Cookery Elisabeth Luard

CHRISTMAS is all about the quantity, as is clear from Hannah Glasse’s Yorkshire Christmas Pie as delivered in Peter Brears’ magnificent history-with-recipes Traditional Food in Yorkshire (Prospect £25). This, a stupendous layering of boned-out birds, gives an indication of what was available from their own backyards to the affluent landowners of England in 1796.

The birds, in descending order of size, are turkey, goose, chicken, partridge and pigeon, all to be dusted with salt seasoned with grated nutmeg, powdered cloves and ground peppercorns. Wrap each bird one into the other, reform in the shape of the turkey, and place on a wrapper of sturdy pastry prepared with a bushel of flour.

A bushel, as I’m sure you know, is four pecks or eight gallons, which, you’ll be relieved to hear, is 36 litres plus an extra handful for luck.

So far, so good. Now take a jointed hare and as much as you can get of woodcock, moorgame and other wildfowl, and season as before. Pack the hare-joints on one side of the turkey, the birds on the other and distribute four pounds of butter gaily round about.

Bring up the sides of the pastry-case, cover with a pastry lid, bake for at least four hours in a high oven and send it all up in a box to London to your best-beloved just in time for Christmas. If your best-beloved is still talking to you on Boxing Day, you’ve got yourself a wife – or husband, depending on your preference.

Now for the pudding – iced, I think, to soothe the beaded brow after all the fuss.

Christmas pudding ice cream

This is a smooth, creamy, frozen custardice that delivers all the joy with none of the heaviness and hassle of the traditional Christmas pud. Cinnamon-flavoured, darkened with molasses and stirred with rum-soaked dried fruit and toasted nuts, you can freeze it in a pudding-shape, or make little individual castle-puddings. Such a relief. Serves 6–8

4 tbsp raisins 4 tbsp dried apricots, diced as small as the raisins 2 tbsp dark rum 2 tbsp orange juice 600ml single cream 1 short piece cinnamon stick 4 large egg-yolks 2 tbsp sugar 2 tbsp molasses or black treacle 1 tsp powdered cinnamon 1 tbsp chopped crystallised peel 2 tbsp toasted flaked almonds To finish: 1 tbsp molasses or black treacle (optional) handful fresh cranberries

Put the raisins and diced apricots to soak in the brandy and orange juice for a few hours or overnight. Strain, reserving the liquor as well as the fruit. Set aside a tablespoon of the fruit for finishing.

Put the cream and the cinnamon stick in a heavy saucepan (if you rinse it around with cold water first, the cream is less likely to stick and burn). Heat gently till the cream forms a skin and remove from the heat just before it boils.

Meanwhile, whisk the egg yolks with the sugar in a bowl till light and pale. Whisk a tablespoon of the hot cream into the yolk-and-sugar mixture, then stir the mixture back into the cream in the pan. Using a wooden spoon and taking care to keep moving the mixture over the base so it doesn’t scramble, stir over a gentle heat until thick enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon. Have a bowl of cold water ready to cool the base of the pan if it starts to stick.

Remove from the heat, take out the cinnamon stick and stir in the molasses. Stir in the soaked fruit, 1 tbsp crystalised peel and 1 tbsp flaked almonds. Tip it all into a bowl and leave to cool – you can speed up the process by stirring it over a bowl of iced water.

Line a 1 litre pudding bowl with clingfilm and pour in the custard. Freeze till solid (or chill in the ice cream-maker according to instructions). Remove from the freezer half an hour before you’re ready to serve. Unmould by reversing the whole thing onto a serving dish - the clingfilm allows the pudding to drop out quite easily. (You can pop it back in the freezer to keep its shape till you’re ready).

To finish, boil the reserved soaking liquor with the extra tablespoon of molasses (and maybe another slurp of brandy) till reduced to a spoonful of thick, syrupy sauce. Stir in the reserved spoonful of fruit and almonds and spoon it over the pudding just before you serve. Top with a few cranberries – or not, as you please.