Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 10 Dec 2024Purple, green, yellow, red, blue, and white hard candies with cherry centers
City/Region: United States of America
Time Period: 1865Sugar plums go hand-in-hand with Christmas, but what exactly are they? There are recipes out there for a confection made of dried fruit and nuts that’s rolled into balls, but true Victorian sugar plums were a kind of candy made up of layers of hardened sugar syrup and gum arabic surrounding a fruit or nut core. They were pretty much the same thing as Jordan almonds.
You won’t find many recipes for them in Victorian-era cookbooks because no one really made them at home. The specialized equipment and labor involved meant that most people bought them from a confectioner, and I can see why.
Making these was a three-day endeavor for me, and I had to get a panning machine attachment for my stand mixer, and gum arabic, which I surprisingly didn’t already have in my pantry. They’re a nice sweet treat, but really more trouble than they’re worth to make at home.
Cherry Sugar-Plums. Set preserved cherries on a sieve in the stove. When they are partly dry, mix them with pounded sugar, and rub them over a sieve; dry them again, and proceed as with barberry sugar-plums.
Barberry Sugar-Plums. Take perfectly ripe barberries, stem them, dry them in a stove, and add the gum and sugar in the swinging basin. To accomplish this, after being heated in the stove, give them a coating of one part sugar, and one part gum arabic; and, when thoroughly moistened, powder with sifted sugar. Dry the coating in a stove; add a second on the next day, so as to completely cover the fruit; then thicken, and finish like the verdun sugar-plums. The fruit must be coated away from the fire. They are colored like the rose sugar-plums, and pearled like the lemon.
— The Art of Confectionery, 1865
December 29, 2025
What Are Sugar Plums? How to make real Victorian sugar plums
December 27, 2025
QotD: The US Department of War does “The Twelve Days of Christmas”
The President signed an EO directing the Department of War to assist Santa with the Twelve Days of Xmas.
Status of acquisitions follows:
Day 1 – Partridge in a Pear Tree:
The Army and Air Force are in the process of deciding whose area of responsibility Day 1 falls under.
Since the partridge is a bird, Air Force believes it should have the lead. Army, however, feels trees are part of the land component command’s area of responsibility.After three months of discussion and repeated OpsDeps tank sessions, a $1M study has been commissioned to decide who should lead this joint program.
Day 2 – Two Turtle Doves:
Since doves are birds, the Air Force claims responsibility. However, turtles are amphibious, so the Navy-Marine Corps team feel they should take the lead. Initial studies show that turtles and doves may have interoperability problems.Terms of reference are being coordinated for a four-year, $10M DARPA study.
Day 3 – Three French Hens:
At State Department instigation, the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs has blocked off-shore purchase of hens, from the French or anyone else.A $6M program is being developed to find an acceptable domestic alternative.
Day 4 – Four Calling Birds:
Source selection has been completed, with the contract awarded to AT&T.However, the award is being challenged by a small disadvantaged business.
Day 5 – Five Golden Rings:
No available rings meet MILSPEC for gold plating.A three-year, $5M accelerated development program has been initiated.
Day 6 – Six Geese a-Laying:
Six geese have been acquired.However, the shells of their eggs seem to be very fragile. It might have been a mistake to build the production facility on a nuclear waste dump at former Air Force base closed under BRAC.
Day 7 – Seven Swans a-Swimming:
Fourteen swans have been killed trying to get through the Navy SEAL training program.The program has been put on hold while the training procedures are reviewed to determine why the washout rate is so high.
Day 8 – Eight Maids a-Milking:
The entire class of maids a-milking training program at Aberdeen is involved in a sexual harassment suit against the Army.The program has been put on hold pending resolution of the lawsuit.
Day 9 – Nine Ladies Dancing:
Recruitment of Ladies has been halted by a lawsuit from the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Association”.Members claim they have a right to dance and wear women’s clothing as long as they’re off duty.
Day 10 – Ten Lords a-Leaping:
The ten lords have been abducted by terrorists. Congress has approved $2M in funding to conduct a rescue operation.Army Special Forces and a USMC MEU(SOC) are conducting a “NEO-off” competition for the right to rescue.
Day 11 – Eleven Pipers Piping:
The pipe contractor delivered the pipes on time. However, he thought DoD wanted smoking pipes. DoD lost the claim due to defective specifications.A $22M dollar retrofit program is in process to bring the pipes into spec.
