Though they are the stuff of fond memories and indulgent holiday feasts, many of these dee-lish Christmas dishes came about due to commoner-class deprivation and intrusive spiritual dogma which prevailed way back when.
The traditional Christmas Ham can trace its origins to the boar's head that graced banquet tables of wealthy Tudor-era English households (c. 1485-1602) as part of a Norse-influenced harvest and fertility celebration. But holiday-hungry plebes could only afford a less showy yule ham, and though Christmas has since replaced the original pagan fete, the tradition of tucking into a "poor folks' feast of cured pork lives on. Today, hams are usually baked with a honey-glaze and adorned with dried clove (which diners are well advised to remove before eating).
Christmas dinner often shares many of its side dishes with those served at Thanksgiving, including mashed potatoes & gravy, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pies and stuffing, but there are a number of treats that have their origins purely in the Christmas celebrations of yore.
For most of its long history, Mincemeat was made with chopped meat and dried fruit, sugar and seasonings. During the 1600s, mincemeat pies became a British Christmastime fixture, but over the years the meat disappeared from recipes, resulting in its modern incarnation of fruits, sugar and rum or brandy.
Panettone is an Italian bakery whose name, legend has it, comes from the name Pane di Tono or 'luxury bread'. Baked in tall, circular loafs, the perennial cake-bread contains dried fruits and citron essence, and is a popular yuletide favourite the world over.
Arguably the most Christmas-y of food traditions, the concept of plum pudding came about sometime in the 1600s. The recipe calls for a heaping helping of religious symbolism resulting from a Catholic Church decree that families make a pudding with exactly 13 ingredients to represent Christ and the 12 apostles. And because back then "plum" referred to any dried fruit, the modern version made with raisins, currants, citrus zest, almonds, and spices contains no plums or even prunes. More confusingly still, plum pudding is also known as figgy pudding, though today it contains no figs.
It may not be clear to some whether eggnog is a festive cocktail or quaffable dessert, as it displays characteristics of both. Descended from milk- and wine-based punch drinks from the 17th century, today's eggnog is a sweet, milkshake-like holiday indulgence of eggs, milk and sugar, fortified with rum, brandy or bourbon. Because of health concerns surrounding raw eggs, pasteurised commercial eggnogs are now the norm.
With roots firmly in German-Austrian Christmas baking tradition, Stollen has a long and fascinating history featuring a religious visual analogy. First mentioned in official documents from the 15th century, Stollen was the subject of a four-decade lobbying campaign by Saxon royals to gain permission from successive popes to use butter in the recipe, which at the time was a highly regulated essential commodity. Thereafter, Stollen became richer in texture, with dessert-ish enhancements like dried fruits and a layer of marzipan added later, resulting in the bread-cake we know today. Despite its evolution, Stollen's ecclesiastical roots are preserved in its very name, which is short for "Christollen" after the oblong loaf's resemblance to a swaddled infant.
Back in pre-globalisation times when basic baking ingredients were expensive imports, holiday fruitcake was a rare treat limited to the holiday season. Today, the famously dense, dark and rich cake laden with dried fruits, nuts and sometimes a splash or two of booze are a ubiquitous, if not somewhat outdated Christmas offering which often ends up being re-gifted or relegated to the back of the fridge.
"eat" - Google News
December 16, 2019 at 04:31AM
https://ift.tt/34smzCC
Good lord, it's Christmas… let's eat! - Bangkok Post
"eat" - Google News
https://ift.tt/33WjFpI
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
0 Comments:
Post a Comment