Victorian-American Christmas Figgy (or Plum) Pudding Recipes by Kristin Holt

by Kristin Holt

USA Today Bestselling- and RONE Award Winning-Author

Christmas is around the corner, again, and I'm reminded of those family recipes whose aromas evoke myriad memories of holidays gone by. My living grandmother will be 100 on her next birthday. She still made her famous Christmas Pudding (essentially Plum Pudding) every year until she hit age 90. I still miss its one-of-a-kind flavor... a treat so rich it needed the whipping cream to cut the hard sauce and "pudding" (cake).

Today I want to share a handful of vintage recipes for English Plum Pudding, Fig Pudding, and other Christmas pudding delicacies. Sources are listed in publication order, and citations are noted in image footers or quotation block final lines. All were published in the United States, and all were originally presented in the late-nineteenth century.

1885:

 

English Plum Pudding, 1885, The Homemade Cook Book.

1889:

Fig Pudding Recipe, pp164-165: The Every-Day Cook-Book and Encyclopedia of Practical Receipts (1889).

1890:

Christmas Plum Pudding and two sauce recipes, published in 1890 by Improvement Society of the Second Reformed Church of New Brunswick, New Jersey.

 1892:

Two Plum Pudding Recipes from The Columbian Cook Book Containing Reliable Rules for Plain and Fancy Cooking. Published 1892.

 1895:

 

Fig Pudding, 1895, Three Hundred Tested Recipes.

 

Christmas Plum Pudding from The Boston Globe, Boston, Mass., December 15, 1895.

 1903:

Fig Pudding Recipe, published 1903 in Kentucky Receipt Book by Mary Harris Frazier.

Invitation:

After a peek at these vintage recipes, what do you think? Did ingredients or cooking methods surprise you? How about the length of boiling time to prepare the pudding?

Do you have a vintage family-heirloom recipe for Christmas pudding? Have you tasted Victorian-era or Edwardian-era "figgy pudding"? Please tell us about it. (Scroll down to the "conversation" fields.)

Related Articles:

Click on any blog article header image, to open the related article's page. You're invited to take a peek at more related history!

 

 

 

by Kristin Holt

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P.S. thanks for reading! We'd love to hear from you. "Conversation" is the best part! (See the comment box, below.)

Copyright ⓒ 2019 Kristin Holt LC

Christmas Songs from Victorian America

by Kathryn Albright

    

 Christmas songs ~ both contemporary and traditional ~ speak to my heart. I wanted to share six Christmas songs that were written in the "Sweet Americana Sweetheart era," the time between 1820 and 1920. 

Before the 1800's, Christmas carols came to us in two different ways. They would be classical chorales or church music first. Then, sometimes years (even centuries!) later, words would be fitted to the music.Many traditional songs such as What Child is This? and The First Noel come to us in this manner. Or, it could happen the other way around. A well-loved poem would later have music added to it. (As with The Star Spangled Banner.)

In the late 1800's the production of pianos became affordable to middle class families and Tin Pan Alley and sheet music hit the American scene.
 

    

Here are six favorites from the years 1820-1920…

    
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing ~ The tune composed in 1840 by Felix Mendelssohn, the lyrics came from a hymn written in 1739 by Charles Wesley.

It Came Upon a Midnight Clear ~ was a poem by Edmund Sears in Massachusetts, first published in a church magazine 1849. It was adapted to music a year later by Richard S. Willis.

Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem ~ Written by Phillip Brooks, a well-known preacher in Philadelphia 1868. Lewis Redner set the words to music for the church’s children’s choir that he managed.

We Three Kings of Orient Are ~ 1857 in New York City by John Hopkins, Jr.

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day ~ A poem entitle Christmas Bells written in 1861 by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and set to music in the 1870s by John Baptiste Calkin. In 1940 the poem was set to new music by Johnny Marks and that is how we know it today.

Away in a Manger ~ Published 1887 in a collection called Dainty Songs for Lads and Lasses. The lyrics came from a poem in a children’s Sunday School book published several years earlier in Philadelphia. 

* * * * * * * 

Of these songs, I think the most poignant story behind the song is with Longfellow’s Christmas Bells poem. His wife had died in a house fire in 1861 and he was in the grip of depression. Also that year, 1861, the Civil War had begun. His oldest son enlisted and left for the war in 1863. (He was severely injured and returned home.) It was on Christmas Day of 1863 that Longfellow wrote the poem of a hope that prevails as long as there is Christmas and the promise of new life.

