An Edwardian Christmas Dinner Menu (with Amber Pudding)

My 1900 edition of Mrs Beeton's Family Cookery & Household Management does not provide any specific menu designed especially for Christmas, but Mrs Beeton does mention traditional Christmas dinner fare in her December menus for twelve, ten or eight persons.

She would have you prepare and serve for ten persons "Gravy Soup" as an entrée, followed by Brill with a Shrimp Sauce.  After a suitable interval,  Scalloped Oysters would be served with Mutton Cutlets.  The centrepiece course consists of Roast Turkey and Ham, accompanied by potatoes and stewed celery.  A Russian Salad would then clear the palate before a dessert course of Plum Pudding and Maraschino Jelly.

Personally, I am more taken with one of her December Dinners for "Six to Twelve Persons" where the perennial first course of soup is Oyster Soup, followed by Turbot with Tartare Sauce.  A Vol-au-Vent of Chicken follows, then a Sirloin of Beef accompanied by potatoes and cabbage.  I would give the next course of "Partridges" a miss (you can go a bit overboard at Christmas) but would willingly tuck into the recommended dessert of Amber Pudding (I'll get to this one later) and Mince Pies.

In another menu for the same number of guests, Mrs Beeton proposes Stewed Pigeons as the second entrée after which a Saddle of Mutton is to be served with the ubiquitous potatoes and stewed celery.  A "Salad" is to follow, then an incredibly rich dessert course of Plum Pudding and Trifle.  I suggest serving only one of these, as clothes may not fit after scoffing both of these extremely rich and sweetened dishes at the one sitting.

Now to the recipe for Amber Pudding, which to me represents a fine and fitting recipe for a Christmas dessert with its glace cherries, apples and puff pastry:

Amber Pudding

Ingredients: (to fill a large pie dish)

6 apples                                      1 lemon
3 eggs, separated                       3 oz. sugar
a little caster sugar                     2 oz. butter
a few glace cherries                   short or puff pastry

Peel and core the apples and stew them with the rind and juice of the lemon and the sugar until reduced to a pulp.  Grease the bottom of the pie dish and line it half way down with pastry.  Pass the apple marmalade through a sieve, add to it the yolks of the eggs.  After mixing thoroughly, turn the mixture into the dish and bake for 15 minutes. 

Beat the whites of the eggs until they are stiff, adding as much caster sugar as they will take up.  Put this mixture on top of the baked pudding, decorate with the cherries and place into a moderate oven to bring to a bright golden colour.  This dish can of course be prepared ahead of time and served cold.

Edwardian cookery was the last hurrah of British cuisine as after WWI, when many soldiers had been buried on the battlefields, estates were sold off by the aristocracy and women went into service in reduced numbers. As a consequence, the wealthy went to live in smaller homes which warranted only one cook and lavish, multi-course, labour intensive meals were no longer served.

Aristocrats who formerly would never have set foot in a kitchen, except to deliver instructions to the cook or housekeeper, acquired at least a modicum of kitchen knowledge out of necessity.  Lady Agnes Jekyll published Kitchen Essays in 1922 where she describes meals for one in pieces such as the one entitled "Tray Food".  A supreme hostess, (whose first dinner party hosted Ruskin, Burne-Jones and Browning) Lady Agnes espouses in her delightfully written book that at Sunday suppers, 'it often matters less what is on the table than what is on the chairs...and a "loaf of bread, a jug of wine" might be found entirely adequate provision' at such occasions.  Such it was that simple food replaced heavy opulence and home entertaining changed forever.

The Downstairs Cook

There had always been mystery surrounding my maternal grandmother. Born in London, she had arrived in Sydney in 1910 and worked as a governess before marrying a stockman and settling on a cattle property near Warialda in northern New South Wales, or so the family legend held.  She died in 1955, before I was born, so I never knew her - only of her reputation as a rather formidable, matriarchal woman who eventually left her husband and moved to the nearby town of Inverell so their two children could attend school.  Always puzzled by her ownership of a 1900 edition of Mrs Beeton's Household Management (now passed to me) as it was not clear why a governess would need to refer to such a publication, this mystery was finally cleared after I searched the online 1901 UK census records and found "Edith Irwin" aged 19, living in a residence in Streatham, London where she was listed as "Cook, domestic."

My interest piqued, I searched the 1891 census records, but to no avail.  There was no record of her at all.  My mother then gave me the clue, shortly before she died, that unlocked Edith's origins; she was an orphan "who lived with an aunt."  No "aunt" was located by me, but when I typed the word "orphanage" into the search engine, presto! There she was - a resident of the St.Pancras Foundling Hospital, along with many other girls aged from eight to 14.

I had found her, but I needed to know more - what was life like for a young orphan girl in late Victorian London?  When and how did she arrived at the Foundling Hospital?  And were there any records relating to her parents - whose names she knew, as they appeared on her marriage certificate.  The items I inherited from her - an exquisite crystal perfume bottle with an elaborate silver cap, a silver dressing table set with a glorious design of cherubic angels had always fascinated me; she was clearly a woman who loved beauty and who could afford to buy such things, despite her humble station.  The fact she had been born into a situation where she sat on the bottom rung of society, yet managed to acquire items of beauty, apparent self-sufficiency and self-reliance only made me more curious and determined to discover more about her and the eras in which she lived - the late Victorian and the Edwardian, the end of which coincided with her embarking upon the ship which would bring her to her new home, and new era of her own, in Australia.

My hunger led me to commence a fabulous journey of discovery into the period of my grandmother's life which coincided with the elegant and glittering fin de siecle.  Guided also by Mrs Beeton and her household bible full of recipes, this is the story of a culinary journey as well, informed by annotations made by my grandmother herself in that definitive tome.  Please read on to discover a collection of the best tried and tested recipes from Mrs Beeton and other cooks of the time....