Hypnogoria: THE OLDTIME YULETIDE ADVENT CALENDAR

Welcome dear friends back to the Hypnogoria Old-time Yuletide Advent Calendar! We have reached Door 6 and the letter F. And what does F stand for? Frumenty! And no, that’s not a mediaeval rude word! Actually Frumenty was a popular Yuletide dish of yesteryear, and today we will learn all about it and some other forgotten festive foods!

Now frumenty is believed to be one of the old dishes in British cuisine, and was part of traditional Christmas fare for many centuries. In 1676, Poor Robin’s Almanack says “and lastly, who would but praise it, because of Christmas, when good cheer doth so abound, as if all the world were made of minced pies, plum-pudding, and frumenty”. It remained a very popular dish in Victorian times with references to frumenty appearing Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge and Lewis Carroll’s Through The Looking Glass. Indeed it is only in the 20th century that it fell from favour and vanished from our tables.

But what was frumenty? Well, it was a sort of wheat porridge, which could be either a sweet or a savoury dish. Wheat was ground up in a mortar, and then slowly boiled until soft. Then the wheat was mixed and simmered in milk either from almonds or cows, and thickened with egg yolks. Then other ingredients could be added - for sweet versions, almonds, currants, saffron were popular additions, while savoury incarnations might add chopped vegetables, and be served with venison or mutton.

In fact, frumenty, whether sweet or savoury, was often served with venison, which was also a popular Christmas meat. Now we tend to think of the Christmas dinner as being very traditional, however over the years, what has been on the table has changed frequently! To begin with going right back to pagan winter solstice celebrations such as Yule, wild boar was the main dish of the day. And indeed, boar’s head was a festive favourite for many centuries, as commemorated in the Boar’s Head Carol. However venison and other game, such as hare were popular too.

In Tudor times, a favourite main dish was peacock, roasted and daubed with saffron butter. However unlike our modern turkeys, it was not plucked, rather it was skinned and the roast bird sewn back in so that the peacock would come to the table in all its feathered finery. Of course not everyone could afford a peacock, and hence for many centuries goose was the bird gracing many a family Christmas table. And while turkeys from the New World were first introduced to England in the mid 16th century, it would take a long time before this turkey would displace the goose as the Christmas bird. Even in Victorian times the goose was the king of the Christmas table, and turkey was still festive fare for the only rich. For it is a goose that the Cratchits are preparing in A Christmas Carol, first published in 1843, and the reformed Scrooge shares his wealth by sending Bob and his family a prize turkey. While in late Victorian times, the Sherlock Holmes story, The Adventure of The Blue Carbuncle, first published in 1892, features a goose bought for a Christmas dinner.

Hence the turkey dinner that we think of as being traditional only really begins to become commonplace in the 20th century. However, interestingly, its usual garnish of cranberry sauce had long been a Christmas staple, even before turkey reached our shores. For cranberry sauce had long been a regular at a Christmas dinner, originally being a popular addition to venison, and that forgotten festive favourite, frumenty!