Food History

When people tell a group “Merry Christmas everyone” I always have to bite my tongue to avoid adding “And well over the Fast.” It’s because Christmas is very closely linked to New Year in general Aussie culture and of course, one of the new years in my branch of Aussie culture is followed by a fast. This is pure culture confusion added to a little mild frustration that the person giving such generous wishes kind of forgets that not all of us share Christmas.

This would normally be the start of a big grouch. It isn’t. It’s the start of a bit of food history wonderment.

My Jewish self was invited (as a friend) into two different families for Christmas this year. For the last few years I’ve been included in the celebrations of my friend Lesley, but this year James (age 11 ½ ) invited me to his celebrations as well. Since his mother is one of my close friends, this made for a very happy yesterday and my Christmasses with Lesley and her family are always wonderful.

What was super-special this year was that a whole list of food history questions lined up in a row and were answered. I won’t give you all the questions and answers now – they will appear when they’re ready, but you need to know that you can’t get all your food history from books. How a dinner is served, what the regular jokes are, what ingredients are silently substituted – so many answers that can be best got from primary sources.

Dinner with family is the best primary source for current practices. It also answers other questions.

One answer I’ll give you tonight. It’s related to suet.

Last night Donna made Christmas pudding from scratch, according to her favourite recipe. Like quite a few modern Australian recipes for Christmas pudding, it was butter based. I can now say absolutely that butter does not substitute for suet. They may or may not give different textures (Donna’s pud was finished differently to the suet ones I tested, so that wasn’t comparable) but butter gives a buttery underlay to the pudding, entirely different in mouthfeel and overall taste to the suet. This doesn’t mean you can’t replace suet with butter. It does mean you need to realise that when you make that replacement, it’s not the same recipe any more.

I hope everyone who celebrated Christmas enjoyed it. I hope you all enjoyed my series of posts of festive recipes. Now we’re back to normal. In January we’ll have some special guests posting, though, so don’t get too used to normalcy.