Christmas dinner in the trenches of WWI was rarely as festive as it was back home,
but almost every British soldier could count on a slice of Christmas pudding
even if that pudding was pretty basic due to wartime rationing.
So thank you to Cometeer for sponsoring this video as I make a ration friendly Christmas pudding from 1915
this time on Tasting History.
World War I was hell on Earth
which made things like celebrating Christmas day all the more special for the troops on the front lines.
Some celebrations were ones for the history books like the famous Christmas Truce of 1914
when the German and Allied troops came out of the trenches to play football in No Man's Land,
that desolate space between the lines which was a tangle of barbed wire and shell holes
but that was a one-time event. More often the day was pretty routine.
"On Christmas Day we were in the firing line and were served one slice of pudding and seven dates.
But it was so cold and we were always wet."
So while some British troops got to enjoy big lavish dinners of turkey and potatoes and dressing,
most only had a slice of plum pudding to break up the monotony that was their daily ration
of bully beef and hardtack.
[Clack clack]
And while some of these pudding arrived in a tin
many were packages from home lovingly steamed by mothers, and wives, and sisters
to send to their boys at the front.
But with the war came rationing of many of the ingredients that made a Christmas plum pudding so rich,
and so in November of 1915 The Bystander published several recipes
that neglected the more hard to find ingredients like this recipe for Cheap Christmas Pudding.
"Half a pound of finely chopped suet, three quarters of a pound of raisins and currants,
a half pound each of flour, sugar, potatoes, and carrots, one nutmeg, 2 ounces of candied peel,
a little salt and cinnamon. Grate the potatoes and carrots raw and add them last.
It is an improvement to use half flour and half breadcrumbs.
This quantity makes two large puddings, which must be steamed nine hours."
So it's quite different from most pudding recipes which have either egg or cream or at least brandy to give it some moisture.
This has no liquid added so I'm guessing it's just the carrots and potatoes that are
going to give it any kind of moisture.
That said I'm gonna guess it's going to be pretty dry as well so you'll want something to drink with it,
and in the trenches that probably would have meant coffee,
and it's really too bad that they didn't have Cometeer our sponsor today in 1915 because making their coffee is the easiest thing ever.
See Cometeer is brewed coffee that is flash frozen and delivered to your home,
and it doesn't require any machine to make so it is perfect when you want a cup of coffee at home without any hassle,
and for iced coffee which is what I like to drink it's just icewater,
the melted or defrosted coffee and stir.
Ya done! But the real question is does it taste good?
And the answer is absolutely. In fact I was kind of pleasantly surprised
at how fresh brewed it tastes. It's really wonderful.
So I am definitely a Cometeer coffee convert. In fact I've also started using it in
coffee cocktails and for a limited time only they are giving $40 off of your first order
at cometeer.com when you use my code. I will put a link in the description.
It is seriously worth giving a try.
Now other than the coffee what you'll need for this pudding recipe is:
one cup or 120 grams of suet, one and third cup or 170 grams of raisins and currants,
1 cup of flour, one cup of bread crumbs, one cup of brown sugar, one heaping cup of grated potatoes,
one heaping cup of grated carrots, one teaspoon of nutmeg, two tablespoons or 28 grams of candied peel,
a quarter teaspoon of salt, and a half teaspoon of cinnamon.
Now I've cut all the amounts of the original recipe in half because it is for two large puddings,
and I just want one large pudding but if you want to double it.
So start by mixing all of your dry ingredients together in a large bowl, basically everything but the potatoes and the carrots.
Once everything is well mixed then you can add potatoes and the carrots, and like I said
this is where a lot of the moisture is going to be coming from so don't squeeze any of the liquid out, keep it all in.
Once everything is completely mixed then you can prepare your pudding basin.
You want to butter it well and then cut a circle of parchment paper the size of the bottom and butter it on one side
and then set it in butter side up.
Then pour in your batter gently pressing it down, and smooth the top.
Then we come to the tricky part: creating a watertight seal around the pudding.
To do that take a large square of parchment and lay it on top of a slightly larger square of aluminum foil,
and then fold them both over and back to create a sort of crease in the middle that will allow for
some movement when the pudding expands.
Then set this on top of the pudding parchment side down and wrap it around the rim.
Then tie a string around the rim as tight as possible,
and it really helps if you have a proper pudding basin for this because the rim tends to stick out further so it can really
grab onto that string which you're going to want.
Then trim the edge of the parchment and tuck the foil in under it to form the seal.
Finally make a handle by looping another string through the string that's tied around the rim
and make sure that it holds so you can easily lift it without the string coming undone.
This is the part that scares me the most whenever I am making a pudding
but so far I've never lost one... so far.
Then set the pudding in a pot and pour boiling water in it until it comes about two-thirds up the side of the basin.
