COLONIAL CHRISTMAS FOOD TRADITIONS FROM GREAT BRITAIN (Guest post by Christine Trent)

Now, bring us some figgy pudding,

Now, bring us some figgy pudding,

Now, bring us some figgy pudding, and bring it out here!

Good tidings we bring to you and your kin.

We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

From We Wish You a Merry Christmas, 16th century Christmas carol

As most readers of American colonial history know, many 18th century Christmas

traditions came from Great Britain and we still enjoy quite few of them today.

Because I always like to mention specific foods my characters eat when writing

historical fiction, I’d like to explore just a few of the food traditions brought to Colonial America by Great Britain.

Christmas Pudding

Also known as Figgy Pudding or Plum Pudding, Christmas Pudding has its origins in the 14th century as a dish called “frumenty,” a sort of sticky, thick porridge made of boiled figs, ground almonds, honey, water, and wine. It would later incorporate beef, mutton, and grains; then later still would evolve into a steamed dish containing currants, raisins, and spices to become Plum Pudding.

Why “plum” pudding? Plums were what early 19th century Britons called dried fruits in general, and since the dish contained figs, raisins, and currants, the name stuck.

Over the years, the dish evolved into one containing figs—of course—as well as butter, sugar, eggs, suet, milk, rum or brandy, apple, candied lemon and orange peel, nuts, cinnamon, cloves, and ginger. Sounds rich, doesn’t it?

It wasn’t until 1845 that the dish came to be known as “Christmas Pudding,” in Eliza

Acton’s bestselling cookbook, Modern Cookery for Private Families.

Today in the U.S., it tends to be referred to as Figgy Pudding, whereas in the U.K. it is

still known as Plum Pudding or Christmas Pudding or sometimes even just “Pud.”

Christmas pudding frequently incorporates symbolism reflective of Christ such as

topping it with holly (representing the crown of thorns) and setting the pudding on fire (representing the passion of Christ). Placing a silver sixpence in the pudding is another old custom said to bring luck to the person that finds it.

Attribution: Musical Linguist, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Twelfth Night Cake

In the 18th century, Christmas in Britain lasted from December 6th (St. Nicholas Day)

through January 6th (Twelfth Night), with gifts exchanged on both nights.

Still not as long as our Christmas in the U.S., which appears to start around Halloween, if not earlier!

Twelfth night was the culmination of Christmas and rich and poor would have had family get togethers, make music and mark the end of the Christmas season. Central to the celebration was the Twelfth Night Cake, also called the King’s Cake. It would have contained a bean and a pea, respectively designating a king and queen of the night’s raucous festivities for those who found them in their slices of cake. Even servants could play “royalty” if they found the dried legumes.

Twelfth Night Cake, sometimes just called Twelfth Cake, was an extravagantly

decorated rich fruit cake, usually topped with two crowns.

In famed diarist James Boswell’s 1762 account of Christmas, he notes the following

about Twelfth Night cake:

‘This was twelfth-day, on which a great deal of jollity goes on in England, at the eating of the Twelfth-cake all sugared over…I took a whim that between St Paul’s and the

Exchange and back again, taking the different sides of the street, I would eat a penny

twelfth-cake at every shop where I could get it. This I performed most faithfully…People used to stop and stare into the windows of pastry cooks at the gorgeous Twelfth Night Cakes on sale.’

Attribution: British Museum, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Mince Pie

Dating back to the Middle Ages, Mince Pies were stuffed with minced meat such as

lamb or veal, chopped fruit like raisins, prunes, and figs, and a preserving liquid, which served as a way to preserve meat without salting or curing it. It was quite common to mix savory meat with sweet fruits in the era.

A well-baked meat pie, with liquid fat poured into any steam holes left open and left to solidify, appeared to preserve the contents within for up to a year, with the crust apparently keeping out air and spoilage. It seems difficult to fathom today, but it was a common practice then.

By the Tudor era, the pies were rectangular, shaped like a manger, and frequently

incorporated a pastry baby Jesus on top.

After the English Reformation, the pie adopted a round shape.

By the 18th century, tongue or even tripe had become the minced meat of choice, with

minced beef becoming popular in the 19th century.

In the late Victorian period, Mince Pies dropped the meat altogether and were

comprised of all fruit fillings (except for the suet, of course). This seems to be due to

the rise of sugar plantations, making sugar easier and cheaper to obtain. Mrs. Beeton’s

Book of Household Management—a reference I use regularly in writing my Victorian

mysteries—gives instructions for not only a meat version of Mince Pie but also a sweet version.

Today’s Mince Pie is a crumbly pastry filled with fruit, often soaked in brandy and

flavored with citrus and spices. A dollop of brandy butter or cream finishes off this rich dessert.

Old customs surrounding the dish include stirring the pie mixture clockwise only for

good luck and always making a wish when eating the first Mince Pie of the season.

Attribution: en:User:Jmb, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

And if you were to get heartburn as a result of all of this rich food, no worries! There

was an 18th century cure for that! Hannah Glasse’s 1774 cookery book, The Art of

Cookery Made Plain and Easy, includes this “powder for the heart-burn”:

Take white chalk six ounces; eyes and claws of crabs, of each an ounce; oil of nutmeg six drops; make them into a fine powder. About a dram of this in a glass of water is an infallible cure for the heart-burn.

Attribution: Hannah Glasse, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Not enough rich food for you? How about a Yorkshire Christmas Pie, which used all of

the following: a turkey, a goose, a partridge, a pigeon, woodcocks, plus any other birds

the cook could find, plus four pounds of butter, stuffed into a thick crust made from ten pounds of flour?

Life could be difficult and unforgiving on both sides of the Atlantic in the 18th century, but celebrations around rich food were just as popular then as they are today.

Christine Trent is the author of the Lady of Ashes Victorian mystery series and several

other historical novels, as well as the Heart of St. Mary’s County series, set in Maryland. She is currently finishing up a Revolutionary War trilogy, Forged in Liberty, slated for publication in 2025. Learn more at www.ChristineTrent.com.