Gifts from Your Kitchen | ||||||||||||||||||
|
From Early American Life, December 2003
Gifts from Your Kitchen
by Claire Hopley
Today, Christmas cascades us with
everything that’s good to eat: cookies
and cakes and breads, candies, chocolate,
fruits, and nuts. We take them all for
granted, but faced by such a cornucopia,
our ancestors would have imagined they
had stepped into a fairy tale or into a lordly
banquet from the Europe they had left
behind. Few had the wherewithal to assemble
such an array, and some, like the seventeenth-
century Puritans of Massachusetts,
thought that luxurious foods were inappropriate
to a religious holiday. They kept
Christmas as a regular business day, and
frowned on the traditional mincemeat pies,
fruitcakes, and spiced punches of their
native England.
By the eighteenth century though, their old traditions had reappeared, joining Christmas customs brought by other people. In New York and Pennsylvania, the Dutch made koekjes—sweet, buttery morsels that they delivered to their neighbors to celebrate the New Year. English speakers adapted the word to “cookies” and attached the custom to Christmas. Fittingly, the earliest published recipe appeared in America’s first cookbook, American Cookery, by Amelia Simmons, published in 1796. Her “Christmas Cookey” is sweeter than the ordinary plain cookies of her era and delicately flavored with coriander. Since then other immigrants have brought their Christmas cookies to America. We have cardamom cookies from Scandinavia, shortbread from Scotland, cinnamon stars and gingerbreads from Germany, and an array of nut cookies and crisp biscotti from Italy.
These cookies called for sugar and spices, all of which were expensive because they came from distant lands. Thus they appeared only in festive foods-- in breads and drinks and savory meat dishes. Similarly, dried fruits from the Mediterranean were featured in many seasonal cakes and pies, while imported wines and citrus fruits were treats that many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Americans would have tasted only at Christmas.
But the cheaper local harvests were just as welcome: cranberries for pies and sauces, pecans to fill the silver bowl on the dessert table, and, of course, apples. Farmers always planted some late-bearing varieties such as Northern Spy for apple pies as well as Lady apples to decorate the mantelpiece and tannic apples for making cider. It was an everyday drink, but at Christmas it was confected into punches and prettily molded gelatin desserts that shimmered on the festive table.
Fruity gelatins contrasted well with the heavier dishes typical of the season. But what made them really special at Christmas was that they took so much time to make. Housewives had first to make gelatin by boiling down calves’ feet. Then they had to clarify it before flavoring it with spiced cider, wine, or fruit juice. Busy days never left time for all this work, but sparing no effort has always been one of the things that makes Christmas special. Candying orange peel because the fruit was too precious to waste any part of it, baking fancy breads and cookies, or making “secrets”--pretty paper packages holding a candy or other treat--absorbed every spare pre-holiday moment in eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury America.
Today, conjuring up homemade specialties still lies at the heart of Christmas--a basket of international cookies to take to a party, jars of preserves for hostess gifts, a jelly dessert to recall olden days, something chocolatey for those with a sweet tooth, something savory to complement all the sugary treats. With an inheritance of traditions brought by generations of immigrants, America’s Christmas has delights for everyone.
THE RECIPES: