Wassail, Battalia Pie and Marrow Pudding: Your Menu for New Year's

 In an effort to present some food for New Year’s Eve, it becomes a bit difficult to separate the elements of cheer into specific days in the festive period. Traditional things eaten and drunk before Christmas were often consumed through New Year’s (sort of, more on that) to the Twelfth Night and Day. We shall see that when we look at a bill of fare for the traditional New Year’s Day.

My above parenthetical caveat comes from the fact that until 1752, the technical and civil New Year was 25 March (Lady’s Day) in England. The Scots were well ahead (or going retro) and changed the celebration to 1 January in 1600. However, this did not prevent there being celebrations on that day during the festive period and, as we shall see, cooks from acknowledging 1 January as a feast day called the New Year.

Returning to the search for things enjoyed on the evening, one - wassail – seems especially important in the celebrations on 31 December. We talked a fair bit about wassail in terms of both Christmas and Twelfth Night but a little more explanation and a maybe dodgy period origin of the term seems in order.

In a book originally from 1656 with the snappy title: Glossographia, or, A dictionary interpreting all such hard words of whatsoever language now used in our refined English tongue comes an entry on “Wassail or Wassale.” Dictionaries weren’t what they are today, there is not much of a definition, though what is there is useful for us: “on Twelf-day at night, or on New-years Eve.” The drink and its role were so well known, the author did not feel he needed to include more, apparently.

However, he does provide an “Origin” by quoting a story from the Anglo-Dutch translator and historian Richard Verstegen who wrote about thirty or forty years earlier:

Lady Rowena and Hengistus or Hengist were semi-legendary figures amongst the Anglo-Saxons that invaded Briton, while King Vortiger or Vortigern, was a military leader, possibly king, of the peoples who were invaded. To summarize, Rowena having been invited to dinner, presented her British host a cup of wine with the phrase Wae Heal Halford Cyning – "Be of good health, Lord King." He did not understand but got a translator to give him the correct response Drink Heal – "Drink health."

The origin is similar to what we have heard before but this time it comes from a legendary royal source. Thomas Blount, the author of Glossographia adds after: “I have also heard another (but less handsome) etymology of this word...because common people do often, wash their throats with Ale, the old Saxon liquor.” As he says, less handsome and almost certainly not true. Whether the drink’s name has roots in British and Anglo-Saxon royalty it is certainly buried deep in the history of the island where they clashed and in its New Year’s celebrations.

Having drunk our wassail – a basic recipe for one type of it is here – we can finish tonight’s thoughts with a bill of fare or menu for New Year’s Day. This comes from the same cook, Robert May, that presented a bill of fare for Christmas that we picked over a bit.

A photo from I took in Wellcome Library in London of 
a later edition of the Accomplist Cook.

Our mince pies are here again and I have explained before a little about many of the dishes and ingredients above. Some I have not included: snites or snipes are a water bird; Battalia pie and Orangado pie are dishes I would like to do at a later date but here are short explanations.

Orangado from the Orangado pie is a preserved or candied Seville orange, suckets from the Tart Royale are similar preserved sweetmeats.

Battalia (or Battaglia) pie’s name comes from the French béatilles which in turn is a diminutive of the Latin beatus. Bible readers will know the beatitudes ie. “Blessed are the...” The French word then means “little blessed things.” In the pie the little blessed things were offal, or the rest of lots of different animals. Robert May’s recipe, for instance, includes lamb-stones, veal sweetbreads, twenty cock's combs and cocks-stones as well as the main meats and artichoke, oysters, pistachios and hard-boiled egg yolks.

That one being a pretty interesting sourcing experience, I turn to one more menu item I can explain a bit - the "Marrow Pudding bak't."  But that explanation will wait until tomorrow as I have some bone marrow and plan to make it a part of my New Year’s bill of fare. Look in for that experience.