Day 12 – Twelve Drummers Drumming:
Due to cutbacks, only six billets are available for drumming drummers. DoD is in the process of coordinating an RFP to obtain the six additional drummers by outsourcing. However, funds will not be available until FY 26.As a result of the above-mentioned programmatic delays, due to a high OPTEMPO that requires diversion of modernization funds to support current readiness, Christmas is hereby postponed until further notice.
“Old NFO Retired”, from social media courtesy of Moses Lambert.
Update, 29 December: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
December 26, 2025
QotD: In defence of fruitcake
To start, fruitcake has two important things going for it:
- Fruit.
- Cake.
As we all know, fruit is healthy. We are constantly being badgered by dietary experts to eat more fruit. What better source of fruit is there than fruitcake? Besides every other source, I mean.
I do think it’s important here to dispel an enduring myth that the fruit in today’s modern fruitcakes is infused with colossal amounts of sugar.
That is a lie.
It is glacéed with colossal amounts of sugar, which is an entirely different process that involves speaking French.
Okay, I am willing to admit that the fruit you typically find in fruit cake these days, assuming you find any, has been … glacéed with so much sugar it resembles Gummies more than fruit, but that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that it has the word “fruit” in it, so when your doctor asks you if you’ve been eating fruit you can give him an answer that won’t necessarily require a visit to confessional both and a half dozen Our Fathers.
[…]
Fruitcake has a long history, dating back as far as the Egyptians and has played a role in shaping our lives to this very day. Roman legions used an early form of fruitcake called satura to fuel their expansion. Did they rely on kale salads and quinoa? No, otherwise we’d all be speaking German by now. Or something.
Fruitcake is versatile as well, appropriate for both breakfast and dessert, bookending your busy day. Plus, how many desserts can you wrap up and give as an actual gift as opposed to just something you bring to a dinner party? Let’s just say you aren’t going to drop banana pudding in a FedEx box.
And yes, all jokes aside, it really can be used as a doorstop. You can’t say that about peach flambé, if only for the safety hazard.
“One of our writers was crazy enough to pen this defense of fruitcake, God bless him”, Not the Bee, 2022-12-19.
December 25, 2025
Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” is still the best-selling single of all time
I knew Bing Crosby was big with my parents’ generation (including my father, unusually, who generally had little time for American singers), but I didn’t know that Bing’s recording of “White Christmas” is still, after all these years, the top single. Ted Gioia has more:
Pop culture devours its own. The destiny of all bestsellers is to fall off the charts. Even the stars in Hollywood, like those in outer space, eventually stop shining — and it happens a lot sooner.
Consider the case of Bing Crosby. Some of my readers might not even recognize the name. But a few people still alive today can recall when Crosby was both the biggest pop singer in the world and the hottest movie star in Hollywood.
Bing Crosby publicity photo from the 1930s via The Honest Broker
If he’s remembered nowadays, it’s only during December, when his version of “White Christmas” briefly returns to heavy rotation. Even today, it ranks as the bestselling single of all time. There aren’t many records that last eighty years, and least of all in the record business, but Crosby still sits atop this chart.
Here it is (courtesy of Wikipedia):
I’ve written about Crosby before, and will again. But today I want share four of my favorite (and very different) perspectives on Bing.
Repost – “Fairytale of New York”
Time:
“Fairytale of New York” by The Pogues featuring Kirsty MacColl
This song came into being after Elvis Costello bet The Pogues’ lead singer Shane MacGowan that he couldn’t write a decent Christmas duet. The outcome: a call-and-response between a bickering couple that’s just as sweet as it is salty.
QotD: Christmas dinner
It is a simple recipe for happiness. First the meal, then the antidote, then another meal. The ancient Romans were the great masters of this technique. However, having just looked up the word vomitorium in the Latin dictionary, I find that after all it does not mean a place where you went to be sick after dinner. So perhaps this was not a normal feature of every Roman home, as is commonly believed.
Implied in the above-mentioned advertisement is the notion that a good meal means a meal at which you overeat yourself. In principle I agree. I only add in passing that when we gorge ourselves this Christmas, if we do get the chance to gorge ourselves, it is worth giving a thought to the thousand million human beings, or thereabouts, who will be doing no such thing. For in the long run our Christmas dinners would be safer if we could make sure that everyone else had a Christmas dinner as well. But I will come back to that presently.
