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Here are some conversation starters about your favorite holiday treats, including eggnog, gingerbread and candy canes.
1. Eggnog
Once a favored drink among the nobility and upper classes, eggnog is now enjoyed by anyone who walks into a grocery store. The word “noggin” means “small cup,” which is a good thing since making eggnog is supremely labor intensive, and possibly salmonella-inducing (so nog-in-a-box is probably still your best option). Consuming raw eggs (also an ingredient of Wassail, see below) can be risky business, but for the adventurous sorts you can find fancy recipes for the stuff here.
2. Gingerbread
From The Straight Dope, “Ginger was used in England in Anglo-Saxon days. By the late medieval period, ginger was almost as popular as pepper, and was still considered to have therapeutic or medicinal value. Geoffrey Chaucer writes in 1386, ‘they sette him roial spicery and gyngebreed.’” Recipes for gingerbread go back as far as the 14th century.
Gingerbread is also an oddly popular and hardy building material. Each year, for instance, the White House displays a gingerbread “White House” in the State Room, and a plethora of gingerbread house competitions take places all over. In fact, life has taken to imitating art with the Gingerbread houses of Martha’s Vineyard – a neighborhood of tiny, brightly painted and ornamented houses. Gingerbread houses found in the woods are best left alone.
3.Candy Canes
Legend has it that the candy cane started in Cologne, Germany around 1670, when an enterprising priest gave candy sticks to children in order to keep them quiet during services. The modern candy cane (if it can be called such) can be traced back to the 1920s, where Bob McCormack began making candy canes as special Christmas treats for his children, friends and local shopkeepers in Albany, Georgia. Making the candy was no Christmas joy – the pulling, twisting, cutting and bending could only be done on a local scale. But, in the 1950s, Bob’s brother-in-law Gregory Keller, a Catholic priest (full circle!), invented a machine to automate candy cane production. (And for the record, just because a candy cane also forms a “J’ and is eaten around Christmas doesn’t mean it has anything to do with what you think it does).
4. Fruitcake
“The worst gift is fruitcake,” Johnny Carson once suggested. “There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other.” If that is the case, it is altogether possible this fruitcake has been passed around since cheap sugar first arrived in Europe from the colonies in the 16th century, which makes perfect sense. According to this highly entertaining article, “some goon discovered that fruit could be preserved by soaking it in successively greater concentrations of sugar, intensifying color and flavor. Not only could native plums and cherries be conserved, but heretofore unavailable fruits were soon being imported in candied form from other parts of the world. Having so much sugar-laced fruit engendered the need to dispose of it in some way—thus the fruitcake.”
If your distaste of fruitcake runs deep, you might find some enjoyment in the Annual Fruit Cake Toss in Manitou Springs, CO. It’s not all waste – comestibles must be donated to local food banks in order to participate.
5. Wassail
“Oh here we come a-wassailing / Among the leaves so green, / Oh here we come a-wandering / So fair to be seen.”
The word wassail derives from Old Norse ves heill, meaning “be well.” During the reign of Henry VIII, a caroling tradition began in England where merrymakers would carry a large wooden bowl of wassail from house to house dancing, singing and drinking (the original fraternity row keg party). The wassail was served warm and usually contained ale or cider, roasted apples, beaten eggs, sugar and spices. Soft toast was floated on the surface, and so thus potentially began the custom of drinking a toast.
* * * * *
Any holiday recipes to share, Flossers? Or, will any of you stand up in defense of the fruit cake’s tarnished reputation?
Hungry for more? Venture into the Dietribes archive.
‘Dietribes’ appears every other Wednesday. Food photos taken by Johanna Beyenbach. You might remember that name from our post about her colorful diet.
Comments (28)
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Hmm…no Hanukkah treats?
Every year we’re nearly brought to fisticuffs over latkes. Sour cream supporters on one side of the table, and Applesauce fans on the other.
