Oxford Sausage.
Yule-dough, or dow, a kind of baby, or little image of paste, was formerly baked at Christmas, and presented by bakers to their customers, “in the same manner as the chandlers gave Christmas candles.” They are called yule cakes in the county of Durham. Anciently, “at Rome, on the vigil of the nativity, sweetmeats were presented to the fathers in the Vatican, and all kinds of little images (no doubt of paste) were to be found at the confectioners’ shops.” Mr. Brand, who mentions these usages, thinks, “there is the greatest probability that we have had from hence both our yule-doughs, plum-porridge, and mince-pies, the latter of which are still in common use at this season. The yule-dough has perhaps been intended for an image of the child Jesus, with the Virgin Mary:” he adds, “it is now, if I mistake not, pretty generally laid aside, or at most retained only by children.”
It is inquired by a writer in the “Gentleman’s Magazine,” 1783, “may not the minced pye, a compound of the choicest productions of the east, have in view the offerings made by the wise men, who came from afar to worship, bringing spices,” &c. These were also called shrid-pies.
Christmasse Day.
No matter for plomb-porridge, or shrid-pie
Or a whole oxe offered in sacrifice
To Comus, not to Christ, &c.
Sheppard’s Epigrams, 1651.
Mr. Brand, from a tract in his library printed about the time of queen Elizabeth or James I. observes, that they were likewise called “minched pies.”
According to Selden’s “Table Talk,” the coffin shape of our Christmas pies, is in imitation of the cratch, or manger wherein the infant Jesus was laid. The ingredients and shape of the Christmas pie is mentioned in a satire of 1656, against the puritans:—
Christ-mass? give me my beads: the word implies
A plot, by its ingredients, beef and pyes.
The cloyster’d steaks with salt and pepper lye
Like Nunnes with patches in a monastrie.
Prophaneness in a conclave? Nay, much more,
Idolatrie in crust!————
———— and bak’d by hanches, then
Serv’d up in coffins to unholy men;
Defil’d, with superstition, like the Gentiles
Of old, that worship’d onions, roots, and lentiles!