by Amy Jo Browne

Created on: March 31, 2008

This year as you plan your Christmas dinner menu, you maybe were looking for ideas on what dishes to serve. I found some Christmas dinner menu ideas about Jolly Old England; perhaps you could use some of the ideas.

In 17th century, England cookbooks were written for the wealthy by other wealthy people and some of the items within these cookbooks would make some of us modern day people vomit at the thought of cooking, serving, or eating these.

I was surprised to learn that in seventeenth century England a Christmas dinner menu was almost 100 percent meat served in two different courses of between 19 and 20 individual dishes. That is an over abundance of meats.

That is too many meat dishes to eat, and personally, I do not know anyone who eats so many different types of meats with any current Christmas dinner menu. Here's a sampling Christmas dinner menu from 1685 in England oysters, brawn, stewed broth of mutton, a large piece of roasted beef, capons, venison, a partridge, beef roast, minced meat pies, mutton with anchovy sauce, sweet bread, swan, venison in pastry, a baby lamb, a steak pie, roasted venison, turkey roast, chickens in pastry, geese, capons and a custard. Can you imagine cooking or eating most of this for your Christmas dinner? This is only the first course, I guess after people were done eating this they napped or talked until the next course was served.

When the second course arrived on that day, the following items appeared of this Christmas dinner menu, oranges, lemons, a baby lamb, rabbits, pig head with tongue, ducks, pheasants, a swan, partridges, and a meat in puff pastry. The Christmas dinner menu course 2 also included bologna sausages, pickled oysters, bacon, plovers, a meat pie, chickens, a fruit tart, larks, six dried tongues, sturgeon, and powdered geese and plenty of jellies.

Not many side dishes appeared on the Christmas dinner menus of ancient England. I am wondering if the side dishes were just not listed or what. Perhaps it was because potatoes and other vegetables were not grown at this time or it could have been that they simply enjoyed the meat more.

Meat was plentiful, so the wealthy people of ancient England ate more meat on their Christmas dinner menu, than most of us would eat in a month. Most of us Americans eat a serving or two of meat a day, but can you imagine eating a months worth of meat in two meals, as those in England did?

Can you imagine eating a Christmas menu like this? Surely, eating this much meat in one or two settings would fill the stomach to capacity or in some cases beyond capacity, and cause lots of fat to settle around the mid section of many of the wealthy in England perhaps this is why they call it jolly old England.

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