by Sandra Merville Hart

Christmas dinner is a big meal at our house. We roast a turkey large enough to feed the family and provide leftovers for pot pies and sandwiches. Side dishes are plentiful with everyone’s holiday favorites with pie for dessert—both pumpkin and chocolate. There are plenty of Christmas cookies too.

I thought this was a big meal until I read suggestions for Christmas dinner in an 1870s cookbook.

Here are the meats:

Clam soup, baked fish, Holland sauce;

Roast turkey with oyster dressing and celery or oyster sauce, roast duck with onion sauce, broiled quail, chicken pie

There were plenty of side-dishes:

Baked potatoes in jackets, sweet potatoes, baked squash, stewed carrots, turnips, canned corn, southern cabbage, tomatoes, canned pease (peas);

Graham bread, rolls; plum jelly, crabapple jelly;

Salmon salad or herring salad, pickled cabbage, mangoes, French or Spanish pickles, Chili sauce, gooseberry catsup;

Beets, sweet pickled grapes, and spiced nutmeg melon

There were lots of dessert choices:

Christmas plum pudding with sauce, Charlotte Russe;

Pies—mince, peach, and coconut;

Cakes—citron, White Mountain, pound, Neapolitan, and French loaf;

Cookies—peppernuts, ladyfingers, centennial drops, almond or hickory nut macaroons;

Candy—coconut caramels, chocolate drops;

And even ice cream!—orange or pineapple

Beverage choices were coffee, tea, and Vienna chocolate.

If large families (grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins) prepared even a third of these dishes, they undoubtedly had one thing in common with us—leftovers!

Sources

Compiled from Original Recipes. Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping, Applewood Books, 1877.