Great British Food Christmas 2024

provided by the person they were visiting. It was typically a drink called lamb’s wool, because it had a frothy top. Usually this would be spiced hot ale, topped with roasted crab apples, Bramley apples or toasted bread. This is where the tradition of carol singing came from. An 18th Century Christmas Christmas entered a more ornate era in the 18th Century. They might drink a punch cocktail of brandy, water, lime juice and sugar. Enormous Twelfth Cakes became very popular – decorated with bright icing and sugarpaste pressed from fruit woodmoulds. There are also glimpses at a modernising Christmas. Daniel Defoe, during his tour of Britain from1724 to 1727, noted that while turkeys and geese fromNorfolk had once been walked to market in London, the process was now becoming mechanised, with special carts designed to take the birds to the city. A 19th Century Christmas By now, the ‘a la francaise’ style of dining, consisting of multiple courses of many dishes (eaten in smaller portions like a cross between a tasting menu and buffet), had been replaced by ‘a la russe’ – the succession of courses we all recognise today. Christmas dinner would have been roast beef and plumpudding, not turkey. What’s interesting about this period is that we tend to think of Dickens as having invented Christmas. He didn’t. WilliamWinstanley’s Poor Robin almanacs were found by American writer Washington Irving in the British Library. He came across the customs of what happened on various days, and the food and the games played, and wrote about them in his essays. Dickens was very influenced by him, and it’s thought he based A Christmas Carol and The Pickwick Papers on what he read. A 20th Century Christmas Rationing in the 40s wasn’t introduced until pretty late, and was very limiting, especially at Christmas. There was something called ‘murkey’ (muttonmade to look like roast turkey), or you could have roast breast of lamb with a basic stuffing. Then there was mock goose, which would be layers of sausagemeat, onion and apple, shaped into a turkey breast. Cooks could give it drumsticks, which were actually parsnips. Parsnips would also have ended up in Christmas cakes, along with carrots, and whatever dried fruit they had for sweetening. Rationing carried on until the mid- 50s, and going into the 60s it was still difficult to get hold of a lot of things, especially if they were imported. We went a bit crazy at this time. Everything was brightly coloured and twee. It was also the beginning of factory farming. As more birds were available, more people could afford to eat turkey. Christmas Dinner Today What we think of as a traditional Christmas dinner, of turkey, pigs in blankets, stuffing, roast potatoes and Brussels sprouts, really began in the 70s, and we’ve expanded upon it. There’s been a rise in vegetarianism and veganism, which has changed what our Christmas centrepiece might be, and celebrity chefs have made their mark. It’s difficult to say how it might look in 10 years’ time. In the 60s people said in the future we’d be eating our food in pill form. Things can veer off in all sorts of directions. But it’s going to be exciting. greatbr i t i shfoodawards.com 54 FEATURE | CHRI STMAS

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