Christmas Miscellany
Page 9
Holly was the more important of the two plants. It was supposed to protect a home from lightning, and so was often planted outside the front door. And it had even more miraculous powers; its red berries were able to detect evil and so the holly could offer protection against witches. Medieval men also believed that it had powers like those purported to be possessed by certain deodorant sprays today; carrying the leaves or berries about his person supposedly made a young man irresistible to the ladies.
And of course, in the carol “The Holly and the Ivy,” the point is made none-too-subtly that the plant that represents the male is the most important! However, there were a number of carols written in the fifteenth century that had a different emphasis, although the ivy still often came off the worst. Nay, Ivy, nay it shall not be, indeed, Let Holly have the mastery, as the manner is. Holly stand in the hall, fair to behold; Ivy stand without the door, she is bitterly cold:
Nay, Iuy, nay, hyt shal not
be, iwys;
Let holy hafe the maystry, as
the maner ys.
Holy stond in the hall, fayre
to behold;
Iuy stond without the dore;
she ys ful sore a-cold.
Holy and hys mery men,
they dawnsyn and they syng;
Iuy and hur maydenys, they
wepyn and they wryng.
Iuy hath a kybe, she kaght yt
with the colde;
So mot they all haf ae that
with Ivy hold.
Holy hat berys as rede as anyrose;
The foster, the hunters kepe
hem fro the doos.
Iuy hath berys as blake as any
slo;
Ther com the oule and ete hym
as she goo.
Holy hath byrdys, a ful fayre
flok,
The nyghtyngale, the
poppynguy, the gayntyl
lauyrok.
Gode Iuy, what byrdys ast
thou?
Non but the howlat, the kreye,
“How, how!”
Holly and his merry men, they dance and they sing;
Ivy and her maidens, they weep and they wring [their hands].
Ivy has a chilblain, she caught
it with the cold;
So may they all have always,
that with Ivy hold.
Holly has berries as red as any rose;
The forester, the hunters keep them from the does.
Ivy has berries as black as any sloe;
There came the owl and ate them as she goes.
Holly has birds, a full fair flock;
The nightingale, the green woodpecker, the gentle lark.
Good Ivy, what birds have you?
None but the owlet that cries
“Hoo, hoo.”
Secular carols like this one would have been accompanied by dancing, with the men and women facing each other as they sang the parts of the holly and the ivy. As can be seen in the example, the lyrics emphasized the difference between the sexes.
Being the less popular of the two plants, ivy was normally left outside, used only to decorate the outside of the house, while boughs of holly decked the halls inside. Ivy being cast in the role of the female may date back to Roman times and the cult of Bacchus, the god of wine and drunkenness. Bacchus was attended by a fanatical band of women called the Bacchae who, after consuming a concoction made from the juice of crushed ivy leaves and toxic toadstools, would go on an intoxicated rampage, while the god himself wore a crown of ivy leaves. Ivy was also associated with death, due to the fact that it can cling to anything as it grows and is often seen covering tombstones in graveyards.
Did you know . . .?
The wood of the holly tree is traditionally used to make white chess pieces, while garlands of ivy appeared on the first-ever Christmas card, commissioned by Sir Henry Cole in 1843, and drawn by J. C. Horsley.
But it wasn’t all bad. Ivy also had the ability to deter witches, and a piece of ivy wood placed in a glass of wine would supposedly filter out poison. Also, the ivy growing up the side of your house could predict the future. As long as the plant thrived, all would be well. However, if the ivy withered and died, disaster was due to befall the household.
WHAT IS MULLED WINE?
There’s nothing quite like a little of your favorite tipple to warm your cockles, and when you’ve been out in the cold of a December night nothing warms the cockles quite like a glass of mulled wine.
Mulled wine has a long history, being lauded in Europe since at least the fifth century ad, and appearing in various forms in cook books from the sixteenth century onwards. To “mull” means “to heat and spice,” although the origin of the word is uncertain. There is a Middle English word, mollen, which means “to moisten” or “crumble,” but how this might connect with heating and spicing It’s not just wine that can be mulled, of course. Other traditional mulling recipes include those for mead, cider, and beer. Mulled wine and mulled beer used to be heated by plunging a red hot poker from the fire into it. It is worth remembering that the “mull” should never be allowed to get too hot and should most definitely never boil, otherwise the flavor will be spoiled and, worse than that, the alcohol will evaporate.
In Medieval times, people enjoyed a mulled drink called Ypocras, Hipocris, or Hippocras. It was named after the Greek physician Hippocrates, dubbed the “Father of Medicine,” who was supposed to have devised the first recipe for it.
During the Middle Ages, Hippocrates had an almost mythical reputation for being able to heal—more magic and mysticism than medicine. As a consequence, Ypocras itself was generally accepted as being some kind of magical elixir for maintaining good health in general, with doctors recommending that it be enjoyed at the end of a meal as an aid to digestion.
