Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

All our married life I have cooked turkey for the Christmas dinner, even doing a 12kg one for a party once. However, now that some of the brood have left the nest, we have decided to fore-go the joys of turkey and turkey soup for 4 consecutive days and I am doing a traditional Roast Beef and Yorkshire pudding, something not typical in Spain.
It set me to wondering why we have turkey and dredging through my memory banks, it seemed that for the first 10 years of my life, we always had chicken for Xmas dinner, with a roast on Boxing Day.
Hunting through the internet as to the reason for the Traditional Turkey does not clarify much, as it seems the UK tradition was goose and the US tradition was turkey, until goose became too expensive and turkey production became cheap. (I cooked goose once but it produces so much fat I was worried about setting the house on fire.)
My Costa Rican wife insists we makes Tamales for Xmas, but they are always eaten on the 24th.
I wondered if anyone had any thoughts on why we have turkey and what people had if they didn't have turkey?

Hullo Hopgood!
I am sure that you are correct about chicken for Christmas dinner when we were young. In fact, as I recall it, chicken was the height of luxury and good-living after wartime austerity and food rationing. I think that turkey just sort of crept in (perhaps, in the 60s or 70s?) and then became an instant tradition.

Ask Bernard Matthews - I am sure he'd know!

We always had chicken-"I've ordered a nice capon, dear". I suspect my mother thought that turkey was too upmarket and middle class for "our class". We haven't had turkey for years, and I think a good free range chicken has more flavour. Boxing Day is gammon day chez O'Riordan.

Happy Christmas one and all.
Maggie

We had turkey every year - sent by post from my grandparents' farm in County Wexford. It was wrapped in sacking, with the feet sticking out. I bet that wouldn't be allowed nowadays on health and safety grounds! One year the turkey almost didn't make it, there was a knock at the door at 6pm on Christmas Eve and a postman, bird in hand, saying 'We thought you might want this!'.

One of my Irish aunts sent a chicken and also a pack of farm butter, again can you imagine anyone sending butter through the post nowadays?

We haven't had turkey for years either none of us like it very much. We usually have duck. One decent size one does 4 people so we usually have 2 between 5 (or 7 if the parents come).

Like Catharine, we always had a turkey sent from Ireland. It too came in its feathers with a label round its neck (I still used to deliver pheasants like that when I worked as a Christmas postman).

Turkeys are in my opinion not so nice as geese, but much more economical. A 4.5 kg goose will feed 6 if you're lucky, a turkey of the same weight will feed at least 10, and cost half the price. There's a thread on precisely these lines at leo.org, a German-English dictionary-cum-forum. Someone said that turkeys appeared in England (via Spain) under Henry VIII, but I find that hard to believe. Someone else came up with a story that the Pilgrim fathers took their turkeys with them from Europe. I don't think I believe that either.

One problem I've noticed in England is that people cook turkeys as if they were geese, and the result is much too dry. This must be some ancient folk memory. (Like stuffing them with breadcrumbs.) Turkeys are quite hard to cook properly, I think. Geese are easy -- shove itin a very hot oven, and take it out when it's obviously done.

It's always been turkey as far back as I can remember to the early 50's.

It's a turkey breast roast for us this year. Left to my own devices I'd have salmon, I think, but turkey is traditional. We're having Christmas Day tomorrow, and Mum is coming over to join us, because on Tuesday we'll be in the air somewhere over the Atlantic, en route to the Caribbean. It'll be my first non-traditional Christmas, and to be honest I'd really sooner have gone next week, but the bunch of pals we're going with were booking the cruise that leaves on Christmas Day, so Christmas Day it is! Should be interesting, anyway (and warmer than the uK )

We will have turkey on xmas day at the fiance's parents and on christmas eve at my parents i think we are having roast beef or something-i couldnt cope with two turkey dinners its not my favourite meat. Although i think it should be thankful its nothing like the infamours christmas dinner episode of the vicar of dibley

We are having goose this year (mostly turkey in previous years, chicken when I was a child).

I wanted a frozen bird, to avoid last-minute fuss, and the frozen turkeys looked too big for our upright freezer. The goose, being a flatter shape, seemed a better bet.

The traditional Christmas Eve dinner in continental Europe is fish, presumably because Christmas Eve is the last day of Advent, which is supposed to be a fast (those were the days). In Poland and to a certain extent in Germany, people eat carp, which commands high prices. They're welcome; might as well eat pin cushions soaked in mud.

We used to have "green eel" (eel in dill sauce) but then my family said they didn't like it, and we had trout for a few years. Tonight we're having paella.

Bon appetit!

michael scuffil wrote:
We used to have "green eel" (eel in dill sauce) but then my family said they didn't like it, and we had trout for a few years. Tonight we're having paella.

Bon appetit!

According to all my Valencian friends, Paella is a heavy dish (on the stomach that is) and should only be eaten at lunch time. They allege that only tourists eat it in the evening.
But then they have their breakfast at 9.30 and call it lunch, so who knows?

jhopgood wrote:

michael scuffil wrote:
We used to have "green eel" (eel in dill sauce) but then my family said they didn't like it, and we had trout for a few years. Tonight we're having paella.

Bon appetit!

According to all my Valencian friends, Paella is a heavy dish (on the stomach that is) and should only be eaten at lunch time. They allege that only tourists eat it in the evening.
But then they have their breakfast at 9.30 and call it lunch, so who knows?

would that be am or pm?

We are having salmon tonight.

englishangel wrote:

jhopgood wrote:

michael scuffil wrote:
We used to have "green eel" (eel in dill sauce) but then my family said they didn't like it, and we had trout for a few years. Tonight we're having paella.

Bon appetit!

According to all my Valencian friends, Paella is a heavy dish (on the stomach that is) and should only be eaten at lunch time. They allege that only tourists eat it in the evening.
But then they have their breakfast at 9.30 and call it lunch, so who knows?

would that be am or pm?

We are having salmon tonight.

AM

They all come to work at 8.00 am, then at 9.30 am, troop off to the local bar, armed with a sandwich wrapped in aluminium foil, and accompany this with a beer.
They still work pretty hard, until about 1.30 pm, and then come back at 3.00pm and work till 6.00pm.

We're having Costa Rican Tamales, spiced up with some red pepper sauce.

englishangel wrote:
We are having salmon tonight.

Tonight, we are having gin.

Happy Christmas all !