feature

Old Christmas recipes from East Anglia

Christmas goose pie pre Turkey days

From the handwritten recipe book of a housekeeper of a large house in Norfolk.

Bone a large goose and a good fowl. Make a forcemeat of minced tongue, ham, veal and suet: season it with sweet herbs, parsley, lemon, pepper, mace and salt. Mix it with two eggs and fill the inside of the fowl with it: put the fowl inside the goose, make a gravy with the trimmings of the fowl, the tongue and any pieces that may be left of the veal, and a calf’s foot or a cow’s heel: stew the goose with the fowl inside, in this gravy for twenty minutes or half an hour. Then lay the goose in a dish and place a piecrust over it: fill up any vacant spaces with slices of ham or the rest of the forcemeat. Strain the gravy through a jelly bag until it looks clear and pour it over the pie; lay some butter on the top and bake for three hours.

The old cookbook then says: It is eaten cold, and if well-made is extremely good and savoury; it will keep for a long time.

Why not try it this Christmas and surprise everyone? Even though everyone will be rather full after that you still need a Christmas Pudding. Victorian rich plum pudding

1lb 2oz Kidney suet, chopped very fine 1lb large raisins, stoned and cut in half ½ lb French plums cut in slices 6oz shredded mixed peel; 1 teaspoonful baking powder 1lb breadcrumbs 3oz pounded almonds ¼ lb Indian cornflour a pinch of salt ½ lb sultanas 1 teaspoonful allspice ½ lb currants a grating of nutmeg 1lb sugar ½ teaspoon cinnamon Mix these dry ingredients together in a large bowl then bind them together with:

Juice of 1 lemon, a glass of brandy, 8 or 9 eggs whipped for seven minutes, a gill of strong ale or sherry.

Sherry is more delicate but ale is the traditional way of ‘wetting’ the Yuletide pudding.

The mixture should then be the consistency of very moist dough and will be sufficient for one large pudding or three small ones.

While the pudding is being mixed everyone in the household should have a stir and make a wish. A sauce that enhances the taste of the pudding is as follows: 1 glass of sherry 2 egg yolks ½ glass of brandy juice of a lemon 4 lumps of sugar 1 gill water 10z almonds, all boiled together for 10 minutes.

And don’t forget Christmas Day Tea if you can fit in any more food!

Cold turkey etc. then mince-pies! Tradition dictates that 12 mince-pies should be eaten between Christmas and New Year to ensure that the New Year will be a lucky one! Good Luck!!

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Picture by Charles Edmund Brock Stir-up Sunday

The tradition of preparing Christmas pudding on the Sunday four weeks before Christmas doesn’t just stem from the time needed for the pudding to mature. It’s a day written in religious history.

In Medieval England, around the 1540s, the Roman Catholic Church decreed that a pudding should be made on the 25th Sunday after Trinity Sunday (which usually falls around early June) – the weekend before Advent begins and roughly one month before Christmas Day. The prayer for the 25th Sunday after Trinity, in the Book of Common Prayer, as it was used in the 16th and 17th century, reads:

STIR up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The line ‘Stir up, we beseech thee’ came to take on more than religious significance. It was also a practical reminder to begin preparing the Christmas pudding.

Today, Stir-up Sunday continues to mark the date when people make their pudding.