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The Ghost of Christmas Pudding In place of the warm, gooey, perfect cannonball of traditional English holiday cheer, I’ll have a piece of good old American apple pie, please
By Serena Kenyon BroWn
“When we got
here last Saturday night, we found that Mrs. Fields had not only garnished the rooms with flowers, but also with holly (with real red berries) and festoons of moss dependent from the looking-glasses and picture frames. She is one of the dearest little women in the world. The homely Christmas look of the place quite affected us. Yesterday we dined at her house, and there was a plum-pudding, brought on blazing, and not to be surpassed in any house in England.”
From a letter by Charles Dickens to Georgina Hogarth, Boston, Sunday, December 22, 1867. Mrs. Fields, author and influential wife of Dickens’ friend and publisher, James T. Fields, deserves every compliment that Boz heaped upon her when he visited Boston. Dickens was giving readings of A Christmas Carol at the time, so it is likely she was familiar with the glorious descriptions of celebratory fare in the story, and she clearly understood the importance of the seasonal plum pudding to her English visitor. Nowadays plum pudding — there are no plums in the pudding in the modern sense; it’s an archaic reference to raisins — is eaten almost exclusively at Christmas in the British Isles, hence we refer to it as Christmas pudding. The excellent Mrs. Fields must have done her research very carefully when she was planning how to make Dickens feel at home during his American tour. If she were entertaining him today, nothing would change. In 21st century England, my mother still decorates the house with deep green foliage (with real red berries), and every year a plum pudding is brought on blazing, the theatrical piece de resistance of the Christmas feast. I experience a feeling of mild panic at the thought of Christmas without a Christmas pudding. I adore it: a warm, gooey, rib-sticking cannonball of a treat served with a melting spoonful of brandy butter. It is the perfect ending to the traditional British Christmas dinner, which consists of roast turkey or goose, roast potatoes, Brussels sprouts, carrots, parsnips, chestnut and/or forcemeat stuffing, pigs in blankets, bread sauce, cranberry sauce and lots of gravy. As Dickens’ letter suggests, it is very important that the pudding be set alight. This is achieved by a good sloshing of brandy — a fair amount also goes into the pudding’s initial ingredients. The blaze can be somewhat hazardous, decorated as the pud is with a sprig of holly on the top, but that only adds to the thrill
The Art & Soul of Wilmington
of the occasion. Some say that the flames symbolize the passion, others that they ward off evil spirits. They certainly brighten up the foggy dark of a British late December day, and people can huddle round the glowing pudding to keep warm. You may be wondering why I don’t make one myself. Perhaps I will, though I could never equal my mother’s Christmas cuisine. Also, it should be done before Advent begins, up to a year in advance, the generous quantities of alcohol acting as preservative. In accordance with tradition, everyone present takes a turn to stir the ingredients and make a wish. When the pudding is heated on Christmas Day, it will be stuffed with charms and five pence pieces to bring luck and wealth to the recipient for the forthcoming year. Experience has taught me not to go looking for specific tastes of the homeland. It can be rather disconcerting. Thanks to my husband Paul’s relentless quest for barbecue in the U.K., I now think I’m in south London whenever I smell hickory wood on a grill. It’s more rewarding to save up all those missed tastes and make a special occasion of them, to weave them into the culinary tapestry of migration. If one spends every meal trying to recreate dishes from thousands of miles away, one misses out on learning about the local specialties that are part of the fabric of one’s new home. A brief survey of friends here has revealed a host of wonderful possibilities to look forward to on Christmas Day: cakes, tortes, fudge, cookies and pies of every variety, including, of course, that most American of all: apple pie. What Dickens probably did not have at his lodgings, and nor did I until my arrival in North Carolina, were glow-in-the-dark reindeer. These are one of the principal reasons I get excited about spending the holidays Stateside. I love my reindeer. They were a gift from a former landlady, who could have had no idea what bounty she had bestowed upon a foreigner who had previously considered putting the cards and a bit of tinsel on the mantelpiece a good effort at Yuletide ornamentation. As the season approached it became apparent that Christmas here called for something more. Technically they may not be reindeer. The doe hasn’t got antlers. Her spare frame and limited markings make it difficult to tell whether she is of a type of reindeer that doesn’t grow antlers, or whether she is a deer without the rein part. It matters not a jot to me. She and her fawn light up in the dark and they will almost undoubtedly constitute the centerpiece of our garden decoration — for which read the only ones that we will get around to. Those candescent cervids represent to me the brilliance, excitement and fun of the holidays in America. On Christmas Day, I might just saunter out after lunch and share a slice of apple pie with them. b Serena Brown is the newest member of the Salt staff. December 2013 •
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