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Mince-Pyes of Stinking Meat

Plum Pudding Mrs Beeton Colour
View examples from books in the University of Leeds Cookery Collection illustrating the stories behind some traditional Christmas dishes, and look at the variety of ways in which people have celebrated Christmas over the centuries.
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Triumphs and Trophies, Robert May
Robert May's description of a Christmas Party
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Mince Pyes of Stinking Meat
Mince pie recipe - stinking meat
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Vegetarian Christmas Recipes 1914
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Rotherham Food Advisory Bureau Christmas Recipes
Second World War home front Christmas
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Plum Pudding Mrs Beeton Colour
Origins of the Christmas Pudding
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First Christmas pudding recipe
Recipe for earliest ancestor of Christmas Pudding
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Hannah Glasse recipe for Plum Porridge.
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James Gillray 'Plumb-pudding in danger' cartoon.
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The plum pudding becomes a Christmas dish.
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Christmas Pudding T-Shirt
The ubiquity of the Christmas pudding today
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Mincemeat as a Christmas food was first documented in 1557 by Thomas Tusser whose Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry includes mince or ‘shred’ pies in a list of foods that were standard at Christmas (Special Collections holds several early editions of this book).

This recipe is taken from The country housewife’s family companion published in 1750, which covered all aspects of household management, from recipes to medicines and animal husbandry.

The recipe describes how a woman, given spare offal from the lord of Gaddesden Manor's household, which would sometimes be 'stinking', through the 'negligence of careless servants' made seasoned mince pies to disguise the taste of the meat.

Recipes like this, which describe the living conditions of the rural poor in the mid eighteenth century, show how the cookery collection can give insight into experiences which would often be overlooked.

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