Ypocras, and other drinks like it, were believed to be particularly good for keeping away all manner of ills throughout the cold winter months. There is probably some truth in this, for at the things up isn’t clear. time it was certainly safer to drink the wine than the water. The practice of heating the drink would have helped to kill many of the unpleasant microbes merrily creating their own bit of culture within the wine. And wine did have a tendency to go bad: adding spices and honey would have made it palatable again.
The following is a modern take on the recipe for making this popular Medieval drink:
Ypocras
1 bottle of sweet red or white wine
1 to 2 cups of honey
1 tbs each of ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, white pepper, cloves, nutmeg, and caraway seeds
A cheesecloth
Bring the wine and honey close to a boil in a pan, skimming off the scum as it rises to the surface. Taste the concoction and add more honey to sweeten, if desired. Take off the heat and stir in the spices. Leave it to sit for 24 hours, while covered.
During this time the spices form a thick residue at the bottom of the pan. Now, using a ladle, decant the wine into a second container, straining it through 2 to 3 layers of cheesecloth, while trying to leave as much of the spice residue in the pan as possible. Store for 1 month before serving—the older it is, the better it tastes!
By the 1500s, recipes began to appear in cookbooks for mulling Clarrey (also spelt “clarree” or “claree”), another drink made using wine, honey, and spices. Both Clarrey and Ypocras are mentioned by the fourteenth-century poet Geoffrey Chaucer. From The Merchant’s Tale we get the following rhyming couplet:
He drynketh ypocras, clarree, and vernage
Of spices hot, to increase his courage.
The name comes from the Latin vinum claratum, meaning “clarified wine,” and it lives on today as “claret,” which is a dry red wine. The original Clarrey, however, can be made with either red or white wine, as it is in this particular recipe.
Clarrey
1 bottle of inexpensive, sweet white wine
1 to 2 cups of honey
1 tbs each of cinnamon, galingale (or you c
ould
substitute ginger), and cardamom
1 tsp of white pepper
A cheesecloth
Bring the wine and honey close to a boil, then reduce the heat and skim off the scum as it rises. Taste and add honey for sweetness as required. Remove from the heat, stir in all of the spices, and then cover and allow to sit for 24 hours. As with the Ypocras, after this time you will need to use a ladle to transfer the liquid into another container, passing it through a strainer lined with 2 to 3 layers of cheesecloth to remove the spices. Again, leave behind as much as possible of the spice residue that will have formed in the bottom of the pot. Bottle it and store for 1 month before serving. A good Clarrey is one that has been aged for a year or even longer.
Bishop’s punch—once called “bischopswyn”—is a traditional Christmas drink associated with Ol’ Saint Nick. In countries where the feast day of Saint Nicholas is observed on December 6, such as in the Netherlands, revelers toast the original Father Christmas with it. If you fancy doing the same, try this recipe.
Bishop’s Wine
1 bottle of red wine
1 cinnamon stick
Sugar to taste
1 orange stuck with cloves
The peel of 1 lemon
Place the clove-stuck orange in a large pan; add the red wine and leave to steep for half a day. During this time the wine will take on the flavors of the orange and cloves. Then you need to add the other ingredients together and simply warm the whole lot through half an hour before serving.
Popular in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Estonia, and drunk during Advent, Glögg is the Scandinavian form of mulled wine. Made from red wine, spices, and sugar, it can also have stronger spirits such as brandy, akvavit, or vodka added to it. It is served with raisins, almonds, and gingerbread biscuits.
Glögg can be made as a non-alcoholic drink, either by boiling it to evaporate the alcohol or by replacing the wine with blackcurrant juice. However, in the recipe presented here, the alcohol remains very much intact.
Glögg
1 bottle of red wine
25 g/1 oz. dried orange zest
25 g/1 oz. cinnamon sticks
20 cardamom seeds
12 cloves
200 g/8 oz. blanched almonds
200 g/8 oz. raisins
225 g/½ lb. brown sugar
70 ml/2½ fl. oz. brandy
A cheesecloth
Bring the wine close to a boil in a pot. Put the orange, cinnamon, cardamom, and cloves in the cheesecloth, tie it into a bundle and boil it in the pot for 15 minutes. Add the almonds and raisins, and cook for another 15 minutes, before removing the pan from the heat. Add the brown sugar and brandy, and stir them in. Then remove the spice bundle. Serve hot.
WHY ARE SPROUTS EATEN WITH CHRISTMAS DINNER?
Picture the scene. You sit down to dinner on Christmas Day, looking forward to tucking into turkey with all the trimmings; your plate is piled high with roast potatoes, parsnips, sausages wrapped in bacon, all smothered with gravy; and then the lurid green balls of bitterness move into view. Brussels sprouts.
Children hate them, as do most adults, and yet you have to have them as part of your otherwise utterly delicious Christmas dinner. And why? Because they’re traditional! And besides, you’ve no doubt been told that they’re good for you too.
Did you know ...?
According to one survey carried out in 2002, brussels sprouts were the most hated vegetable in England. But whose fault is it that you have to sit through the most magnificent meal of the year dreading the fact that at some point you’re going to have to pop one of those malodorous mini-cabbages into your mouth?