* * * * * * * 

What is your favorite Christmas carol or song? Comment for a chance to win an autographed copy of Christmas Kiss from the Sheriff.

 Gemma Starling travels two thousand miles from her former life to flee a crime she committed. As the new schoolteacher in Clear Springs, she tries to blend in, but the new sheriff is not so easily deceived.  

When her life is threatened, he realizes that his personal feelings for her have far surpassed his professional responsibilities for the case. He can’t lose her…yet does he even know who she truly is?

Happy Holidays!

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Victorian Bad Hair Day

by USA Today Bestselling Author Kristin Holt

Here we are! Thanksgiving is behind us and Christmas is before us! It's that Most Wonderful Time of the Year! With shopping galore, Feasts, Gift-Giving, and (I hope) READING to do, I want to share a gem of Victorian American history with you.

I spend a bit too much time scouring Vintage newspapers for elements of Victorian life that belong in fiction. After all, the best stories are set against believable, historically accurate settings. (At least I think so.) Not long ago, I came across this story, published in the Titusville Herald of Titusville, Pennsylvania (after first appearing in the Lansing (Michigan) Republican. Titusville was treated to this story (whether historically TRUE or simply amusing, I have no idea) on February 24, 1870, in context of the most recent Thanksgiving and Christmas (of 1869).

 

As you can see, the image, 148 years old, was either deteriorated when scanned into a digital file, or didn't scan well. Either way, I decided to transcribe it for you, taking care to preserve spelling, formatting, and paragraph breaks. Note the standard (for the era) punctuation at the end of titles and header sentences.

Christmas.

TURKEY GRAVY POMADE--A WRONG GIFT OF GIFTS.

From the Lansing (Michigan) Republican.

A good religious college, located not a thousand miles from Michigan, was blessed with a wide circle of female friends among the denomination it represented. One year the ladies in a thriving town where the college was  very popular, thought it would be a kind act to send the senior class a box of good things for Thanksgiving. They prepared a lot of mince and pumpkin pies, frosted cake, cold roast turkeys, and other dainties, and in order that the turkeys might go off smoothly, they put in the box a bottle of rich, savory gravy. It was not labelled [sic], and the bottle containing it was very much like those in which a favorite kind of hair oil is exposed for sale on the tempting shelves of fancy goods stores.

When the box was opened at the college and the joyful feast disclosed to view, the senior class were highly delighted. That Thanksgiving dinner was the happiest for many a year, with one little exception, and this was more comic than melancholy. Three or four of the seniors, with handsome curling hair, thought of course those benevolent ladies had them in view in sending a present of hair oil, and they slyly carried off the bottle, and in their own rooms made a faithful application of gravy to their heads! The stickiness of the supposed hair oil soon aroused wonder, but it was some time before the seniors knew that they had made a wrong use of a table luxury. The joke soon spread through the college, and at last reached the ears of the donors of the box. At Christmas, therefore, the same generous hearted ladies made ready another box of good things, and forwarded it to the same college.

Taking a hint from the previous blunder, and believing that perhaps it was necessary for the seniors that their heads should be fashionably anointed, these kind ladies put in the second box a bottle of real hair oil. The bottle, like its predecessor contained the gravy, bore no label, and some of the unlucky seniors determined to make no mistake this time, poured the contents liberally over their plates at dinner, without stopping to taste or smell. The odor of bergamot and cinnamon did not once undeceive them. They imagined the hair oil to be, perhaps, an elegant new French dressing for cold meat, and swallowed their food with a few qualms, but with the hearty appetites of youths.

Oh, no! Not the WRONG CHRISTMAS GIFT! (See red "highlighted text" in the article's title.) Must've been the shame of all shames for a young woman (married or not) to give the wrong gift!

The gravy used as hair oil... and hair oil used as gravy is a fine example of Victorian Americans' Sense of Humor. I found plenty more:

Hair Oil was a thing back then:

Are you interested in more Victorian-era Christmas posts?

And, because I hope you're enjoying plenty of sweet holiday romances this holiday season, take a peek at a post I wrote about WHY Christmas Novellas are so popular with readers:

 

Did you know Sweet Americana Sweethearts hosts a Book Club on Facebook? Come join the fun!

Kristin Holt, USA Today Bestselling Author, writes Sweet Victorian Romance set in the American West. She writes frequently about Old West history and contributes monthly to Sweet Romance Reads and Sweet Americana Sweethearts.  

Sweet Romance Appropriate for All Audiences

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