Everyone has family traditions when it comes to food around Thanksgiving and Christmas. But if you really want to take your dinner guests back in time—and create a new tradition of your own—you might consider some ideas and recipes from those who dined in luxury ages ago.
This was an era of “lavish banquet tables set with snowy white linen tablecloths, delicate china, and sparkling crystal glasses,” Ms. Diamond writes. For many families, Thanksgiving and Christmas marked “the most carefully planned meals of the year.”
Edible History
Ms. Diamond became fascinated with the time period while working on one of her first books, “The Thousand Dollar Dinner,” which told the story of an annual culinary competition in the mid-1800s that featured an incredible 12-hour, 17-course feast.“I became engrossed in food history, taking those recipes and trying them,” she said. “I think when you research something and live it, eat it, and breathe it, you become an expert in that area.”
Ms. Diamond enjoys the research aspect as much as the recipe development process.
“I often find a recipe to start with from a historical or manuscript cookbook and then see how it has evolved over time,” she said. She’s done this with recipes such as charlotte russe, a luscious, chilled dessert of vanilla Bavarian cream set in a mold lined with ladyfingers, originally invented by a French chef at the beginning of the 19th century. It became a staple during the Gilded Age, when recipes encouraged the use of boxed gelatin, an innovation at the time. However, other recipes Ms. Diamond leaves to history. She wasn’t going to research the braised pigeon on that thousand-dollar menu!
“Reconstructing older recipes requires tweaking ingredients and measurements, as many are now different today,” Ms. Diamond said. For example, eggs were smaller then. Baking powder and other rising agents weren’t common until the mid-1800s. Measurements often weren’t precise, calling for quantities such as “a wineglass” or “a dessertspoon.”
She decided to share her culinary knowledge and great-tasting recipes.
“I thought, ‘Why not put them in a cookbook?’” she said.
Elaborate Feasts
This culinary time machine starts on a ride in a luxurious Pullman dining car, where a meal with a choice of entrees including lobster, roast beef, lamb, or turkey cost $1 ($32 today). The cookbook then takes you from summer picnics to winter holidays.For Thanksgiving, roast turkey—referred to as “His Birdship” in a 1890 magazine—was traditional, but cooked in a different manner.
“The turkey recipe is interesting because you take canned tomatoes and make a glaze for the turkey,” Ms. Diamond said. The canning process had been newly developed, so for the first time, people could have tomatoes all year. The earliest recipe that Ms. Diamond found was in an 1885 magazine, and she thinks that the method was more popular in the North.
“The tomatoes give the turkey an extra level of flavor and moisture, especially since they are mixed with butter and spices such as sage and nutmeg,” she said. “The result is turkey with just a hint of tomato sweetness, not overpowering.”
As a bonus, the tomatoes add a festive pop of color.
Other courses often included oysters, other seafood, and roast beef. Instead of the marshmallow-topped sweet potato casserole that we know, sweet potato croquettes were traditional.
“Croquettes were very popular during the Gilded Age, found throughout cookbooks from the era and at large catered events such as weddings and receptions,” Ms. Diamond said. “They are very flavorful, soft, and juicy on the inside, but [with] a crisp outer coating.”
For dessert, there was pumpkin pie, but pumpkin and other squashes were also popular ingredients for puddings, tarts, fritters, and cakes. Some recipes, such as pumpkin Indian pudding and pumpkin loaf (similar to Boston brown bread) substituted cornmeal for flour.
And for Christmas, if visions of sugar plums dance in your head, why not make them? There’s a recipe for that as well.
The highlight of a Christmas feast was plum pudding (which, curiously, doesn’t include plums). Ms. Diamond calls this dessert “the epitome of the Gilded Age,” because there was a great tradition that went with the preparation—well, more like a fun superstition.
Beyond the Menu
But if you’re going to create your own historical holiday feast, it’s important to consider more than the menu. Reflect the era’s traditions while adding some of your own history.“If you have heirloom dishes that have been handed down, please don’t hide them in a cabinet. Use them—that’s what your ancestors would want,” Ms. Diamond said.
Back in the day, many decorations were provided by nature—so skip the stores and just step outside.
Thanksgiving meant harvest-themed decor such as leaves, chrysanthemums, and other seasonal flowers, and dried grasses and grains. For Christmas, “use holly branches, pine cones, greenery—that’s what they did in the Gilded Age,” Ms. Diamond said. Other decorations were often edible, including a colorful centerpiece of grapes, oranges, and apples piled in a tall bowl or on a silver platter. Even the Christmas tree was decorated with a variety of fruits and candies.
The festivities didn’t end with Christmas, as January 6 (Epiphany, then often known as “Twelfth Night”) was a day to traditionally host parties—“They had a lot of parlor games and activities,” Ms. Diamond said.
One dessert tradition included a “Twelfth Night Cake,” which was similar to a pound cake and included fruits, nuts, and three items designed to get the party started. Baked into the cake were one dried bean, one dried black-eyed pea, and one clove. Whoever got the bean was the king for the evening; the pea designated the queen; and the lucky recipient of the clove became the jester. The king and queen were crowned and shared the first dance of the evening. Then, let the games begin!
Great things take time and thought, and in this case, the effort that you put into your holiday celebrations might create a new family tradition that will last for generations.