…and in case you haven’t been the provider of chocolate gelt for a while, there are now a variety of cartoons supporting the tradition. Spongebob is my favorite.
posted by mandragora on 12-17-2008 at 10:37 am
I saw a thing on the History Channel the other day that said that the Nog in Eggnog is derived from Grog and refers to any rum based drink. I’m not sure which is correct I just thought I would bring up that alternate theory.
posted by Brittany on 12-17-2008 at 11:07 am
I was watching ‘Frasier’ this morning on Lifetime and saw an ad for a new show called Dietribes! You should be hosting that show. Does that mean we have to resort back to our second idea for a name, “Readers, Digest!”?
posted by Jason English on 12-17-2008 at 11:21 am
Some retailers offer pasteurized eggs now. That way you can make your own eggnog and don’t have to deal with that drink stores try to pass off as a the real stuff.
On a side note. Alton Brown has a really good recipe for eggnog. I’m surprised that I don’t hear more about him in Mental Floss. I’d imagine his show and Mental Floss share a large number of fans.
posted by Nick on 12-17-2008 at 11:23 am
I detest egg nog. When I was about 8, I was really sick around Christmas and they gave me this nasty pasty white cure-all medicine. It tasted worse than paste. My doctor suggest to my mom mixing the vile stuff with something to make it more palatable. Being the holiday season my mom thought egg nog would be perfect. To this day when I smell egg nog I smell the phantom of the evil medicine and I can taste it in the egg nog too.
I do enjoy fruit cake though. Being from Colorado, I have even attended the Fruit Cake Toss. It’s pretty impressive how far these things can go. Granted, there are some crappy recipes out there, but my grandparents used to send us one for Christmas every year and it was the best. I was also the only one in my family who ate it….
posted by sm on 12-17-2008 at 11:25 am
I’ll vouch for the medicinal qualities of ginger. I drink ginger tea on a regular basis as I can’t take antacids. Ginger tea has saved me from many sleepless nights.
Unfortunately it tastes roughly like sticks and twigs, not at all like gingerbread – but you can’t have everything.
posted by julia on 12-17-2008 at 11:46 am
My dad makes the absolute best “eggnog.” It’s vanilla ice cream and rum with some nutmeg sprinkled on top. Basically a spiked vanilla milk shake. It always goes over very, very well at holiday parties. Craving some right now.
posted by Shasta on 12-17-2008 at 11:46 am
Hear, Hear, Nick! (Was that ever cleared up during the grammar debate?)
Alton Brown might be my hero. His show on eggnog was super fun. It addressed the problems of homemade nog, but solved them all. I
posted by Kieran on 12-17-2008 at 12:26 pm
“I was watching ‘Frasier’ this morning on Lifetime” Wow, no man should utter those words in public.
posted by Kyle on 12-17-2008 at 12:35 pm
I’m originally from Tennessee and we drink “Boiled Custard” instead of eggnog. The boiled custard is much sweeter and can still be enriched by a touch of liguor. Anyone else out there familiar with this wonderful drink?
posted by Carol on 12-17-2008 at 12:39 pm
I *love* boiled custard! Haven’t had it in ages, though. Thanks for reminding me – maybe I’ll make some this weekend!
posted by Kelly on 12-17-2008 at 12:54 pm
I love fruitcake! I discovered uneaten fruitcake at the bottom of the horribly mushy apple bin in the fridge when I was a kid (to this day, I will NOT eat a Macintosh, even if starving) and happily snacked on it for days. Chewy, chewy, chewy, fruity, and sweet. Yum!
Also – nobody bitches about wedding fruitcake! I say, give fruitcake another shot.
BTW – has anybody had this? My mom used to make some weird jarred thing with raisins and carrots and god knows what else, I just remember grinding carrots for days… she’s passed on, so I can’t ask her. It was a Christmas pudding (?) of some kind, I guess.
posted by Marion on 12-17-2008 at 1:03 pm
ok, so I have a sundry of comments:
mandra, latkes are delicious I concur. hmmm … perhaps an upcoming Diebtribe?
Brittany: yeah, as with the origin of most foods I’m sure there’s more than one story. Grog is also a great word to use in general.
Jason, I totally think we should have a Frasier spinoff show called Dietribes. Imagine the possibilities!
