The Forgotten Menu
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11 recipes

Historic Christmas Recipes

Christmas recipes from three Christmases on record: a bishop’s household in 1289, the Cratchits’ goose in A Christmas Carol, and the trenches in 1914.

Six centuries of Christmas food, from an account roll, a novel and the trenches. In 1289 the household roll of Richard de Swinfield, Bishop of Hereford, lists herring, eels and salmon for Christmas Eve, then beef, pork, a boar, partridges, geese and thirteen fat does coming in for Christmas Day. It is a list of supplies, not a menu, and some of the meat was kept back: What Did a Medieval Bishop Eat at Christmas?

In A Christmas Carol of 1843, Dickens gives the Cratchits roast goose with sage and onion, apple sauce, mashed potatoes and a flaming plum pudding, then chestnuts and hot gin. It is fiction, and the cookbooks of the 1850s and 1860s give the dishes: What Did the Cratchits Eat for Christmas Dinner? In the trenches in 1914, soldiers’ letters tell of cigarettes, cigars, rum, wine and cake crossing no man’s land, and by December 26 plum puddings too (What Did the Soldiers Share in the Christmas Truce of 1914?).

What Did a Medieval Bishop Eat at Christmas?

What Did the Cratchits Eat for Christmas Dinner?

  • A brown glazed earthenware bowl heaped with fluffy mashed potatoes, the top left rough and flecked with black pepper, on a striped cream towel, with two table forks beside it on a wooden table.
    mashed potatoes

    Vegetables & Sides · 45 min total

    Mashed Potatoes (1854) 

    Alexis Soyer’s mashed potatoes from his 1854 cookbook for working families, beaten light with two forks and a little butter and milk, as served with the Cratchits’ Christmas goose.

  • A dark, domed plum pudding studded with fruit on a white plate, a sprig of holly with two red berries in the top, on a red cloth beside a jug of white sweet sauce and a spoon.
    the pudding

    Desserts & Sweets · 4 hr 40 min total

    Plum Pudding (1854) 

    Alexis Soyer’s 1854 Christmas plum pudding of raisins, currants, suet, sugar, peel, flour and crumbs, boiled four hours in a mold: a working family’s Christmas pudding, with flour in it like Mrs. Cratchit’s.

What Did the Soldiers Share in the Christmas Truce of 1914?

  • Twelve small soft white marzipan stars, hearts and rounds laid out on a parchment-lined baking sheet, with a small blue-and-white bowl of blanched almonds and a rolling pin.
    Marzipan

    Desserts & Sweets · 3 hr 40 min total

    Lübeck Marzipan (1858) 

    Henriette Davidis’s Lübeck marzipan: almonds ground with orange flower water, stirred with sugar over low heat, rolled and cut into small soft white shapes.

More recipes

  • Eleven small lidded mince pies of flaky pastry, each with a slit and a crust of coarse sugar, on a wire rack over a linen cloth, a twelfth broken open on a white plate to show currants, raisins and candied peel, beside an old muffin tin.
    excellent mince pies

    Desserts & Sweets · 2 hr total

    Mince Pies (1906) 

    Mrs Beeton’s mince pies from her 1906 Book of Household Management: suet, currant, raisin and apple mincemeat with candied peel and a little brandy, baked in puff pastry and dredged with sugar.

  • A domed mid-brown plum pudding studded with raisins and currants on a white china dish dusted with sugar, with blue rum flames around its base.
    plum-pudding

    Desserts & Sweets · 4 hr 35 min total

    Plum Pudding with Rum (1868) 

    Jules Gouffé’s plum pudding with rum, 1868: suet, raisins, currants, candied peel, breadcrumbs and apple, mixed with rum, boiled four hours in a mold and flamed with warm rum at the table.