The only reasonable motive for not overeating at Christmas would be that somebody else needs the food more than you do. A deliberately austere Christmas would be an absurdity. The whole point of Christmas is that it is a debauch — as it was probably long before the birth of Christ was arbitrarily fixed at that date. Children know this very well. From their point of view Christmas is not a day of temperate enjoyment, but of fierce pleasures which they are quite willing to pay for with a certain amount of pain. The awakening at about 4 a.m. to inspect your stockings; the quarrels over toys all through the morning, and the exciting whiffs of mincemeat and sage-and-onions escaping from the kitchen door; the battle with enormous platefuls of turkey, and the pulling of the wishbone; the darkening of the windows and the entry of the flaming plum pudding; the hurry to make sure that everyone has a piece on his plate while the brandy is still alight; the momentary panic when it is rumoured that Baby has swallowed the threepenny bit; the stupor all through the afternoon; the Christmas cake with almond icing an inch thick; the peevishness next morning and the castor oil on December 27th — it is an up-and-down business, by no means all pleasant, but well worth while for the sake of its more dramatic moments.
Teetotallers and vegetarians are always scandalized by this attitude. As they see it, the only rational objective is to avoid pain and to stay alive as long as possible. If you refrain from drinking alcohol, or eating meat, or whatever it is, you may expect to live an extra five years, while if you overeat or overdrink you will pay for it in acute physical pain on the following day. Surely it follows that all excesses, even a one-a-year outbreak such as Christmas, should be avoided as a matter of course?
Actually it doesn’t follow at all. One may decide, with full knowledge of what one is doing, that an occasional good time is worth the damage it inflicts on one’s liver. For health is not the only thing that matters: friendship, hospitality, and the heightened spirits and change of outlook that one gets by eating and drinking in good company are also valuable. I doubt whether, on balance, even outright drunkenness does harm, provided it is infrequent — twice a year, say. The whole experience, including the repentance afterwards, makes a sort of break in one’s mental routine, comparable to a week-end in a foreign country, which is probably beneficial.
George Orwell, “In praise of Christmas”, Tribune, 1946-12-20.
December 24, 2025
The Pagan Roots of Christmas
History With Hilbert
Published 23 Dec 2017It’s Christmastime everyone, as you can tell from the name, it has a lot to do with Christ and Christianity, after all, Jesus was born on the 25th of December, right? Well, not quite. Most of what we do at Christmas time has little or nothing to do with Christianity and is rather rooted in the ancient pagan pasts of both Europe and other places. In this video I’m going to explore the aspects of Christmas that come form the traditions and beliefs of the Northern Europe Germanic or Nordic Pagans as this is what I know the most about and what interests me the most. This isn’t to say there are more explanations for where certain traditions come from or that there were other groups who contributed aspects of our modern Christmas celebrations. Things like Carol Singing, Christmas Trees, Christmas Lights, Yule Logs, Christmas Dinner, Santa Claus, the Elves, New Year’s Resolutions and Kissing under the Mistletoe can all be traced back to the pagan times of our forefathers and to various characters of Norse Myth and Legend like Odin, Freyja, Baldr and Thor.
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QotD: Moderation for the inveterate port fan at Christmas
A nice spätburgunder, the delightful German word for pinot noir, would be a good alternative. Or perhaps an English red. They’re not easy to find or cheap but I can thoroughly recommend the 2020 pinot noirs from Gusbourne in Kent and Danbury Ridge in Essex.
With the turkey, keep the pork accessories to a minimum. Don’t sneak into the kitchen to polish off the pigs in blankets. Instead have lots of vegetables, but do not have seconds, no matter how tempting that might be. As for Christmas pudding, avoid, avoid, avoid. Maybe a crumb for appearances’ sake. But you must resist the sweet wine. I’m a sucker for a nice monbazillac but I’ve decided you don’t need port and sweet wine, and I’m going for the port. Eyes on the prize and all that.
The strategy is to reach the port and stilton course having consumed no more than the equivalent of one bottle of wine. Ideally less. If you’ve had two, that’s too much. Go for a walk.
Assuming you’ve reached this stage soberish and with a stomach that’s not rebelling, that doesn’t mean that you can suddenly channel your inner Georgian squire when the decanter comes round. Don’t be like John Mytton, one time MP for Shrewsbury, who arrived at Cambridge University with 2,000 bottles of port: unsurprisingly he didn’t graduate. He was notorious for drunken antics such as setting fire to his nightshirt in a bid to cure hiccups and once rode a bear into a dinner party for a jape. We’ve all had that urge after too much port.
