English Christmas Dinner

[John von Pey]

Hello all,

Normally I'm a more or less regular at the rum forum, and "just" reading the other forums. But now I need your help, so I crawled out of my shell.

For Christmas we (a group of friends) are planning a traditional English Christmas Dinner. I have found loads of recipies, but not in a complete dinner setting.

So can you help me out, of which compontents does a classic traditional English Christmas dinner excist?

Two already booked ingredients are (ofcause) the turkey and the Christmas pudding (already in my basement riping )

[naguere]

John von Pey,

Your idea is delightful,

on a personal note I allways prefer a standing rib roast of beef , rather than turkey, along with Yorkshire pudding (perhaps served on it's own as a first course with gravy) roast potatoes (cooked in beef dripping ) and the indispensible 'mushy pease'. brussels sprouts with chestnuts.

I iin these modern times a melange of roast vegetables would be more appropriate but they would not be welcomed by my family on that most traditional of days.. Don't forget you need some spirits, whiskey/brandy, warmed to pour over the christmas pudding and set it afire to carry it into the darkened dining room, to applause I hope.

If you can get hold of some indoor fireworks you will have a real party.

A Happy Christmas and a Merry Boxing Glove (old traditonal family greeting, in my house anyway!)

edited for spelling errors, well some of them anyway

Edited October 28, 2004 by naguere (log)

[jackal10]

I'm sure lots of others will answer this. I even did a Blog on it last year

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=33730&hl=

Firstly its usually lunch rather than dinner;

Christmas presents are opened around 11am - or much earlier with kids;

Sometime during the day Carols from Kings, and the Queens speech, a jigsaw puzzle and a really bad old film, like the Sound of Music need to be fitted in..

Christmas crackers, with a snap, a motto, a silly joke, a trinket and a paper hat.

The paper hats must be worn!

Lunch is

A light starter, maybe smoked salmon or a soup

Turkey (or goose, but a goose only really feeds two),

Traditional trimmmings:

Chesnut stuffing

Another stuffing in balls (easier to cook the stuffing seperately)(optional)

Bacon rolls

Chipolata sausages, as a chain

Gravy

Bread Sauce

Cranberry sauce (optional - the US influence)

Roast potatoes,

Roast parsnips

Boiled Sprouts (traditionally cooked until soft)

Boiled carrots

Christmas Pudding, flamed

Hard Sauce (Brandy butter)

(cream or custard, with or without brandy optional)

Stilton

Mince pies

Drinks: Mulled Wine, Champagne, good claret, burgundy or Rhone or the like, Port, maybe brandy and cigars, coffee...

[intraining]

jackal10, i never saw you at my house?

sounds about right, but did you forget breakfast? a full cooked breakfast?

or prawn cocktails for appetizers?

how about the rest of the day? lot's of chocolate, nuts (mmmm brazil nuts), more booze, night time turkey sandwiches on buttered bread with a tomatoe on the side

the flaming christmas pudding and don't forget christmas cake too.

i made a christmas goose once, had the best roast spuds from all that fat.

cocktail sausages wrapped in bacon and cooked in honey

ok ok, now don't forget to get AT LEAST 2 days after

Edited October 28, 2004 by intraining (log)

[jackal10]

You are right: I forgot the full coooked breakfast, prawn cocktail as a starter (with iceberg lettuce and Mary Rose sauce - mayo and ketchup combined), nuts after, and all the sweeties for desert: choose from crystallised fruit, crystallised ginger, chocolate ginger, dried fruit (dates, figs) tangerines, ornage and lemon slices, dragees, chocolates, and if up market Elvas semi-dried plums. Not forgetting nougat, marzipan fruits, and turkish delights...

Christmas cake (rich dark fruitcake, marzipan and white Royal icing) for tea...

[intraining]

oh yeah, turkish delights - that's the reason i've been into rose water forever!! had some in tukey once too - they were real good.

[curlywurlyfi]

chez Kirkpatrick, just in case there's a snowball's chance in hell of anyone feeling underfed on the big day, we also do a ham alongside the turkey, and mashed turnip (swede to you English, rutabaga to you Americans) with plenty of black pepper.

I second the prawn cocktail as starter of choice. My mother decided one year to do melon + Parma ham instead and there was virtually an insurrection.

[Jon Tseng]

For a straightforward reference the book Deliah Smith's Winter Collection should be pretty reliable

cheers

J

[tony h]

Raymond Blanc's Blanc Christmas is more inventive & palatable than Delia's

wonder how long it took him to come up with the title

[Gary Marshall]

I second the prawn cocktail as starter of choice.  My mother decided one year to do melon + Parma ham instead and there was virtually an insurrection.

←

A very similar incident at my mum's last year when she swapped prawn cocktail for salmon.

