Origins of Christmas Food

The gingerbread house dates back to at least the early 1800s.

We all have favorite Christmas foods. Some are foods that we made with our mothers, used as tree decorations, or ate at the Christmas table in our own homes as we grew up. They include an array of ethnic recipes and well-loved hand-me-down dishes. In addition, we love the Christmas foods of storybooks, Dickens and history.

Mincemeat Pie

Mincemeat pies, which have been around since Medieval times, originally used leftover meat. From the Renaissance on, "minced meat" pies, or "mince pies," were supplemented with dried fruits, sugar and spices. In the mid-19th century, fruits and spices along with nuts, sugar and suet became the dominant ingredients, though meat was still part of some recipes, according to John Ayoto in "An A-Z of Food and Drink," cited on FoodTimeLine.org. At this time, the term "mincemeat" came to refer to the melange of fruits, spices and suet sometimes laced with an alcohol such as brandy that we now think of as mincemeat, the primary ingredients that we serve in pie crust as mincemeat pie and serve at Christmas.

Plum Pudding

Plum pudding, also known as Christmas pudding, descends from early-15th century England and was not originally a Christmas food. The original, plum pottage, was a soupy melange of chopped beef or mutton, onions, root vegetables and dried fruits. The word "plum" originally referred to a prune but later came to refer to any dried fruit. Gradually, meat was replaced by suet, and the vegetables, except for a lone traditional carrot, also disappeared, leaving dried fruits, some of which now would have included imported dried fruits. According to Alan Davidson in the "Oxford Companion to Food," also cited on FoodTimeLine.org, plum pudding was linked to Christmas in the 1670s but was often served as a first course, rather than as a dessert. The sweet plum pudding that we now associate with Christmas was first established in the 1800s.

Stollen

Related to fruitcake, panettone, king cake and babka, stollen is a German sweet bread that developed in the Medieval period. It is particularly associated with Dresden, says Alan Davidson in "The Oxford Companion to Food." A rich yeast bread that is studded with raisins, currants or another dried fruit and sometimes stuffed with marzipan, stollen is oblong, ridged down the middle and tapered at each end, a shape that Davidson says is supposed to symbolize the Christ child.

Gingerbread Houses

Gingerbread houses may have been inspired by the popular Grimm's fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel," in which the children eat from a fanciful house made of sweets. But some historians believe that gingerbread houses may have existed prior to the early 1800s when the Grimm brothers were publishing their stories, according to a 2001 article in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, quoted on FoodTimeLine.org. In 17th century Germany, only professional gingerbread bakers were legally allowed to bake gingerbread, except for Christmas and Easter, when anyone could bake it. As early as the 16th century, when master bakers belonged to guilds, they were making and decorating works of art made from gingerbread. Later, German immigrants brought the tradition of baking and building gingerbread houses to America with them.

Fruitcake

The fruitcake as we know it today originated in the Middle Ages, according to Alan Davidson in "The Oxford Companion to Food," though some cakes made with dried fruit, honey and nuts are older. The rich, heavy version of fruitcake with British roots that we now know was a decadent luxury would have become available only after dried fruits became available in in the 13th century. One such cake was Scottish black bun. In the early 18th century, bride cakes and plumb cakes, which developed from enriched bread recipes, became common at celebrations. Early fruitcake recipes called for the eggs to be beaten for a half an hour, and the butter was dipped in rosewater.

References

• FoodTimeLine.org: Christmas Foods