Christmas Food

It would appear, according to some of the menus, that everyone in the well-to=do houses in earlier times over indulged at Christmas.  Christmas dinner consisted of a vast number of courses.  The meal began with the traditional boar's head followed by Christmas pudding.  These two courses were brought in accompanied by loud cheers and blowing of trumpets.  The pudding consisted of  a kind of porridge boiled in a pan, made out of beef broth  thickened with breadcrumbs  and flavoured with raisins, currants, prunes and spices.. Then the real meal began consisting of beef joints, roasted swan,, venison, capons , peacocks and many side dishes.  These were followed by sweetmeats washed down by copious draughts of ale.  Remember Charles Laughton in the film Henry VIII tossing the bones to the dogs?  It makes our feasting sound positively frugal..