the pie was sometimes decorated with a pastry figure to represent the infant Jesus). When the Puritans came into power in the late 1640's, the mincemeat pie was one of the first things to go -- well into the 1650's it was literally a punishable offense to be caught eating mince pie! Gingerbread Another holiday treat that fell under the Puritans' suspicion was gingerbread. Ordinary gingerbread, a coarse confection made of grated bread crumbs spiced, sweetened, and bound together with wine or honey, was sold at village fairs. Ben Johnson's play Bartholomew Fair has a character named Trash who sells gingerbread; at one point the character Leatherhood tells him: "Sit farther with your ginerbread-progeny there, and hinder not the prospect of my shop"; later the hypocritical Busy orders him, "Hence with thy basket of popery, thy nest of images, and whole legend of gingerwork." Bread bakers sometimes also made fat little "Yulebabies" for their customers' children at Christmastime, by adding sugar and currants to regular bread dough, although they took much abuse from the pastry cooks for doing this. Only the pastry cooks were, by guild regulation, permitted to use sugar and fruit in their work! Despite all this abuse, ginerbread remained a favorite holiday treat, even being exchanged as small gifts in the shape of figures during the holidays. Fruitcake Fruitcake had also reached its present form and popularity by the seventeenth century. One book, Tryon's Way to Health, stated, "Observe the composition of Cakes which are frequently eaten. In them are commonly Flour, Butter, Eggs, Milk, Fruit, Spice, Sugar, Sack, Rosewater and Sweet Meats, as Citron and the like." Wassail Bowl Was a very old custom named for the old English toast, "Was hael!" (Be well!), still enjoyed in the seventeenth century. One recipe "supposedly as used in the kitchens of the court of Charles I", was: "Boil three pints of ale; beat six eggs, the whites and yokes together; set both to the fire in a pewter pot; add roasted apples, sugar, beaten nutmegs, cloves and ginger; and, being well brewed, drink it while hot." Boar's Head Was popular at least in the homes of the nobility at Christmas. It was attended with great pomp and ceremony, as indicated by this account from James I's court: "The first mess was a Boar's Head, which was carried by the tallest and lustiest of all the guard, before whom (as attendants) went one attired in a horseman's coat, with a boar's spear in his hand, next to him another Huntsman in green, with a bloody faulcion drawn, next to him two Pages in tafetye sarcanet, each of them with a mess of mustard; next to whom came he who caried the Boar's head crossed with a green silk scarf, by which hung the empty scabbard of the faulcion which was carried before him." A rather lengthy song composed for the occasion accompanied this procession. Christmas, before the Puritans came to power, was indeed a time to eat, drink and be merry! |
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