Going to in-laws this year, in all my 34 years i have never had christmas dinner away from home.

As long as i get the traditional christmas drinks at the pub i might survive it!

cheers

gary

[Marco_Polo]

sounds about right, but did you forget breakfast? a full cooked breakfast?

No full English cooked breakfast here. My wife being from the Midlands, Christmas breakfast is always, wait for it, pork pie. This took some getting used to in the early days of our marriage (I think I nearly vomited the first time, but somehow manfully managed to swallow back the regurgitation, otherwise who knows what might have happened?). Apparently, pork pie was/is traditionally the breakfast of choice in the Midlands to give the hardworking mother/wife of the family a break from having to prepare anything in the morning since the Christmas lunch itself is such a big deal. My father-in-law is very particular about his pork pies (he likes Pork Farms best): they must be quite peppery and also have a good layer of jelly, with a hot water raised crust that is thick and crusty, never mushy. Must be served with Colmans English mustard, no other will do (and certainly not French!).

Well, over the years, I've come around to accepting the once-a-year-necessity of eating this on Christmas morning, but we have insisted that it is washed down with some good pink Champagne (the past few years a rather good Dom Ruinart - though I must say, the subtleties of the biscuity rich deluxe cuvée are rather overshadowed by the tongue-searing heat of the English mustard...)

As for the Queen's speech, not in this household, thank you very much. My in-laws are neither pro nor anti monarchy, but the speech is mercifully something we've always been spared: lunch is served precisely the moment Her Majesty begins and in all my years of living here I've never had to suffer through the bloody thing, stomach grumbling, waiting to eat.

I guess the two most important elements of the meal here (whether turkey or goose - we'll have the latter this year since we're cooking) are the roast potatoes (my mother-in-law's the best in the universe), and the sprouts - which I'm afraid I still despise much as I have tried, but which are just, well, the taste of Christmas in England.

Oh yes, another absolute indispensable, the ritual of the passing of the Port round the table at the end of the meal to accompany the Stilton. Now which way is it supposed to go?

MP

Edited October 29, 2004 by Marco_Polo (log)

[curlywurlyfi]

oh, yes, champagne to start the day. We have heelpad rolls (trans: square Lorne sausage in a bun, with or without marmelade, tomato sauce, HP sauce, viz various other threads) with ours.

My mother also (accidentally - we burnt the custard - it's a long story) came up with a fantastic wheeze a couple of years ago which is now the law. Christmas lunch stops after the turkey. Everybody goes to bed or dozes in front of the telly for two hours, snores reverberate round the household, and then when we get up again, we've digested sufficient roast bird to have space for Christmas pudding. It's fantastic I tell you.

[jackal10]

Oh yes, another absolute indispensable, the ritual of the passing of the Port round the table at the end of the meal to accompany the Stilton. Now which way is it supposed to go?

MP

←

To your left. As in the nautical saying "Is there any Red Port Left?" (the red lamp is on the port side which is on the leftside of the boat facing if you face forward)

.

The port should not touch ground before it has passed round the table. Some port decaters are round bottomed so you cannot put them down until they return to their stand.

Everything else, including the stilton (a full round from a truckle, wrapped in a napkin, with a silver spoon to dig it out of the middle) is passed to the right

It is barbaric to pour port into the stilton. It ruins both the port and the stilton.

[Jon Tseng]

sounds about right, but did you forget breakfast? a full cooked breakfast?

My father-in-law is very particular about his pork pies (he likes Pork Farms best):

←

Pork Farms Pork and Apple Pie (don't know if they still do them anymore...) are the best!

l8tr

J

[Andy Lynes]

Christmas breakfast is always, wait for it, pork pie.

←

And I thought Heston Blumenthal was at the cutting edge of experimental cuisine in this country. Pork pie and Coleman's first thing in the morning however is really out there.

[slacker]

Turkey - English? No, no, no. Goose, please, or beef.

Champagne is a must. It helps the yearly visit to church along, and soothes the nerves among the screaming of children.

Scramblers and SS, possibly, but I prefer Gravlax and Champagne.

.....which is hardly traditional English. Ho hum.

[YKL]

another book which is quite good is Elizabeth David's Christmas - only published last year I think. Useful for generic ideas or pleasurable reading ....

Cheers

Yin

[andiesenji]

I remember most of the food on Christmas day when I was a child growing up in my grandfather's house. All the traditional English foods plus all the things that had been added over the years since he emigrated to America from England. As well as the traditional southern foods introduced by his cook.

My cousins and I got to have our meals with the adults that day and there was a huge amount of food as it was an extremely large extended family.

We had to have breakfast before we could open our presents and it was agony sitting at the table in the breakfast room trying to mind our manners and eat like little ladies and gentlemen under the sharp eye of my great grandmother, a stickler for proper behavior. I can remember most of the foods that we had the rest of the day but Christmas breakfast is a blur.

