Book Review/A Christmas Dinner
A Christmas Dinner BILL DUNCAN “Would that Christmas lasted a whole year through (as it ought).” –Charles Dickens Who better could introduce “A Christmas Dinner” by Charles Dickens than Peter Ackroyd, the book critic for the London Times and without a doubt the most knowledgeable expert on the life of Charles Dickens. In 1990, Ackroyd wrote the 1,140 definitive biography of Dickens, simply called “Dickens.” In this just released book, Ackroyd explains that the original “A Christmas Dinner,” first appeared in December 1835 in a London periodical. It was republished a year later as one of the “Sketches of Boz.” Boz was the pseudonym Dickens used in his early career. He wrote this particular story when he was 23 years old, but as Ackroyd writes, he already showed a brilliant writing style, a style that Ackroyd says in his biography comes from Dickens’ “memories of Christmas at home.” Dickens’ original story is reprinted in this unique book in which Alice Ross, a writer and culinary historian, traces the food choices and authentic recipes of the era in which Dickens wrote. All of the recipes included have been tested in her 19th century kitchen that is a working museum in her Long Island, N.Y. home. Not only are the recipes authentic, but also Sharon Stein, the illustrator, meticulously reproduced details of the early 19th century décor and dress for the oil paintings she created for the book, Ross not only ferreted out the recipes for a Christmas dinner, but also wrote an essay on the holiday celebration saying the earliest celebrations in Britain had roots in Druidic practices of the mid-winter lengthening day. “Their icons were the Yule log, the boar’s head, holly, ivy and mistletoe,” she says, and adds that feasting was an important part of the celebration. She touches on the Puritan era in which any festive religious display and pageantry was banned. Even with the return of some of the festivities, Christmas was still not a joyful time. She traces the change to a “young and still largely unknown English journalist named Charles Dickens,” and his first holiday sketch, “A Christmas Dinner,” for largely restoring the Christmas spirit. The story, she said, was based on “remembered Christmas dinners at the home of his grandparents, including to elaborate menus that included Christmas pudding, mince pies and holiday punch.” The young Queen Victoria of England, deeply in love with her German prince husband, Albert, who also remembered family Christmas feasts and other holiday events in Germany, imported to her palace all the elements of Prince Albert’s childhood Christmas celebration including Christmas stockings, the Christmas tree, cakes and cookies and candies. “While we can now see all around us Queen Victoria’s transplanted Christmas decorations, it was Dickens’ insistence on traditional celebratory English foods at Christmastime that has prevailed.” Dickens married Catherine Hogarth, a Scottish bride from Edinburgh who was an excellent cook. Many of the recipes are Catherine’s. Ross writes, “Their table surely sighed happily under the weight of soups, oysters galore, fish, turkey, roasted mutton and beef all in rich sauces, numerous side dishes, roll, butter and jam, desserts, toasted cheeses and salad. All this food went down easily with brandy punch at the start, ales and wines during the meal and sherry and port at the end.” Ross discovered that Catherine Dickens used a pen name to write a cookbook entitled, “Lady Clutterbuck’s What Shall We Have for dinner?” A few of the dishes in Ross’ book, including Cock-A-Leekie Soup, come from that cookbook. Ross said that Dickens’ mention of making turkey as the highlight of the Christmas dinner came about because the turkey “had long been transplanted from the Americas and raised in England. “The size of the turkey assured its centerpiece role in a festive holiday meal. Dickens famous, “A Christmas Carol,” was written much later in his career and in that story, the Cratchett family dined on goose instead of turkey “likely,” Ross said, “because of the tight budget than with change of custom.” The research that went into this book is outstanding, including Ross’ listing of a full menu for both Christmas Eve dinners and Christmas Day dinners. This is a wonderful book to add to any Christmas book collection or cookbook selection. It would be a fun book for a family to follow the recipes of Dickens’ “A Christmas Dinner.” (Bill Duncan can be reached at bduncan@nrtoday.com or by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470)
A Story by Charles Dickens
Recipes by Alice Ross
Illustrations by Sharon Stein
Red Rock Press
Hardcover $24.95
The News-Review
From the recipes discovered by Alice Ross in her research for “A Christmas Dinner.”
Cock-A-Leekie Soup was one of Catherine Dickens’ favorite dishes. It seems to have originated in her native city of Edinburgh, Scotland. The soup’s curious name is thought to have come from the praftice of sending the loser of a cock fight to the soup pot, along with leeks and prunes. The soup is a holiday tradition and is sometimes called “Christmas Cock-A-Leekie.” It was a favorite of novelist Sir Walter Scott.
These days, according to Ross, the soup is enriched with barley or potato. This is Catherine Dickens’ own recipe:
Make a stock of six or eight pounds of beef, seasoned as for brown soup, and when cold skim off the fat. Wash well a bunch and a half of leeks and cut them in pieces of an inch long. Put on the stock with two-thirds of the leeks and a good-sized fowl and boil for one hour. Take out the fowl, skin it, and cut it into small pieces, return it to the soup with the other third of leeks and boil for another hour. If prunes be liked, throw in a quarter of a pound half an hour before serving. Some cooks thicken the soup with fine oatmeal, but if the leeks be tender, they boil away sufficiently to make the soup of a proper thickness and consistency without his addition.