'Tis the Season for Southern Cookin': A Christmas Feast

Merry Christmas! We hope you're enjoying a wonderful day with family and friends, lots of presents, and delicious food. As you sit down for your own Christmas feast this evening, we've got a holiday meal to offer you as well. We've cooked up you a lavish Christmas dinner, based on a Christmas menu listed in Atlanta's own The Dixie cook-book (1883). Below you'll find the full dinner menu, with recipes waiting for you after the jump. Enjoy! 

A Christmas Dinner Menu

Raw oysters served with sliced lemon

Turtle soup

Baked fresh fish

Roast turkey garnished with fried oysters

Mashed potatoes

Lima beans

Pickled beets

Mayonnaise of chicken salad

Celery

Cranberry sauce

Christmas plum pudding with rich sauce

Mince pie

Sponge and lady cake mixed

Fruit and nuts

'Tis the Season for Southern Cookin': Holiday Eggnog

“ 'Do you remember,' he said and under the spell of his voice the bare walls of the little office faded and the years rolled aside and they were riding country bridle paths together in a long-gone spring…  There was the far-off yelping of possum dogs in the dark swamp under cool autumn moons and the smell of eggnog bowls, wreathed with holly at Christmas time and smiles on black and white faces.” 

--Gone with the Wind, Chapter LIII

We have Bugsie and her eagle eyes to thank for this edition of Southern Cookin'. Because as she discovered, there's a small gem about antebellum Christmastime in the County tugged away in this nostalgic paragraph from the mill scene. Eggnog was a holiday tradition for Scarlett's friends and family! So with this knowledge in hand, we're naturally pleased to bring you not one but two recipes for eggnog, should you like to partake in this canon-approved holiday beverage.

Why the two recipes? Well, the first comes courtesy of The Dixie cook-book, published in Atlanta in 1883, to give you a local recipe that could have inspired Scarlett's own eggnog at Tara.

And if you want a little more pizazz, the second recipe offers up a Creole twist on this classic drink via The Picayune's Creole Cook Book, published in New Orleans (1901). 

We hope you enjoy these recipes and celebrate Christmas as Scarlett did--by raising a glass of holiday eggnog!


Eggnog

Stir half a cup of sugar (white), yolks of six eggs well beaten, into one quart of rich cream; add half a pint of brandy, flavor with nutmeg, and lastly add whites of the eggs well whipped.

--from The Dixie cook-book, published in Atlanta (1883) 

Egg-Nog

10 Fine, Fresh Creole Eggs

A Quart of Milk

2 Cupfuls of White Granulated Sugar

A Gill (1/2 cup) of Fine French Cognac

A Grated Nutmeg 

Beat the yolks to a cream, add the sugar, and beat to a cream. Blend all thoroughly, beating till very, very light. Now pour over the boiling milk, stirring well. When thoroughly blended add the whites of the Eggs, beaten to a stiff froth, and the Liquor, and serve hot. This Egg-Nog is also served cold by the Creoles at New Year's receptions. At the famous Christmas and New Year Reveillons it is served hot. The Liquor may or may not be added, according to taste.

--from The Picayune's Creole Cook Book, published in New Orleans (1901)

'Tis the Season for Southern Cookin': Snow Cake and Snow Custard

Today ushers in the very merry month of December and the official start of the Christmas season here at the blog! To celebrate this festive time of year, we'll be bringing you plenty of holiday blog posts all month long, including several special editions of Southern Cookin'.  Each week leading up to Christmas, we'll feature seasonal Southern recipes from the Gone with the Wind era to get you in the holiday spirit. 
  

And today we are pleased to not only inaugurate this holiday series, but to also introduce a new cookbook to our collection. Our recipes, selected for their wintry feel, come courtesy of The Dixie cook-book, published in 1883 in Scarlett's home base of Atlanta, Georgia. We hope you enjoy them, and be sure to stay tuned for more goodies next week!

Favorite Snow-Cake

Beat one cup butter to a cream, add one and a half cups flour and stir very thoroughly together; then add one cup corn starch, and one cup sweet milk in which three tea-spoons baking-powder have been dissolved; last, add whites of eight eggs and two cups sugar well beaten together; flavor to taste, bake in sheets, and put together with icing.

Snow Custard

Half a package of Coxe's gelatine, three eggs, two cups of sugar, juice of one lemon; soak the gelatine one hour in a tea-cup of cold water, add one pint boiling water, stir until thoroughly dissolved. Add two-thirds of the sugar and the lemon juice; beat the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth, and when the gelatine is quite cold, whip it into the whites, a spoonful at a time, from half an hour to an hour.

Whip steadily and evenly, and when all is stiff, pour in a mold, or in a dozen egg-glasses previously wet with cold water, and set in a cold place. In four or five hours turn into a glass dish. Make a custard of one and one-half pints milk, yolks of eggs, and remainder of the sugar, flavor with vanilla, and when the meringue or snow-balls are turned out of the mold, pour this around the base.