Discover 20 Historical Christmas Recipes: Fruitcake, Gingerbread, Figgy Pudding & More

One can hard­ly con­sid­er the Christ­mas sea­son for long, at least in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world, with­out the work of Charles Dick­ens com­ing to mind. That owes for the most part, of course, to A Christ­mas Car­ol, the novel­la that revived the pub­lic cul­ture of a hol­i­day that had been falling into desue­tude by the mid-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. What­ev­er its lit­er­ary short­com­ings, the book offers a host of mem­o­rable images, not least culi­nary ones: Mrs. Cratchit’s pud­ding, for instance, which Dick­ens likens to “a speck­led can­non-ball, so hard and firm, blaz­ing in half or half-a-quar­tern of ignit­ed brandy, and bedight with Christ­mas hol­ly stuck into the top.”

In the Tast­ing His­to­ry video at the top of the post, host Max Miller teach­es you how to make just such a hol­i­day pud­ding — and indeed a fig­gy one, a con­fec­tion whose name we all rec­og­nize from no less a stan­dard car­ol than “We Wish You a Mer­ry Christ­mas,” even if we don’t know that pud­ding, in the Vic­to­ri­an sense, refers to a kind of cake.

The fig­gy pud­ding Miller makes from an orig­i­nal 1845 recipe looks, and seems to taste, more like an alco­hol-soaked ver­sion of the fruit­cakes many of us still receive come Christ­mas­time. Despite its rep­u­ta­tion for lead­en unde­sir­abil­i­ty, rein­forced by decade after decade of John­ny Car­son gags, the fruit­cake has a rich his­to­ry, which Miller reveals in the video just above, and culi­nary strengths beyond its extreme shelf life.

This playlist of 20 Christ­mas-themed videos offers many more such delights: Turk­ish delight, for instance, as well as Vic­to­ri­an sug­ar plums, medieval gin­ger­bread, and his­tor­i­cal ver­sions of such still-com­mon com­forts and joys as eggnog and pump­kin pie. And if you’ve ever won­dered to what was­sail — as a noun or a verb — actu­al­ly refers, have a look at the video above, in which Miller explains it all while mak­ing a pot of the stuff, which turns out to be a kind of apple­sauce-enriched ale. Was­sail, too, is a favorite Dick­ens ref­er­ence, and not just in A Christ­mas Car­ol. His first nov­el The Pick­wick Papers includes a Christ­mas feast with “a mighty bowl of was­sail, some­thing small­er than an ordi­nary wash-house cop­per, in which the hot apples were hiss­ing and bub­bling with a rich look, and a jol­ly sound, that were per­fect­ly irre­sistible”: the kind of image that, near­ly two cen­turies lat­er, still makes read­ers want to go a‑wassailing.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Eudo­ra Welty’s Hand­writ­ten Eggnog Recipe, and Charles Dick­ens’ Recipe for Hol­i­day Punch

Try George Orwell’s Recipe for Christ­mas Pud­ding, from His Essay “British Cook­ery” (1945)

Charles Min­gus’ “Top Secret” Eggnog Recipe Con­tains “Enough Alco­hol to Put Down an Ele­phant”

How Eat­ing Ken­tucky Fried Chick­en Became a Christ­mas Tra­di­tion in Japan

Tast­ing His­to­ry: A Hit YouTube Series Shows How to Cook the Foods of Ancient Greece & Rome, Medieval Europe, and Oth­er Places & Peri­ods

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.