History of York

For the well-off Victorian, Christmas food could include goose or turkey, Yorkshire pie with aspic jelly, trifle, ices, and Christmas pudding.  Cassell’s Household Guide of about 1890 still lists roast beef alongside turkey and plum pudding as the staples of an English dinner at Christmas time.

Yorkshire Pie was a famous regional luxury which, in its hey day in the late 18th century, according to one recipe included a turkey, a goose, a partridge, and a pigeon all inside one another so that it looked like a turkey. Then a jointed hare was added together with woodcocks and moor game and at least 4 pounds of butter.  It was all put into a pie made from a bushel of flour. It was very often sent to London in a box as a present.

Plum cakes were clearly something of a local speciality too...