Marion – YES, WHAT is that?? I remember the carrots and raisins too … I never ate it, but it was something my Grandmother made I’m pretty sure
posted by Allison Keene on 12-17-2008 at 1:09 pm
No offense Allison, way off topic too, but I cannot stand the word sundry for some reason. It makes me angry everytime I hear it or see it written. Anyways……
posted by Billy on 12-17-2008 at 1:19 pm
The bourbon fruit cake from the monestary here in KY is AMAZING and it will give you a buzz… As will the monk fudge. delish.
posted by Lauren on 12-17-2008 at 1:34 pm
Billy, I’d drive you insane with how often I use “sundry”, but never have I seen it used as Allison employs it. Shouldn’t it be “sundry comments” not “a sundry of comments?”
posted by VM on 12-17-2008 at 1:41 pm
@Lauren – I am so with you on the KY bourbon fruitcake made by Monks. My Mom gets some every Christmas from friends and I always steal it.
re: fruitcake – my “second Mom” in Virginia used to make the best fruitcake; had to give it up due to age and moving from a southern sprawling kitchen to a small condo kitchen. I have one circa 2006 in my freezer. I assume it’s still edible?
posted by Val on 12-17-2008 at 2:13 pm
Carol, I’m another native Tennessean who grew up drinking boiled custard. Sooo thick, sooo sweet. In recent years, I’ve come to realize it owes as much to creme anglais (the custard dessert sauce) as it does to eggnog, but heavens, it is seriously good.
posted by Martha on 12-17-2008 at 2:49 pm
marion – what the heck is a wedding fruitcake? i would certainly complain at the suggestion of fruitcake involved in my wedding. eggnog however, yum.
posted by tiffany on 12-17-2008 at 4:48 pm
Eggnog was one of the first recipes I learned to make as a child. I think it was in a Peanuts cookbook for kids. Yummy stuff. Never made us sick, but maybe we just got lucky.
Love a good fruitcake, but not all ‘cakes are created equal. Collin Street Bakery has some yummy varieties. And if you don’t care for the neon “fruit” in most ‘cakes, you might like Alton Brown’s Free Range Fruitcake. It’s made with dried, not candied, fruit. My health conscious husband thought it tasted pretty good.
posted by Pam on 12-17-2008 at 9:09 pm
@Lauren We just ordered some of the Monk fruitcake for the first time. We have high hopes.
I thought the custom of toasting came from the Romans dropping burned bread into their wine to reduce undesirable flavors.
posted by Sorcha on 12-17-2008 at 10:13 pm
The Stories Behind 5 Holiday Treats | Deliggit.com…
\r\nFrom eggnog to wassail, here are the stories behind five different holiday treats…
posted by Deliggit.com | The social sites' most interesting urls on 12-18-2008 at 7:59 am
Carol my mother was from SC and boiled custard was always a Christmas treat – I like it much better than I do eggnog.
posted by carver on 12-18-2008 at 9:41 am
Carrot raisin thing – something like this? There are at least 6 different versions of this stuff on the site….
no links. right.
allrecipes dot com
ingredient search for carrots & raisins will get you there…
posted by rae on 12-18-2008 at 12:26 pm
I agree with Pam! The Collin Street Bakery in Corsicana, Texas has the best fruit cake ever! You can order it by mail, too!
posted by Anna on 12-18-2008 at 5:53 pm
Wassail, Wassail, all over the town
Our toast it is white and our ale it is brown
Our bowl it is made of the white maple tree
With the wassailing bowl, we’ll drink to thee.
A choir classic.
posted by Shaina on 12-18-2008 at 6:00 pm
One of the only way’s to having healthy eggnog is by adding vanilla flavored whey protein and using low fat milk in the recipe.
posted by Justaddmuscle.com on 12-19-2008 at 3:18 pm
I’m way late to this post (as I’m very behind on my reading!), but we can’t find pre-made egg nog here in New Zealand. I found a recipe that cooks the eggs/milk (verrrry slowly over very low heat), so no worries about drinking anything potentially dangerous.
And my whole family LOVES fruit cake! The Giant grocery stores in Maryland have the best fruit cake. Ah, how I miss it…
posted by Dawn on 1-15-2009 at 3:26 am