More Gravy than Grave

Christmas has always been fabled for its moreish cuisine. From Tudor feats of venison, boar, and beef, to today’s lean gobblers, the feast of St. Christ has been through quite a few meaty reincarnations.

Once upon a midnight festive, the sight of arching swans or flamboyant peacocks would have been standard fare at Christmas. This was excess with a point — not only that the Christ Child was here, but that the hour had turned and Spring was on the way. Today, though, a rather more ‘sedate’ meat has taken over most Christmas tables (here in Cambridge, at least) — the humble turkey, a bird as renowned for its lean healthiness as for its gullibility where rain is concerned. ‘Wherefore?’, one may be tempted to ask.

By way of answer, let us scan the rest of the table — the sparkling ham, puckered with cloves and honey glaze, the steaming casseroles heaped with black gold, the royal purple mulled wine with orange discs, cinnamon and star anise bubbling at the brim, and a big flaming pudding in the middle.

Given that our readers are among the more astute of the general public, the little trick in the previous paragraph will be quite evident — less than half of the ingredients mentioned are from the this Sceptred Isle, the rest are imports from the far flung edges of the no-longer-existent Empire (also the ‘native’ stuff, if supply chains are to be believed). The glamour of the meaty centrepiece has slowly dribbled out and soaked the sides aborning.

Now, this is not a moment of Empire-bashing (though Heaven knows it probably should be), but one to remember the eclecticism of the Christmas table. The British Turkey would hardly be worth the feast without the British Pepper, and the British Orange, and the British cloves, and the British Cinnamon, and the British figs, and the British Star Anise, and the British Dates, now would it? So perhaps on this Feast Day of the Christ, take a moment to remember the wide world that provided for the table (and maybe take a gander at the weird and wonderful list of flips and flops in DHP’s Advent Calendar?)

Illustration: David Teniers the Younger, The Twelve Days of Christmas No. 8, 1634-40, https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/12/17/the-first-christmas-meal/