Christmas Eve at the Waldorf, 1899

A couple of years ago, we vicariously enjoyed ChristmasEve dinner at the Savoy Hotel in London, in the year 1899. Why don’t we stay in the same era, and see what the Waldorf=Astoria in New York has to offer us this evening?

Feuilles de laitue, Suédoise

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Huitres

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Potage, Jenny Lind

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Radis   Olives Celéri   Amandes sales

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Mousse de homard, sauce aux crabs d’huitres

Salade de concombres

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Ris-de-veau, Gourmet

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Mignons de boeuf, Castellar

Pommes Laurette         Petits Pois

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Perdreaux rôtis en casserole

Salade Romaine

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Glaces de Fantaisie      Petits Fours

Fromage           Fruits

Café

Now, what to choose as the recipe for the day?  If in doubt, choose potatoes – that’s one of my guiding principles. So, Pommes Laurette it is. The dish appears on a number of menus of the era, but I am unable to find a recipe in any of the usual sources. I suspect it is meant to be Pommes Lorette – a classical dish indeed.

Here it is, from Escoffier himself:

Pommes de terre Lorette.

Ingredients as for pommes dauphine*, 6 oz. grated cheese, flour.

Add the cheese to the potato and chou paste mixture. Shape into pieces the size of an egg, coat with flour and fry in deep fat for 6-8 minutes.

*Pommes dauphine.

Coquette mixture**, 8 oz. chou paste (without sugar), egg.

Combine the croquette mixture and chou paste well together. Shape into brioche and arrange on a buttered dish. Brush with egg and cook in a moderate oven.

** Croquettes de pommes de terre.

2 lb. potatoes, 3 oz butter, salt, pepper, nutmeg, 1 whole egg, 1 egg yolk, flour, egg and breadcrumbs for coating, deep fat for frying.

Peel and quarter the potatoes and cook quickly in a little boiling salted water. Drain, dry for a few minutes at the side of the stove, then rub through a sieve. Return the purée to the pan, add butter, seasoning and nutmeg and stir over a gentle heat for a few minutes to dry off. Remove from the heat, add the beaten egg and egg yolk. Mould into cork shapes, coat with flour and then with egg and breadcrumbs.

Fry in deep fat for 5-6 minutes, or, if preferred, mould into flat cakes, coat with flour and egg and breadcrumbs, and fry in butter in a frying pan.

Aussie Christmas Puddings.

Every year at this time in Australia, we suffer (or enjoy) a terrible mismatch between the traditions of our prevailing culture and the exigencies of our climate. The first wants hot roasts and hot puddings in a room with an open fire, the other needs cold prawns and very cold ice-cream in a room with air-conditioning (if a picnic at the beach is not possible.)

For many decades, cookery columnists have suggested alternative recipes for Christmas fare that are more in keeping with the heat and humidity. As the percentage of the population with no personal memory of a British or European Christmas dwindles, these are being taken up with more enthusiasm. 

I decided to take a glimpse back into the newspapers, to see what was offered in earlier times, in the name of an Aussie Christmas pudding.

This one is really just a patriotic variation on the same hot steamy theme:

West Australian Christmas Puddings.

The following are recipes for real West Australian Chri;tiuas puddings: —

No. 1. - Take ½ lb. suet, ½ lb. coarse sugar, ½ lb.stoned West Australian raisins, ½ lb. West Australian currants, 2oz. Plaistowe's candied peel; a breakfast cupful of West Australian flour; one [?] breakfast cupful of West Australian bread crumbs; half a nutmeg, a little

salt, four West Australian eggs.

Mix all the dry ingredients, add the eggs, beat lightly. Boil in floured cloth four or five hours, two days running.

No. 2. - Take 1lb. stoned West Australian raisins; ½ lb. West Australian currants; ½ lb. West Australian sultanas, 1oz. Plaistowe’s citron peel, 1 oz. Plaistowe’s lemon peel, half a nutmeg, 1 teaspoon mixed spice, ¾ lb. sugar, ½ lb. West Australian butter, ten West Australian eggs; 1 ½ pints West Australian bread crumbs, 1 breakfast cup West Australian flour, I teaspoon carbonate of soda, 1 teaspoon cream of tartar. Beat butter and sugar to cream, add eggs well beaten, add other ingredients, mix well, and boil six hours. Half quantities used, steamed five hours make a good pudding, sufficient for a family of six or eight

Geraldton Guardian (West Australia) December 8, 1928

And now, one more in keeping with our climate:

Australian Christmas Pudding.

