'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

Raw Oysters

Wash the shells, open, detaching the flat shell, loosen from the deep shell, but leave them in it, and serve half dozen on a plate, with a quarter of lemon in center. Eat with salt, pepper and lemon juice or vinegar.

Baked Fish

Clean, rinse, and wipe dry a white fish, or any fish weighing three or four pounds* rub the fish inside and out with salt and pepper, fill with a stuffing made like that for poultry, but drier; sew it up and put in a hot pan, with some drippings and a lump of butter, dredge with flour, and lay over the fish a few thin slices of salt pork or bits of butter, and bake an hour and a half, basting occasionally. 

Fried Oysters

Drain carefully, remove all bits of shell, and sprinkle with pepper and salt, and set in a cool place for ten or fifteen minutes. Then, if oysters are small, pour them into a pan of crackers rolled fine, add the liquor, mix well, and let stand five minutes, add a little salt and pepper, mold into small cakes with two or three oysters in each, roll in dry crackers until well encrusted, and fry in hot lard and butter, or beef-drippings. Serve hot in a covered dish.


Mashed Potatoes

Pare and boil till done, drain, and mash in the kettle until perfectly smooth; add milk or cream, and butter and salt; beat like cake with a large spoon, and the more they are beaten the nicer they become. Put in a dish, smooth, place a lump of butter in the center, sprinkle with pepper; or add one or two eggs well-beaten, pepper, mix thoroughly, put in baking dish, dip a knife in sweet milk, smooth over, wetting every part with milk, and place in a hot oven twenty minutes.

 

Cranberry Sauce

After removing all soft berries, wash thoroughly, place for about two minutes in scalding water, remove, and to every pound fruit add three-quarters of a pound granulated sugar and a half pint water; stew together over a moderate but steady fire. Be careful to cover and not to stir the fruit, but occasionally shake the vessel, or apply a gentler heat if in danger of sticking or burning. If attention to these particulars be given, the berries will retain their shape to a considerable extent, which adds greatly to their appearance on the table. Boil from five to seven minutes, remove from fire, turn into a deep dish, and set aside to cool. If to be kept, they can be put up at once in air-tight jars.

Christmas Plum Pudding

One quart seeded raisins, pint currants, half pint citron cut up, quart of apples peeled and chopped, a quart of fresh and nicely chopped beef-suet, a quart of sweet milk, a heaping quart of stale bread-crumbs, eight eggs beaten separately, pint sugar, grated nutmeg, tea-spoon salt; flour fruit thoroughly from a quart of flour, then mix remainder as follows: In a large bowl or tray put the eggs with sugar, nutmeg and milk, stir in the fruit, bread-crumbs and suet, one after the other until all are used, adding enough flour to make the fruit stick together, which will take about all the quart; dip pudding-cloth in boiling-water, dredge on inside a thick coating of flour, put in pudding and tie tightly, allowing room to swell, and boil from two to three hours in a good-sized pot with plenty of hot water, replenishing as needed from tea-kettle. When done, turn in a large flat dish and send to table with a sprig of holly, or any bit of evergreen with bright berries, stuck in the top. Serve with any pudding-sauce. This recipe furnishes enough for twenty people, but if the family is small, one-half the quantity may be prepared, or it is equally good warmed over by steaming.

For sauce, cream a half pound sweet butter, stir in three-quarters pound brown sugar, and the beaten yolk of an egg; simmer for a few moments over a slow fire, stirring almost constantly; when near boiling add a half pint bottled grape-juice, and serve after grating a little nutmeg on the surface.

Mince-Meat Pie

Two bowls chopped apples, one of chopped meat, with one-fourth pound suet, grated rind and juice of one lemon, two tea-cups molasses, one large tea-spoon each of cinnamon and cloves, one nutmeg, one pound raisins, half pound currants, one-fourth pound citron cut fine, one quart cider, and sugar and salt to taste.

Velvet Sponge Cake

Two cups sugar, six eggs leaving out the whites of three, one cup boiling hot water, two and one half cups flour, one table-spoon baking-powder in the flour; beat the yolks a little, add the sugar and beat fifteen minutes; add the three beaten whites, and the cup of boiling water just before the flour; flavor with a tea-spoon lemon extract and bake in three layers, putting between them icing made by adding to the three whites of eggs beaten to a stiff froth, six dessert-spoons of pulverized sugar to each egg, and lemon to flavor.

Lady's Cake

One-half cup butter, one and a half of sugar, two of flour, nearly one of sweet milk, half tea-spoon soda, one of cream tartar, whites of four eggs well beaten ; flavor with peach or almond.