Poultry and game

Everybody knows the old Christmas song in which the true love gives his lady a partridge in a pear tree, two turtle-doves, three French hens, four calling birds, not to mention swans a-swimming and geese a-laying; what they may not know is that these were traditional Christmas presents - all destined to end up on the table.

The partridge would arrive spiced and garnished with fruit, the doves would be from the domestic dovecote which provided households and farms with pigeons all the year round. The calling birds were song-birds - blackbirds, and thrushes were eaten with relish in pies as were larks and sparrows, threaded on spits like beads on a necklace and roasted in front of the fire. The French hens, previously crammed within an inch of their life, with raisins, breadcrumbs and milk, became so fat that they could barely stand. The swans, swimming on the river Thames in their thousands, were ‘eaten by the English, like geese or ducks’ to the astonishment of visiting foreigners. And geese were then the most accepted of traditional Christmas fare - (if you couldn’t afford a goose you would have an enormous ox-heart and stuff it with sage and onions, calling it ‘mock-goose’).