It might seem heretical, but you don’t need to finish off the decanter at the table. A vintage port should be good for four or five days, whereas tawny lasts for weeks, so you can keep coming back to it. If there are only a few port fans in the family, it’s worth opening a bottle on Christmas Eve and having a glass or two. Then if you do decide to polish it off while outlining your plan for getting the British economy back on track, there won’t be quite so much in the bottle. Oh, and tiny glasses, please. Think Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany in Master and Commander.
When lunch is over, say no to coffee and find somewhere to have a nap until it’s time for a cup of tea. Try to avoid eating or drinking alcohol again for the rest of the day. But who am I kidding, I’ll probably open a bottle of Beaujolais to go with my turkey sandwich. And maybe a little port and Stilton. But nothing after nine o’clock. That is very important.
And so to bed for a good night’s sleep and awake rested, if not quite refreshed, and without an angry wife glaring at me. That’s the plan anyway.
Henry Jeffreys, “How to drink port without the storm”, The Critic, 2022-12-09.
December 23, 2025
Christmas Cookies – You Suck at Cooking (episode 120)
You Suck At Cooking
Published 23 Dec 2020This sugar cookie recipe is super easy, just like things that aren’t difficult. They also have something in common with Christmas cookies: you can find them both on planet earth, which is the fifth largest planet in our solar system.
1/2 pound softened butter
1 cup of sugar
cream them together with your gyrowangucopterlatorThen add:
1 jangled egg
3 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
then rejangle with your handheld copterwanglerIn another bowl sift together:
3 cups all purpose flour
¾ teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon saltthen dump the baking snow onto your butter cloud and recopterize with your dough typhoon but feel free to fold it together with your spatulator first to avoid a dust storm
At this point you should have dough but if you doughn’t then add another tablespoon of milk until you have dough (and if you have goo try adding some more wheat dust)
lay the dough down to sleep on plastic wrap (one folded sheet) then throw it in the
temperature reducer for an hour or twothen remove it from the heat remover and if it’s really cold let it warm up a bit, otherwise start
pressing and rolling it out until it’s 1/4 inch thick unless you’re not making cookiesthen just do your thing, you know, making shapes and whatnot and bake them for 12 minutes on 350
If you want to make icing take 1 cup of powdered sugar and add a couple teaspoons of corn syrup and a couple teaspoons of water … you can add more corn syrup and less water or just keep adding corn syrup, it’s really up to you. I did one where all I added was maple syrup and that was interesting although you can barely taste the maple over the powdered sugar, but what I learned from this is holy cow does corn syrup ever taste good. As an adult I’ve been in this mentality that corn syrup is the worst and why would you ever eat that and I tasted it for the first time in years and it was like eating caramel for the first time. I think I chugged that stuff when I was a kid and wanted candy because it’s liquid candy. Anyway, what I’m saying is I recommend corn syrup. Even though it comes from corn, which is not recommended.
December 22, 2025
Monday meme-ery
Sorry for the lack of substantive content, folks. I thought I could get a bit of time yesterday to put up a few more posts, but that turned out to be a pipe dream. Just so you won’t feel cheated at finding nothing new here, I’ll take the lazy way and post a few seasonal memes and pretend that’s what I intended to do all along. Just smile and nod and pretend you agree, okay?
The Great Eggnog Riot at West Point Military Academy
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 6 Dec 2024Boozy, creamy eggnog with foam and nutmeg on top
City/Region: United States of America
Time Period: 1887At West Point in 1826, with alcohol prohibited on campus, students smuggled in large quantities of booze to make eggnog for a secret party on Christmas Eve. Drunkenness led to a riot that involved firearms, swords, broken windows, and barricades.
If you’ve never made homemade eggnog, I highly recommend it. It’s creamy, boozy, and so much more delicious than what you buy at the store. Is it good enough to start a riot over? I’ll leave that judgement up to you.
I have an allergy to raw egg whites, so in the video I used 12 egg whites worth of reconstituted dry aquafaba instead, and it worked great.
Egg Nog
Beat the yolks of twelve eggs very light, stir in as much white sugar as they will dissolve, pour in gradually one glass of brandy to cook the egg, one glass of old whiskey, one grated nutmeg, and three pints of rich milk. Beat the whites to a froth and stir in last.
