“All you that to feasting and mirth are inclin’d,
Come here is good news for to pleasure your mind;
Old Christmas is come for to keep open house,
He scorns to be guilty of starving a mouse;
Then come, boys, and welcome for diet the chief,
Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minc’d pies and roast beef.
A long time together he hath been forgot,
They scarce could afford for to hang on the pot;
Such miserly sneaking in England hath been,
As by our forefathers ne’er us’d to be seen;
But now he’s returned you shall have in brief,
Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minc’d pies and roast beef.“
The last line forms the burden of every stanza. A few years later, in 1695, Poor Robin welcomes Christmas much in the same terms,—
“Now, thrice welcome, Christmas,
Which brings us good cheer,
Minc’d pies and plumb-porridge,
Good ale and strong beer;
With pig, goose, and capon,
The best that may be,
So well doth the weather
And our stomachs agree.”
Really, one may say with Terence, “jamdudum animus est in patinis,” and eating seems to be a happy invention, occupying a valuable portion of our existence. Old Tusser, long before, had recommended somewhat similar dishes for Christmas,—
“Brawn, pudding, and souse, and good mustard withal,
Beef, mutton, and pork, shred pies of the best,
Pig, veal, goose, and capon, and turkey well dressed;
Cheese, apples, and nuts, jolly carols to hear
As then in the country is counted good cheer.”
This was hearty and hospitable fare, fit for the fine old gentry of England; but Massinger talks of something more luxurious, hardly to be surpassed in our scientific days.
“Men may talk of country Christmasses,
Their thirty pound butter’d eggs, their pies of carps’ tongues,
Their pheasants drench’d with ambergris, the carcases
Of three fat wethers bruised for gravy to
Make sauce for a single peacock.”
The well-known minced or Christmas pie is of considerable antiquity, and many references are made to it in early writers. It is customary, in London, to introduce them at the lord-mayor’s feast, on the 9th of November, where many hundreds of them appear; but this is an irregularity that some archæological lord-mayor will, no doubt, by and bye, correct; at any rate they should be eaten under protest, or without prejudice, as lawyers say. They ought to be confined to the season of Christmas, and the practice of using up the remnant of the mince meat, even up to Easter, should be put a stop to by some of our ecclesiastical reformers. So much were they considered as connected with Christmas, that the puritans treated their use as a superstitious observance, and after the Restoration they almost served as a test of religious opinions. Bunyan, when in confinement and in distress for a comfortable meal, for some time refused to injure his morals by eating them when he might have done so. Misson, in the beginning of the last century, says they were made of neats’ tongues, chicken, eggs, sugar, currants, lemon and orange peel, with various spices.
The modern receipts are similar, and the less meat they contain the better. The following is a well-tried and much approved one, and has been handed down in the same family for generations: “A pound of beef suet, chopped fine; a pound of raisins, do. stoned; a pound of currants, cleaned dry; a pound of apples, chopped fine; two or three eggs; allspice beat very fine, and sugar to your taste; a little salt, and as much brandy and wine as you like:” a small piece of citron in each pie is an improvement, and the cover or case should be oblong, in imitation of the crache or manger where our Saviour was laid, the ingredients themselves having been said to have some reference to the offering of the wise men.
James the First’s dislike to the look of a naked sword took its rise from about the time of his birth; but Lord Feesimple, a cowardly character, in ‘Amends for Ladies,’ one of Field’s plays, attributes his lack of courage to an incident during that extensive chopping season, the necessary precursor of minced pies. “I being in the kitchen, in my lord my father’s house, the cook was making minc’d pies; so, sir, I standing by the dresser, there lay a heap of plums; here was he mincing; what did me? I, sir, being a notable little witty coxcomb, but popp’d my hand just under his chopping-knife, to snatch some raisins, and so was cut o’er the hand; and never since could I endure the sight of any edge tool.” There is a superstition that in as many different houses as you eat minced pies during Christmas, so many happy months will you have in the ensuing year; you have only therefore to go to a different house each day in the Christmas to ensure a happy twelvemonth, a simple receipt, if effectual. Something like this is mentioned in ‘Dives and Pauper,’ by W. de Worde, 1496, where the custom is reprobated of judging of the weather of the coming year by that of the days of Christmas. This was also prognosticated by the day of the week on which Christmas Day fell, and there are some old Christmas songs referring to it. In the ‘Golden Legend,’ of the same printer, is a more laudable prejudice, “That what persone, beynge in clene lyfe, desyre on thys daye a boone of God; as ferre as it is ryghtfull and good for hym; our lorde at reuerēce of thys blessid and hye feste of his Natiuite wol graūt it to hym.”