Lighthearted: If you're not British, what's the Christmas food that you just can't eat?

[BetsyBobbins]

I've been in the UK 22 years now, but I can't still bring myself to eat some of the traditional British Christmas food. I tried them once and never again. Mind you, this is coming from someone who got used to, and now loves baked beans among other things. But Good Lord, what's up with the Victorian puddings and cakes?

Christmas pudding: Looks like Elephant poo, smells like stale booze and tastes like soil.

Christmas cake: More of the same. Looks horrid, smells weird and has an even worse texture, a mix of soil and sawdust. Plus, how can you trust something that was cooked months in advance? I don’t.

Mince pies: now, that is the worst of all. Looks good, I’ll give them that, but they smell like vomit and have the texture of baby sick.

Tell me the ones you never got used to

Why do you say “if you’re not British”? Most of us will dislike something, but it seems you just want to sneer at us whilst excluding us from the conversation. Why?

I'm just watching James Martin cooking Parsnips with honey and sherry. They look delicious.

In defence of the carbs, many extras in a traditional meal were to stretch out the meat and other expensive/scarce ingredients- Yorkshire pudding, stuffing, bread and dripping, a slice of bread to mop up the left over gravy.

The veg selection would have been meagre in post industrialised Britain and lots of families would have had no space to grow veg or raise meat.

It's a feast in midwinter using whatever was available including the dried fruits.

I hate turkey as a vegetarian. It's tricky to cook enough not to poison people without over cooking. I then cook the left overs into curry or risotto for days.

This year I'm hosting 10 adults and the party includes meat eaters, vegetarians, vegans, lactose intolerant and Gluten sensitive. We'll have a lovely time.

I'm quite sure in another country we'd be tucking into picked herring or fermented bean cakes. Enjoy whatever you are doing. 🎄 🤶

My family are Irish so we had most of the same Christmas food growing up, I’ve never liked mince pies, Christmas cakes, Christmas pudding and my mum always made trifle for desert on Christmas Day which is also not my thing - very disappointing desert wise! We always had cocktail sausages rather than pigs in blankets and I gave the sprouts a swerve as well.

DH (forrin) and DD1 love all the traditional Christmas foods but this year DD2
and I have come up with a cunning plan to make Tiramisu, so for once we have a desert we like.

Trifle would have started as a way of using slightly stale cake by soaking in tinned fruit and slathering in custard. Bread and butter pudding a way of using stale bread.
I love both. They remind me of my grandmother's. My kids think wet sponge in Trifle is disgusting and demand Pavlova.

Bread sauce, brandy butter 🤢🤢🤢

Ground almonds, icing sugar, caster sugar, a little rose-water and eggs is the recipe for proper marzipan here too. This is how my mother (British) made it. I now make it to put on my Christmas cake, which isn’t dry, vile or weird but juicy, fragrant and spiked with preserved ginger and not too much dried fruit.

Marzipan was originally 'marchpane' and was made in England since medieval times as a high-status food, usually formed into elaborate decorations that might be baked. It gradually evolved into the modern 'marzipan'. The commercial stuff bears no resemblance to the real thing, I agree.

I just realised why I hate marzipan! Rose water😶 I always wondered why I like almonds but not in marzipan

If you live somewhere that's lovely and warm and sunny in December, it makes total sense to eat outside. Unfortunately in the UK in December it's usually cold, often wet, not often sunny, with very short hours of daylight. Staying inside and feasting is a way of coping with the weather, and bracing ourselves for the remaining weeks of winter. Historically, it would have been a good idea to put on a few pounds to help with the cold.

We have a neighbour who is a dab hand with the barbecue, so the main part of their Christmas dinner gets cooked in the garden, but certainly not eaten there!

I'm British and dislike mince pies but it's red cabbage and parsnips that really give me the major shivers . I do love bread sauce though.

Because people tend to like what they grew up eating.

Oh, I hate trifle as well. I think of it as war food - ekeing out rations.

Goodness me no. It's a much more extravagant dessert than ration food. Cream, custard, jelly, tinned fruit, sponge and sherry! Not to mention the hundreds and thousands on top.

Someone upthread said vegetables would have been scarce after the war. My impression is they were always available in quantity, if you were happy to eat home-grown vegetables - i.e. British, not imported. Carrots, parsnips, onions, leeks, potatoes, cauliflower, cabbage, sprouts, kale, swede, turnips in the winter. Lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, radishes, peas and green/runner beans in the summer. Cultivated mushrooms available most of the year, I think. Some veg in tins. Until the 1970s not many British people would ever have had peppers, courgettes, aubergines or other exotic imports. I enjoy those now, but any vegetable is good if cooked with care.

OP I suggest you haven't had very good examples of Christmas cake (Christmas pudding I can't stomach either). My mother's was moist and delicious, but rich so only a finger with a cup of tea required!
I am English but grew up abroad. Some of my relatives do not understand my must have bread sauce. I can't stand trifle (yuck yuck yuck).

Roasts, Just Roasts....bleuurgh

I'm 44. Not sure if we were the first generation or not but I don't remember a Christmas without them.

The cheese footballs are so strange! Me and my DS love them but I don't know why because in theory I think they are disgusting 😂

Also love Bittermints!

I’m not British but this thread makes me feel uncomfortable. Just like the negative American threads. They seem to be a bit mean spirited as they lumping a whole culture together and making comments about them. But maybe I’m too sensitive 🤷🏾‍♀️

Placemarking for later

That explains why a lot of British people don’t like traditional British Christmas food. The past is a foreign country and one visit a year isn’t necessarily enough to get a taste for it.
It doesn’t answer my actual question though.

So what are the newer additions? Turkey and pigs in blankets? I need to google some from 70 years or so ago

Red cabbage, pigs in blankets, cauliflower cheese, Yorkshire puddings (if not having beef). When I was growing up in the 1960s turkey was the stereotypical meat associated with Christmas dinner, so featured in adverts, books, films etc, but it was too expensive for us (admittedly there were just four of us, so not that practical either) so we had a chicken. We did eventually progress to turkey in the 1970s. I suspect the price had come down a bit then with intensive rearing methods.

Please can someone let me know a good recipe for Jamaican rum/black cake? I think I need to try it, it sounds amazing!

I am British and fwiw, I don't find this thread at all rude

If you don't grow up eating some foods, I can see how you are very unlikely to ever like them... looking at you, black pudding!

Thanks for understanding.

I love it here, have been here for 22 years, eat most everything but it's particularly those three items that I don't like. Heck, I even eat sprouts if they're are offered to me!

Yup. Pretty sure many people living in other countries have a"god no" Christmas food list too. Like Slovak soup with sauerkraut, czech fish soup, borsch in Poland and others, carp in central Europe and so on.

There si a list every year of worst foods around the world. It's interesting one!