Christmas Food Literature

[azzar]

Orwell (author of 1984, Animal Farm) loved Christmas, loathed capitalism, was a bit of a foodie... apparently the treacle tart is pretty good too.

Orwell's Xmas pud

"It is not a law of nature that every restaurant in England should be either foreign or bad..." Ha! Nice one, Eric.

[CalumC]

Merry dystopian christmas?

Someone has to make a feature of recipes from authors, surely? Seems too obvious to have not already been done.

[The Old Foodie]

Emily Dickinson was supposed to be famous for her Black Cake.

There is an "adapted" version of the cake HERE..

I'd love to have a copy of the original one.

Edited to add:

There is also this, from the play The Belle of Amherst, by William Luce (1976)

Black Cake: two pounds of flour, two pounds of sugar, two pounds

of butter, nineteen eggs, five pounds of raisins, one and a half

pounds of currants, one and a half pounds of citron, one half pint

of brandy -- I never use Father's best -- one half pint of molasses,

two nutmegs, five teaspoons of cloves, mace, and cinnamon, and --

oh, yes, two teaspoons of soda, and one and a half teaspoons of salt."

(Emily has removed her apron)

"Just beat the butter and sugar together, add the nineteen eggs,

one at a time -- now this is very important -- *without beating.*

Then, beat the mixture again, adding the brandy alternately with

the flour, soda, spices, and salt that you've sifted together.

Then the molasses. Now, take your five pounds of raisins, and

three pounds of currants and citron, and gently sprinkle in all

eight pounds -- slowly now -- as you stir. Bake for three hours

if you use cake pans. If you use a milk pan, as I do, you'd better

leave it in the oven six or seven hours."

Edited December 13, 2008 by The Old Foodie (log)

[Chris Amirault]

An excerpt from the Times article on Orwell:

Orwell was a foodie. There are full instructions for treacle tart, Yorkshire pudding, plum cake and the Christmas pudding. There's also one for marmalade. Someone, from the British Council presumably, has scrawled “Bad recipe!” across that.

So how was the Christmas pudding, you're wondering. Well, it's sitting very happily in the fridge, gestating: three bowls containing all three kilos of it. The recipe is fairly standard for the time. It doesn't contain any ingredient that's not mentioned by the great Constance Spry. It is chiefly sultanas, raisins, currants, candied peel, almonds, flour, cinnamon and breadcrumbs.