1 ½ cups mixed fruit (chopped) such as prunes, if available, raisins, sultanas, currants; ¼ cup grated mixed nuts; 1 ½ cups whole meal bread crumbs or plain cake crumbs; 1 dessertspoon warmed honey; ½ cup orange and lemon juice.  Mix well and place in wetted mould. Take a packet of strawberry jelly crystals, pour over when almost set. Chill. When ready to turn out, place a cloth over the pudding and basin, then holding with both hands, plunge into a basin of very hot water for a second. The pudding will leave the basin without any trouble. Serve covered with custard, or mock cream and chopped nuts. Decorate with small sprigs of holly. If a larger pudding is required, double the quantity of ingredients.

Advocate (Burnie, Tasmania) November 17, 1945

And a similar idea, this time with the very Aussie inclusion of candied pineapple:

Australian Christmas Pudding.

Ingredients: 2 oz. plain chocolate or 1 dessertspoon cocoa, 2 ½ cups milk, 1 dessertspoon coffee essence or black coffee, ½  cup each of sugar, diced candied peel, stoned dates, prunes, muscatels, sultanas, drained cherries, preserved ginger, pineapple and ground almonds, 2

tablespoons brandy, 3 dessertspoons powdered gelatin, 1 cup cold water, ¼ pint cream, pinch of salt, hard sauce or whipped cream, chopped jelly*.

Method: Melt the chocolate over hot water or blend cocoa with a little hot water, add sugar and milk and heat to boiling point. Add prepared dates, prunes, peel, muscatels, sultanas, cherries, ginger, pineeapple, and simmer mixture for five minutes, then remove from heat. Moisten gelatine with cold water and dissolve over boiling water, stir into fruit mixture and add coffee, brandy and almonds. Stir occasionally till beginning to thicken, then add whipped cream. Pour into wet mould and leave till firmly set. Serve on glass dish, garnished with drained cherries, chopped Jelly, whipped cream, and top with a sprig of holly.

[Note to my American friends: this means ‘Jell-O’, not ‘jam’!]

Sunday Times (Perth, WA) of December 17, 1939.

And finally, the perfect idea - ice cream plum pudding!

Ice Cream Plum Pudding

Ingredients: ½ lb. drained-cherries, ½ lb. stoned chopped dates or prunes, ¼ lb chopped preserved figs, ½ lb seeded muscatels, ½ lb chopped preserved pineapple, 2 oz. itron peel, ¼ lb blanched chopped almonds or shelled walnuts, ½ cup brandy, ice cream mixture as chosen.

Method: Mix the sliced or chopped cherries, dates, figs, muscatels, pineapple, peel and nuts in basin. Add brandy, cover with plate and leave overnight. Prepare a rich ice cream mixture and freeze it to a mushy thickness, then combine with the chilled brandied fruits, and continue freezing until mixture is firm and smooth. Pack in ice and salt, or leave in refrigerator tray to mature for an hour or more before serving with wafer biscuits.

Sunday Times (Perth, WA) of December 17, 1939.

A Gingery Christmas.

The smell of sweet spices is the smell of Christmas, is it not? And surely one of its top notes is that of ginger? There is gingerbread, of course, and there are many recipes for it in Through the Ages with Gingerbread, plus quite a number more buried in blog posts that I have still not gotten around to cutting and pasting into the archive itself. There are numerous recipes for ginger beer, ginger puddings, and ginger biscuits too, in the cyber-pages here at The Old Foodie. I am, as you can guess, a ginger fan. And besides, my home state of Queensland is famous for its ginger, so why should I not promote it?

So, here in honour of both Christmas and the Sunshine State, I give you a couple of gingery ideas:

Christmas Ginger Cake.