Then set it over medium heat, put the lid on and let it steam for 9 full hours.
Every hour or so you're going to want to add probably a little bit more boiling water, if it goes too low then you're frying the pudding and not steaming it.
Now I am really curious how this is going to work out because the the mixture is
so much drier than any pudding that I've ever made especially a Christmas pudding
like the Victorian plum pudding that I made in the episode on Christmas puddings.
That was a figgy pudding with eggs and brandy and those things were hard to get during WWI.
So I don't know how or even even if this is going to work out.
I really imagine that it's just going to crumble when I take it out of the steamer
which after 9 hours will be very discouraging, but yeah
we will find out together once I tell you a little bit more about what Christmas dinner was like during WWI.
As a British soldier during WWI the quality of your Christmas dinner would depend on a number of things.
First, what front were you on? How close to the front were you,
and at what point during the war was it because as the war went on the quality of Christmas dinners declined,
but in that first Christmas dinner in 1914 there was a definite concerted effort
to bring the Christmas spirit to the boys at the front especially if you were an officer.
"I went up to see the Lincoln colonel and there I found the second in command and the adjutant sitting down to a jolly good Christmas
which they'd sent across and told me to come and join and we had roast pheasant...
and plum pudding and plenty of rum. Of course, the colonel could always get rather more than the ration!
No, we had a real slap up meal."
But even many of the enlisted men that first year wrote home about dinners that included ham and roast beef,
potatoes, asparagus, parsnips, mince pies, fruit, nuts and puddings.
Some even got turkeys even if they had to cook them themselves.
"First Christmas we had, someone get a turkey. But I don't know where they got it from.
But we made a trough in the ground and put a fire in it and then put some iron bars across the top and laid the turkey on the top.
It was a sort of barbecue thing you know."
And if you were at the very front line and couldn't sit down to a full Christmas dinner
you might be lucky enough to get a care package from home or even from the royal family.
Around 400,000 Princess Mary boxes arrived at the front lines by Christmas 1914,
and they were a great deal more delivered in the weeks and years after.
These were brass boxes engraved with an image of Princess Mary the 17 year old daughter of King George V.
See in October of 1914 Princess Mary had started a fund to provide some Christmas gifts
to everyone "wearing the King's uniform on Christmas Day, 1914."
The boxes could include candy, spices, chocolate, pencils, pipes tobacco, and cigarettes.
They also included a picture of the Princess and a greeting from King George V and Queen Mary which read
"May God protect you and bring you safely home."
Less elaborate packages were often put together not for the entire army but for individual units
by the people from their hometown.
The Leicester County Club sent a box of chocolates to every man in the Leicestershire regiment
and a brewery in Guildford sent hampers which included canned Irish stew,
canned pineapple, mustard, peppermints, and of course Christmas puddings among other things.
And it may have been some of those gifts from home that British soldiers shared and traded to of all people
the German troops in the opposing trench.
One of the most enduring stories of Christmas during WWI is that of the Christmas Truce that first December.
"As darkness came on, lights were seen in the German lines in the Rue du Bois...
later on... their whole line was illuminated.
I think they had hoisted lanterns on tall poles on their parapet and in their trenches.
After they began to sing .
They sang beautifully. The whole effect was weird in the extreme.
They then started shouting across to us, which we replied. I think everyone felt very homesick on Xmas Eve.
Thoughts of our families at homes were uppermost in our minds. The night passed without a shot being fired on either side.
[In the morning] the Germans started shouting remarks across the lines which
at first were not complementary. Afterwards they shouted greetings such as "Good morning Englishman,
a merry xmas, you no shoot,we know shoot.
There was no shooting all day."
Not only was there no shooting but a few brave souls on either side got out of the trenches
and went to greet each other in No Man's Land
and eventually started trading gifts and food and drink, and tobacco,
and then they started playing football.
There are even reports in several letters that say that the Germans won a match 3 to 2.
The truce also allowed the men to gather the bodies of their fallen comrades and give them proper burials.
Now the following day, Boxing Day, the ceasefire ended pretty much everywhere,
a few places it lasted for a few days but
mostly the the fighting began again and it was not repeated the next year,
nor ever again, it was just that first Christmas in 1914.
Perhaps it's because the brutality of the war really ramped up in that next year and
it's kind of hard to celebrate Christmas with your enemy when you're also trying to kill them.
The following year 1915 Private William Bowyer wrote
"On Christmas Eve we have a short voluntary service and communion in a bell tent
very strange singing 'Peace on Earth' and off to kill all we can early next morning..."
It's a fair point,
though before they went off to kill all they could the next morning
"We had a few comforts given out, including a piece of Christmas pudding.....