The one I remember best is Christmas 1945 when my daddy and all my uncles were home from the war, my mother and two of my aunts who lived away were home for the holidays and one of my great uncles who lived in New York was also there. I came across a note in one of my grandmother's cookbooks about that holiday, planning food for 59 people (including 7 children).

I came across this site which brings back even more memories.

[Suzi Edwards]

I'm from the Midlands and I've never heard of pork pie for breakfast. However I wish I had as I LOVE pork pie with english mustard.

One winter Satanburies did a great Christmas food catalogue. There were loads of pictures of bacon wrapped sausages, vol-au-vents and, of course, a wide selection of pork pies. I ended up conducting a survey of all of my friends and the mini cranberry topped pork pie won.

Just thought I'd share that.

[Marco_Polo]

Of course one of the defining elements of Christmas lunch is the Christmas cracker. Joining hands crisscrossed and pulling the crackers which go off usually with a whimper not a bang, putting on the coloured paper hats, and reading out the cheesy jokes one by one at the start of the meal is all an essential part of the ritual. My father-in-law (he who loves pork pie for Christmas breakfast) also likes to put out streamers and pea shooters, and with some 11 grandkids (ranging in age from 26 to 10) it gets pretty racous. Personally I could do without the streamers and spit-sodden paper 'peas' in my crystal goblet of claret (pulling out old Bordeaux from the cellar another tradition), but there we are. You gotta go with the flow and it's all part of the essential English Christmas. (So far that matter is going for a walk in the the wind and rain: when we're down here it's along Exmouth seafront, and afterwards of course for a pint or two at The Bridge Inn).

As for the pies, no apple, no cranberries, no turkey and ham: just the pure basic unadorned pork pie. For the uninitiated, this English standby is a hefty and solid yeoman's fare, a hand raised hot water crust (traditionally raised around wooden moulds) filled with ground pork meat seasoned just with salt and pepper, baked, then, once cooked and cooled, filled with pork gelatine to fill up the gaps between crust and meat. This solidifies to a solid clear jelly. Nothing else. It's cut into slices and always eaten cold. Tarka, your lack of knowledge of this 'Midlands tradition' confirms what I have long suspected: that eating it for Christmas breakfast is probably not universal throughout the region - in fact probably not done anywhere else except in my in-laws house. For me, eating pork pie on Christmas morning (with the pink Champagne) is a form of penitence: I always make an immense and histrionic fuss about having to do so (though in truth, I've rather come to like it, though I don't care to admit it); but then, I'm just getting my own back for the grief I have to put up with each year about pumpkin pie.

MP

[alexw]

Breakfast with us is always croissants and selection of preserves from the wierd list at fortnums, with Ham and tongue and smoked salmon carved at the table with another selection of this seasons mustards washed down with a glass or three of bucks fizz. this is then followed by presents and subsequent building of many hot wheels toys and putting enless stickers on things before you can settle down to your own prezzies.

Lunch then for everyone but me is the bog standard turkey, veg etc, I reserve a nice chateaubriand as I cook for a living by the 25th the last thing I need to see is another bloody turkey.

what ever you decide to have on the day I wish you a very (early) blooming great Xmas.

Alex.

[intraining]

chez Kirkpatrick, just in case there's a snowball's chance in hell of anyone feeling underfed on the big day, we also do a ham alongside the turkey, and mashed turnip (swede to you English, rutabaga to you Americans) with plenty of black pepper. 

I second the prawn cocktail as starter of choice.  My mother decided one year to do melon + Parma ham instead and there was virtually an insurrection.

←

you know what real good? mashed swede and carrots together, pepper and butter

[John von Pey]

Thanks for all the information. This Christmas is going to be classic

[andiesenji]

I received Diana Serbe's newsletter today and when I visited the site I noticed the number of English recipes and a couple of Christmas recipes.

Wouldn't hurt to check it out.

In Mama's Kitchen

I already posted the mince meat recipe on the Pork Cake thread.

[jackal10]

Arrgh! This is not English mincemeat. British mincemeat is stored uncooked, and only cooked in the final pie or tart. The high levels of sugar and alcohol preserve it.

Here is a picture of my English Mincemeat from last year.

I give the illustrated recipe, as well as that of Christmas Pudding and other good things in my egCI "Autumn and Festive Preserves" unit. http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=30785.

About now would be a good time to make them, and traditionally they should be made by “Stir-up Sunday”, the last Sunday before Advent, which is around the middle to end of November, so that they have time to mature before Christmas day. It is called “Stir-up Sunday” because the Collect begins “Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people”, reminding the faithful that it is time to make puddings

Edited November 7, 2004 by jackal10 (log)