Christmas Meat Part 1 - The Boars Head

Now this is something you don't see dished up on the 25th December nowadays!

Although it would have been quite common in Medieval and Tudor England and the tradition carries on in some Oxford Colleges. 

The boars head in hand bring I

With garlands gay and rosemary

(These are the words from an original Boars Head Carol printed in 1521)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ1N4Flm7Ko

and according to this youtube from a few years ago - in the US too.

                                        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InqbGmtNIUo

This dish was always served with mustard and is actually what we know now as brawn, something that I made a few times when we kept pigs. Although we always had the head cut in half before getting it back from the butcher as there is a surprising amount of meat on a pigs head, and I would put it to set in a bowl rather than putting it back in the cleaned pigs head skin!

Apologies as I'm sure someone has already mentioned this in their Blogmas posts and I copied some of it from one of my own posts from few years ago! Difficult to be original in December in Blogland!

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I watched/ half watched the programmes  I'd planned yesterday and  the final part of  'The War Between Land and Sea' had a very clever ending.  

Wartime Christmas puddings were made and today there isn't much to do, I ought to get out for a bit of a walk as it looks like being a mostly sunny day.