Our Colonel wishes us a happy Christmas and we move away into the night,
passing other bodies of troops moving off, with artillery rumbling along... we have a cessation midday for our Christmas dinner,
bully and biscuits."
Even by that second year many of the Christmas feasts had dwindled and for those in the front lines
it was rations just like every other day, plus that obligatory slice of Christmas pudding
which often came in a can which boasted a hearty Christmas greeting from the city of London territorial Association,
and they were perfect for the trenches because all you needed to prepare them was a pot of boiling water.
"Directions - place the tin in boiling water and continue boiling as follows:
1 pound tin one hour and 10 minutes extra for each additional pound."
But for those a little further back from the front line they were able to find not only pudding but some turkey
whether it was raising a few and preparing them themselves or purchasing them from merchants further from the lines
which is what one company in the 38th Welsh division did when they paid 592 francs for 25 turkeys in 1915.
But as the war went on even the turkeys became a little more scarce
and there are still records of big Christmas feasts for some of the soldiers but more often the
diary entries and letters home read like these from 1916.
"Somewhere in France - there was no real Christmas dinner just the usual rations as the parcels from home didn't arrive until the afternoon."
"My Christmas dinner was a tin of bully beef which I dug out of the snow,
because it had been discarded by the previous occupants of the gun pit.
The cook together, with... the ration lorry couldn't come because the roads were in such a state on account of ice and snow.
And so my Christmas was a tin of bully beef... just fried it up and made a hash of it. That was 1916!"
And 1917 was even more meager though one company who were unable to get back from the front lines,
and so didn't get a Christmas dinner were promised a treat of milk and rum punch but
"the officer in charge took a sip and spat it out...
The cooks, gloriously drunk, had substituted the demijohns of rum
with the demijohns of whale oil! So only one out of the 4 dixies, I think, had any rum in it.
The rest had milk and whale oil. So none of us got any rum punch!"
And on the sea it was pretty much the same story. A royal Marine recalled being on a ship at Christmas in 1917.
"All the fresh food disappeared and we had a Christmas dinner of salt pork and rice, which wasn't very appetizing."
See the Brits had been fighting for three years now and each Christmas got a little bleaker
which probably made it all the more galling to watch the Americans who were celebrating their first Christmas at war
getting all of that goodwill and hospitality that that the British had got back in 1914.
"Bountiful provision made for armed forces.
Every American soldier in France is to get his Christmas turkey, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, and mince pie after all...
One battleship has announced that its Christmas menu will be: mock turtle soup, olives, roast turkey, (sage dressing),
giblet gravy, cranberry sauce, potatoes au gratin, celery, roast pork loin, mixed pickles,
buttered beets, applesauce, mashed sweet potatoes, asparagus, salad, cheese and crackers. Apple pie,
chocolate cake, ice cream, fresh fruit, nuts and raisins, coffee, cigars."
And it was biscuits and bully beef for poor Tommy in the trenches...
unless your ma back at home was lucky enough to scroungeup some potatoes and carrots
so she could make you and send you this cheap Christmas pudding.
So after nine hours your pudding should be well steamed so you can take it out of the water
very carefully remove the string and foil and turn it out onto a plate.
Huzzah! I am actually shocked that it didn't just crumble into pieces.
Now most in the trenches would have probably eaten it just like this but if you were lucky enough to have access to the commissary
maybe you could make some sort of sauce for it like this brandy sauce which is also from the 1915 article.
All you do is cream together a quarter pound or 113 grams of butter with a third cup or 70 grams of sugar.
Then slowly add a couple ounces of sherry or brandy,
and at that point it's kind of like clotted cream which can be used but you can also warm it up just enough so that it pours on top,
and here we are a rationed Christmas pudding ready to send to the front lines and in France.
Here we go.
Hm. :)
That's wonderful.
I actually think I like it more than more than a rich plum pudding.
The carrots add a- you get a little bit of that carrot cake flavor,
and it's just lovely.
It's also not dry at all. In fact it's very very moist but it isn't
as dense as as many plum puddings can be
which I actually think I prefer.
As for the brandy sauce,
I could just drink that by the glass.
Now while the fighting men in the British army were being sent plum Christmas puddings like this,
they were also sending things home as well, Christmas cards.
Some were like postcards that relied mostly on humor to carry the holiday greeting,
but some were unbelievably elaborate embroidered Christmas cards likely made by women in Belgium and France.
Some even had a silk pocket to include a letter.
One of the most prolific senders of these cards
was a private to his wife back in England and it's almost as corny as a Hallmark Christmas special
because his actual name was Holly Christmas.
"To my darling sweetheart. May every joy attend you this xmas, with fondest love and kisses
from one only absent in person.
Your only boy Holly."
Have a merry Christmas everyone and I'll see you next time on Tasting History.