Historic Kitchens Manager for Historic Royal Palaces, Sussex born and bred Richard Fitch shares his extensive knowledge of Christmas fare from the last 500 years, and some historic recipes which our readers may like to try at home this year
With Christmas approaching, many of us will be turning our thoughts to planning the Christmas dinner. However, for me, it’s not turkey, potatoes and all the trimmings that occupy my mind; it’s thoughts of Christmas food from the last 500 years rather than what we’ll be eating as a familyat home this year. In my position as Historic Kitchens Manager at Hampton Court Palace, I will be planning the historic food that my team will prepare and demonstrate over the festive season.
Hampton Court Palace is well-known as the Thames side palace of King Henry VIII, but it is also home to the largest surviving Tudor kitchen complex in the country. A food factory that was designed to prepare 500 meals, twice a day for the courtiers and staff of Britain’s monarchs. The building was constructed under Henry VIII through to George III, who was the last monarch to use Hampton Court as a residence.
Through the centuries, Christmas Day dinner wasn’t always the centre attraction, but rather the start of twelve days of food and feasting (following fasting during Advent), culminating in the more important Epiphany, or Twelfth Night – the date the three Kings visited the infant Christ and the start of the New Year. Christmas Day saw the return of all the foods forbidden by the church for the advent period and would have been a welcome start to the festive season. From December 25th through to Epiphany on 6th January food, feasting, hospitality, and charity played an important role. Roast beef was the meat for the Court, with fowl and game birds being the food for the King and nobility.
Another feature of high- status Christmas meals would be a boar’s head prepared and paraded before the diners to celebrate the Yuletide; a practice which forms the basis of the Boar’s Head Carol published by Wynkyn de Worde in 1521. The dish involved cooking the boar’s head in wine, then removing skin and meat from the bones and creating it into a large, head- shaped sausage, before being served with great pompand ceremony.
This dish remained a firm favourite with kings and queens through the centuries, with Queen Victoria insisting that it formed part of the service for her festive celebrations. With charity an integral theme of the season, many large households from noblemen to King would bring selected poor guests into their halls to dine with them, or they would ensure that plenty of leftover food was distributed to the poor – who would gather at the gates of palaces and noble houses to receive some welcome cheer.
The seventeenth century is forever linked with the parliamentary banningof Christmas as a ‘popish’ display of idolatry, and we often find modern references to the banning of mince pies. Whilst the century saw the rise of shred or mince pies and the real start of their association with the Christmas period, there is no evidence that they were ever banned, nor that the increase in their popularity towards the end of the century was linked to the mid-century ‘banning’ of Christmas. Shaped in diverse ways, though often formed to resemble Christ’s manger, these meat and fruit pies were the forerunner of today’s sweet Christmas treats, which often still contain a meaty element in the form of suet.
The eighteenth century brought plum porridge to the table, soon to be converted into the Christmas pudding we recognise today, as well as roasted potatoes cooked under the meat in front of the fire. It also introduced the Yorkshire Christmas Pie, a pie containing a boned bird, within a bird, within a bird, often erroneously referred to as being a Tudor dish and very much the antecedent of the modern American turducken. The Christmas Pie recipe, published by Hanne Glasse in 1747, appears to be one of the earliest recipes where Christmas is specified as being part of the title, or given as the time to make it. Prior to this there are recipes for plum porridges and puddings, as well as mince, or shred pies, but none refer to Christmas in their descriptions.
The nineteenth century brought the Victorians and with them, many of the things we now consider Christmas traditions. The decorated tree, Christmas cards, and crackers are firmly associated with the reign of Queen Victoria, though in truth many of these traditions predate her reign but were made more popular by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
The popularity of ‘A Christmas Carol’ by Charles Dickens, and its description of Bob Cratchet’s Christmas dinner at the close of the story, defined our future view of a ‘traditional’ Christmas dinner, and cemented the place of turkey as the meat of the meal, surpassing the more established beef joint or goose.
For those skilful enough to prepare it, Queen Victoria’s chef Charles Elmé Francatelli wrote a ‘modern’ recipe for an imitation boar’s head. It was made of savoy biscuit and filled with ice cream and would grace the table as part of the Christmas Day meal.
In previous centuries this would have taken centre stage on the more important Epiphany or Twelfth Night. Also, during this transitional time, the Twelfth Cake fell from favour, to be replaced by the lighter Christmas cake that we now reverentially feed with alcohol during its maturing. Evolving from medieval spiced breads, the Twelfth Cake, heavily iced
in its Victorian incarnation, was the culinary finale to the Christmas celebrations for the previous centuries.
The tradition of putting charms or money into our Christmas puddings originated from a time when, those who were served a slice with a bean or pea in it, would be transformed into King of the Bean and Queen of the Pea and would oversee the final day of Christmas celebrations.From there it is mere skip and a jump to the present day and our family Christmas feasting that includes echoes of festive fare from the previous 500 years.
This Christmas, the cobbled courtyards of Hampton Court Palacewill be filled with festive decorations and seasonal music. Visitors to Henry VIII’s Kitchens can warm by the roaring fire, while my team and I roast meat just as it would have been done 500 years ago for the royal court, as well as creating historic recipes, for visitors to examine the flavours and spices that would have been enjoyed at the palaces centuries ago.
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