A Christmas Day Menu (1887) - The 1800s Housewife

Dear friends ~

I’m suddenly realizing that it’s just three days ’til Christmas, and I actually haven’t shared an 1800’s suggested Christmas Day menu yet. Somehow in my head I’d done that ages ago!

I’ve been without properly running water for a couple of weeks now, and won’t be back up and running until Dec. 30, so believe me that I am not functioning at the top of my game right now, by any means.

If you’re on the email list, you may have followed along as we made Roast Goose, and Mince Pie. Today I’m making that Christmas Plum Pudding, so you can expect to see that in tomorrow’s email! In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this festive menu…doesn’t it all sound wonderful?

~ Anna

THE WHITE HOUSE COOK BOOK

By Mrs. F. L. Gillette
and Hugo Ziemann, Steward of the White House
1887

An 1887 menu for Christmas Day — From The White House Cook Book, 1887. Page 458

I love how this menu includes suggestions for every meal of the day. The dishes really cover all the bases, and do it lavishly.

Fish and seafood show up in three different ways, game is represented in that lovely soup as well as the canvas back duck, and the star of the show is a traditional goose, which would have been a domestically-raised, large bird.

For dessert, there’s cake, pie, ice cream, and pudding–again covering all the bases. Fruit, nuts, and coffee are perfect for settling in, and “filling the cracks”.

I also enjoy seeing the full day of suggested menus, because it’s such a visual reminder that dinner, the big meal in the middle of the day, was the main event during this era. Supper, the evening meal, was a much smaller repast.

This is a cookbook that assumes a readership of very comfortable means, and that assumption shows up abundantly throughout this cook book. However, even written for a well-to-do audience, the supper menu draws on the leftover goose from dinner, offers just one fish, one vegetable, and one bread option, and two simple but lovely sweet dishes to finish it off, along with tea.