A Very Merry Christmas to you all, my friends!
My own Christmas wish (well, one of them anyway) is
that I hope to continue to meet with you here every weekday in 2015. The tenth
anniversary of this blog will be on October 31st, and I certainly
hope you are still with me then, and beyond.
On this Christmas Day I have for you a short piece
from The Queenslander (Brisbane, Qld)
of 15 Dec 1900.
A
CHRISTMAS MENU
FOR
QUEENSLAND HOMES.
By
“Delphia.”
You must not imagine,
dear girls, that the following menu is one that recommends itself to sojourners
in a tropical climate, or to such melting moments as dwellers in Queensland
experience on the Nativity festival day of the year, the 25th
December. For weeks and weeks before that date our colonial thermometers rise
higher and higher, and it is just possible may reach a record rise on the day
of days. Common-sense gastronomers would initiate a menu adapted to the climate
– cold turkeys, game, fowls in aspic, moulded calf’s head, cold chicken pie and
salad, apple snow, jellies, and a dozen other lovely cold dishes, beautiful to
look at and delicious to eat. All very well, wise gourmond; but how are these
viands to be made to congeal with the thermometer in the nineties and no ice
chests, and where, in far-way bush homes, can slabs of ice be manufactured? But
even if a Christmas menu upon a frozen plan were feasible, it is doubtful if it
would usurp in place of the traditional fare upon which our ancestors feasted,
and which, while you are reading these lines, our sisters and brothers in Great
Britain are busily preparing, and anticipate eating as of yore. Let us make the
most of what we have, and be thankful that we have the good old roast of beef,
the plump turkey, and delicious fruits of our own colony, and many also from
other climes. These are within our reach, and only need the culinary art which
most of our housewives possess to develop a grand festival banquet such as will
do honour to old Father Christmas, transplanted to a sultry clime. So we must
make our Christmas menu of ingredients which come well within the scope of
every colonial home, and sufficiently substantial to meet the approval of our
hearty bushmen and bushwomen.
MENU
FOR CHRISTMAS DAY.
1st
COURSE:
Giblet
Soup.
-
2nd
COURSE:
Poultry.
Roast
Turkey and bread sauce.
Roast
Ducks, or boiled fowls.
Meats.
Piece
de resistance – Roast Beef of Old England (Sirloin)
Boiled
Ham.
Sucking-pig
and Apple Sauce.
SWEETS.
Christmas
Plum Pudding. Boiled Custards.
Apricot
Tart. Whipped Cream.
Mince
Pies.
Fruit
Salad.
Cheese
Straws.
Vegetables. – As many
as can be procured. Cobs of young sweet corn
are delicious. They
must be green, and should be boiled in salted water for twenty minutes, and
served like asparagus.
Several recipes
appropriate for the season were published in the same edition of the paper: here
is my choice for you today:-
Christmas Cake (Kingswood Cookery Book.)
1 ¼ lb. flour, 1 lb. brown sugar, 2 lb.
currants, one gill brandy, 1 lb. sultanas, 1 lb. butter, ten eggs, ½ lb. mixed
peel.
Sift the flour, clean the fruit, and mix
together; beat the butter and sugar together to a cream; add the eggs, two at a
time, not previously beaten, then the brandy slowly; add the fruit and flour,
and last of all the peel; line a cake-tin with paper, but do not grease it;
pour in the mixture, and bake three or four hours.
May I also remind you,
in case you missed it, of the list of Christmas menus previously featured
here?:
ChristmasMenus from the Past (1507-1931).
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