Ingredients: 1 ½lb. of flour, ½lb. ground rice, ½lb. castor sugar, 1lb. treacle, ½lb. lard or margarine, ¼ lb. butter, 3 eggs, a little lemon essence, 2 heaped teaspoonfuls of ground ginger, 2 teaspoonfuls baking powder (heaped) , ½ teaspoonful carbonate of soda, I gill milk, a little salt. Mix well together; beat the butter, lard, and sugar together, add the beaten eggs, then the flour, rice, and salt. Mix well, add the baking powder and soda, and mix again. Now add the ginger and lemon essence. Make a well in the centre, pour in the treacle, beat well for 10 minutes, mixed with the warm milk. Bake in a paper lined tin for 2½ hours in a moderate oven. This cake is better if made a fortnight before Christmas.

The Queenslander (Brisbane, Qld) December 1, 1927

Ginger Wine.

Put seven pounds of Lisbon sugar into four galloons of spring water, boil them a quarter of an hour, and keep skimming all the time. When the liquor is cold, squeeze in the juice of two lemons, and then boil the peels with two ounces of ginger, in three pints of water, for an hour. When it is cold, put it all together into a barrel, with two spoonsful of yeast, a quarter of an ounce of isinglass beat very thin, and two pounds of jar raisins. Then close it up, let it stand seven weeks, then bottle it off.

Modern Domestic Cookery, and Useful Receipt Book (1847), by William Henderson.

The Inevitable Pudding.

I am keeping it simple today, my friends – it is a busy time of year, after all.  I am going to give you a couple of variations on the seemingly never-ending theme of Christmas Pudding.

 

The Country Gentleman’s Magazine (London 1868) had a section catering for the Country Gentlewoman. I don’t know why the Country Gentlewoman did not have her own magazine, but – thank goodness – puzzling over this question is beyond the scope of this blog. Here is one of its offerings:

A Baked Christmas Pudding.

This dish is but a variety of the above [a baked apple pudding]; the writer thinks, however, that it may be not unacceptable to those of our readers who are forbidden to eat pastry in any form. It may be simplified or enriched according to taste, but the present recipe will be found very good. Chop separately, and mix as for mincemeat, four ounces of stoned raisins and four of apples, and two of beef kidney suet; add three of currants, three of pounded sugar, one and a half of crusted ratafias, two of candied citron or orange-rind,-half a glass of brandy, half a glass of sherry, or any other good white wine, the juice of half a large lemon, and the grated rind of more than the half, a grain or two of salt, some grated nutmeg, and a small portion of pounded mace or of cloves. Put these ingredients smoothly into a small buttered tart-dish, and lay over them four ounces of fine, lightly-grated, bread crumbs, thoroughly mixed with three of pounded sugar, and the slightest pinch of salt. Should the pudding prove too sweet, less sugar must be added to the mince, as the crust will not be firm and crisp without a certain proportion of it. The top may be brushed with clarified butter before the sugar is sifted on. The directions given for that of the apple-pudding apply equally to this, and need not be repeated. Half an hour in a moderate oven will quite suffice to bake it, as it is small.

Observe.—The authoress has had excellent puddings of this kind made with summer fruit; those of cherries, of black currants, and of damsons were particularly good. When large plums are used for them they should be split, and a few of the kernels laid amongst them.

And here is a pudding containing mashed potato:

Cottage Christmas Pudding.

A pound and a quarter of flour, fourteen ounces of suet, a pound and a quarter of stoned raisins, four ounces of currants, five of sugar, a quarter-pound of potatoes smoothly mashed, half a nutmeg, a quarter-teaspoonful of ginger, the same of salt, and of cloves in powder; mix these ingredients thoroughly, add four well-beaten eggs with a quarter-pint of milk, tie the pudding in a well-floured cloth, and boil it for four hours.

Flour, one pound and a quarter; suet, 14 ounces; raisins stoned, 20 ounces; currants, 4 ounces; sugar, 5 ounces, potatoes, quarter of a pound; half a nutmeg; ginger, salt, cloves, quarter of a teaspoonful each; eggs, 4; milk, half a pint :— 4 hours.

Mrs. Hale's New Cook Book: A Practical System for Private Families in Town (1857),

by Sarah Josepha Buell Hale