Brussels sprouts are unusual in that they are one of the few vegetables to have originated in northern Europe. They are members of the Brassica family (which also includes cabbages, cauliflowers, broccoli, and kale), cultivated first from the wild cabbage. They also just happen to come into season during the winter and are supposedly best harvested later on in the season, after they have suffered a few sharp frosts. In times gone by, the only fresh vegetables you could eat during the winter were those which were in season at that time of year, and sprouts fitted the bill at Christmastime.
But what has Brussels, capital of Belgium and the European Union, got to do with sprouts? Well, the first written reference to brussels sprouts comes from 1587. They became known as brussels sprouts because it is believed that they were widely cultivated in that part of Belgium in the sixteenth century.
When it comes to cooking them, it is common practice to cut them with a cross on their base. Most cooks who carry out this practice, before dropping the sprouts into boiling water, will tell you they do so to ensure that the inside will cook at the same rate as the outside. However, current culinary thinking has it that crossing the sprout in this way results in a loss of flavor. However, there is another reason why they are crossed, and that, like so many Christmas traditions, is based on good old-fashioned paranoid superstition.
It’s supposed to keep the Devil out (but as far as this writer’s concerned, the Devil’s welcome to them). If you’ve ever wondered why sprouts are so blighted with “a powerful smell of drains,” as the Victorians euphemistically put it, it’s all down to chemistry.
During cooking, sprouts release sulphuric compounds which have that all-too-familiar and none-too-pleasant smell of rotten eggs. However, they can smell even worse after they’ve been eaten! These same chemical compounds react with bacteria in the gut to produce hydrogen sulphide, which is the constituent ingredient of stink bombs.
Other than that rather nasty aromatic side effect, it’s no wonder that children don’t like sprouts. Your sensitivity to tastes tends to decrease as you get older and, as a result, sprouts really are more distasteful to children than they are to adults. There’s a perfectly acceptable scientific reason why the little green devils taste so bad: their bitter taste is a chemical defense evolved by the Brassica oleracea to stop insects from attacking it. So yes, sprouts are traditional—having arisen out of a traditional necessity to eat during the cold winter months—and what’s more, they’re good for you too.
Brussels sprouts, like cabbages, are members of the cruciferous family of vegetables, which are a good source of the antioxidant vitamins A and C, potassium and iron. They also contain something called sinigrin, which may, according to some sources, help to prevent bowel cancer. Good news for sprout farmers and those keen on keeping healthy, but bad news for anyone who doesn’t like eating their greens, as to gain their full benefit you have to eat about 10 oz. (280 g) of sprouts a day.
Did you know . . .?
In 2007, gastro-genius Heston Blumenthal created a Christmas meal like no other for six celebrity diners: actor Richard E. Grant, comedians Rob Brydon, Sue Perkins and Dara O’Briain, journalist Kirsty Wark, and broadcaster Terry Wogan. The meal went as follows:
Mulled wine Hot on one side of the glass, cold on the other
Edible baubles Made of blown sugar, filled with smoked salmon mousse
Gold, frankincense, and myrrh Langoustine, onion, and vermouth stock cubes, wrapped in edible gold leaf and dissolved in frankincense water, served with a carved myrrh-wood spoon
Babe in a manger Communion wafer sprayed with the aroma of freshly washed baby Flaming whiskey sorbet Scented with the perfume of a wood-paneled room, complete with roaring fire and leather armchair
Hand-reared roast goose Goose fed on apple powder, Paxo stuffing, and essential oil of Christmas tree, accompanied by sherbet fountains made from the powdered goose feed with vanilla straws. Pommes purées with goose, chestnut, and bacon velouté. Served in a bell jar containing the smoky aroma of roasted chestnuts
Reindeer milk ice cream Frozen in liquid nitrogen
WHY DO WE DISPLAY NATIVITY SCENES AT CHRISTMAS?
Nowadays, the sight of a Nativity scene with the baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and assorted livestock alongside visiting herdsmen and foreign dignitaries is indelibly etched onto the memory of
anyone who has celebrated Christmas. Many homes dust off the figures of their own manger scene when they bring out the rest of their Christmas decorations. It can be seen in shopping centers and on the streets of towns across the country—not to mention on endless Christmas cards—and is an expected element of any church. There are even specific Nativity services held on or around Christmas Eve.
In one sense it is very obvious how such a tradition arose, when you consider the “facts” of the Christmas story told and retold year after year. But in another way, it might seem a curious practice to keep up when so few people actually attend church on Christmas Day, as its religious significance continues to diminish in the modern age.
The first Nativity scene, created inside a church, was in Rome in the tenth century, at the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore. The idea soon caught on and other churches began creating their own stable scenes in time for the feast of Christ’s Mass.
With the help of a local landowner, Gionvanni Velita, and his friends, Francis succeeded in creating his own representation of the Nativity in a cave, surrounded by candles. Details of the actual participants in his Nativity scene vary, with some saying that Francis used statues to represent the holy family, while others claim that real people, dressed in appropriate costumes, fulfilled the role. However, all the sources agree on the fact that at the centre of the scene was a straw-filled manger surrounded by real animals.