Lost Recipes: Ancient flavors of Christmas to try in July

Yes, we’re still half a year away from Santa’s visit, but Christmas in July is pretty much a thing now. This week in Lost Recipes, we’re looking at Yuletide concoctions so old that they were considered “ancient” when the Advertiser published them long ago. Let’s dust these holiday treats off and see if we can unwrap something tasty.

Oxford’s ancient recipe for wassail bowl

In 1923, the Advertiser published a recipe for a wassail bowl drink that was created centuries earlier in Elizabethan England, and later discovered by Oxford University. This is a drink William Shakespeare himself might have enjoyed in the 1500s.

First, a word of warning: Wassail is very, very alcoholic and only for adults. Funny thing is, we’ve all been singing about it since we were kids. Seriously. Remember the old Christmas carol “Here We Come a-Wassailing”?

Back then, I always thought the line was “waffling,” as in waffles. I didn’t know what waffles had to do with Christmas, but what hungry kid is going to argue about eating waffles?

Wassail is actually a kind of warm spiced drink, often with a mix of ale and mulled wine. The wassail bowl was just that, a bowl from which wassail was dispensed. So, yes, the song is about a group of folks walking around and singing on Christmas with a big bowl of warm alcohol — kind of a mobile keg party.

So here is what Oxford said is the original wassail recipe:

In a bowl, add ? pint of sugar (the recipe calls for Lisbon sugar, which is also known as “clayed sugar”). Pour a pint of warm beer on top of the sugar and stir it together, then grate ginger and nutmeg into it. Add four glasses of sherry, and five additional pints of beer. Stir it well, and sweeten to your taste. From photos I’ve seen, some people also add sliced fruits to wassail, but that’s not in the original recipe.

Also, today’s light beer simply won’t do for this. The ones from a century ago weren’t exactly right either.

“It is only fair to the Elizabethans who enjoyed this drink to say that their beer was probably very different from the beverage served under that name nowadays,” we wrote.

A little research shows beers from Shakespeare’s day would be much heavier, a little sweeter and less bitter than what was available in 1923, and probably most of what we’ve got in 2024 also.

Whistles, a sweet on a stick

Now that we’re past the adult party bowl, here’s a treat that’s mainly for kids.

In 1913, the Advertiser published a recipe for homemade sweets children loved during holidays decades earlier. They were called whistles, and here’s how they were made:

Cream ? pound of sugar and ? pound of butter together. Take six eggs and separate the yolks from the whites, then beat them separately. Add the eggs to the creamed sugar and butter, then add enough flour to make a thick batter.

“In the old days, rosewater was considered a delicate and delicious flavoring, but vanilla might suit the modern palate better anyway and add some flavoring,” the Advertiser wrote 111 years ago.

Butter a sheet of paper and spread it on a baking sheet — back then it was a breadboard. Drop tablespoons of the batter on it, three to four inches apart, and spread them out thin. Bake it, probably at about 350 degrees, until they’re slightly browned.

“Then slip the little cakes on a moulding board sprinkled with sugar and quickly roll them about a stick,” we wrote. “When they are cold, fill them with jelly or jam.”

As you can see, food on a stick’s been around for a long time.

Mince pie

Here’s one we published in 1971 that’s been a Christmas favorite for many, many generations. It’s minced pie, and this ancient recipe — which contains a farm’s worth of animals — is courtesy of holiday consultant Sally Hopkins.

Start with a “fine hash” made of a pleasant, a capon, two partridges, two pigeons, and two rabbits, and a hare (which is a larger version of a rabbit). About all that's missing is a pear tree and five golden rings. Where you get all these slaughtered critters is up to you. Boil them all and keep the broth for later. Separate the meat from the bones, and then chop all the meat up together.

But that’s not all.

“Add the livers and hearts of these animals, plus two kidneys of sheep,” we wrote. “Add little meat balls of beef, with eggs. Add pickled mushrooms, salt, pepper, vinegar and various spices and pour it into the broth in which the bones were cooked.”

That all cooks down together and gets put into pie crusts, which were shaped like Christ’s manger and even had a small figure of Jesus on the top crust. That last part caused a ruckus with the Puritans in England, who tried to ban mince meat pies.

“But mince pie lovers stuck to their ovens and in the end won,” Hopkins said.

IF YOU TRY IT

If you decide to try one of these lost recipes please send us a photo and a note on how it went. Send it in an email titled "Lost Recipes" to Montgomery Advertiser reporter Shannon Heupel at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Lost Recipes: Ancient flavors of Christmas to try in July