— The White House Cook Book, 1887
December 21, 2025
Getting Dressed – Victorian Maid, Christmas 1853
CrowsEyeProductions
Published 5 Dec 2018A Victorian maidservant dresses ready for a day of work, then ventures out into a cold evening …
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December 20, 2025
Christmas During the Great Depression
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 17 Dec 2024Gelatinous Christmas pudding with chocolate, nuts, dried fruit, and whipped cream
City/Region: United States of America
Time Period: 1931During the Great Depression, making Christmas festive was more important than ever. Homemade gifts, cards, and decorations defined the season when money was tight for everyone. Many people who lived through the Great Depression recalled that no matter what, Christmas dinner was special.
This recipe from 1931 comes from a radio program hosted by the fictional character Aunt Sammy, who was supposedly the wife of Uncle Sam. I’m not quite sure how this Christmas pudding was much less expensive than a traditional boiled pudding, but it’s an interesting change nonetheless. I like the flavors of the chocolate and fruit coming through, though I do wish the texture was a little smoother.
There are twelve ingredients. Quite a lot to write down but I’ll go slowly.
2 tablespoons of granulated gelatin
1 cup of cold water
1 pint of milk
1 cup of sugar
1 and 1/2 squares of chocolate
1 cup of seeded raisins
3/4 of a cup of dates
1/2 cup of nuts
1/2 cup of currants, and
3 egg whitesThat’s a long list. I’ll go over it again while you check. (Repeat)
To make this pudding, first soften the gelatin in the cold water for ten minutes. While the gelatin is soaking, melt the chocolate with part of the sugar. When it is melted, add a little of the milk, just enough to make a smooth paste. Put the rest of the milk in the upper part of the double boiler. When the milk is hot, add to it the melted chocolate. Then the sugar and salt. And, finally, the soaked gelatin. Stir the mixture. Then remove it from the fire. Set it away to grow cold. When it begins to thicken, add the vanilla, the fruit, and the chopped nut meats. Then fold in the beaten egg whites.
Now turn the mixture into a wet pudding mold decorated with whole nut meats and raisins. Set the mold in the refrigerator or other cold place, to chill. When the pudding is cold and firm, and it is time for serving at dinner, turn it out on a pudding plate or platter. Garnish it with sprigs of holly. A wreath of holly springs around the edge and one stuck in the top makes it look like a real Christmas pudding.
Serve the pudding with whipped cream, sweetened and flavored with vanilla, or with a currant jelly sauce.
— Aunt Sammy, December 1931
December 25, 2024
Repost – “Fairytale of New York”
Time:
“Fairytale of New York” by The Pogues featuring Kirsty MacColl
This song came into being after Elvis Costello bet The Pogues’ lead singer Shane MacGowan that he couldn’t write a decent Christmas duet. The outcome: a call-and-response between a bickering couple that’s just as sweet as it is salty.
James Lileks on Christmas traditions
My family doesn’t have a lot of traditions that have carried on, although we do still do our big family get-together at our house on Christmas Eve, so I guess that counts. Here’s James Lileks‘ take on the tradition question at this festive time of the year:
Christmas gifts under the tree.
Photo by Kelvin Kay via Wikimedia Commons.
There are two views of Christmas traditions.
1. They are the jewels of the past, polished by time, handed down from loving ancestors whose memory we e’er keep warm and and alive when we do as they did, eat as they ate, and raise our new wine in the glasses of yore. Thus do civilizations maintain, and remember.
2. Traditions are the cold hands of the dead past punching through the coffin-lid of yesteryear and bursting up through the loam to reach out and smother the newborn ideas of today, because that’s not how Grandma did it.
I’m very much in the first camp, stamping around like Tevye in the opening number of Fiddler on the Roof. But I share his perplexity some times. Why do we do this? I don’t know. I don’t know why we always had Swedish Meatballs on Christmas Eve. Perhaps that was Grandpa’s favorite, and my Mom made it after he passed to remind herself of him. If so, cool; my daughter, who never met the old man, experiences a little of the remarkable old farmer – especially since I insist that she wash it down with a warmish Grain Belt and smoke an Old Gold afterwards.
“But I don’t want to! They smell and they make me cough!”
“It’s tradition. Your grandfather would be delighted to know you enjoy the rich, apple-fresh flavor of an Old Gold.”
Ahhhh, kids, it’s hard to get them interested in history. Even harder to get them to knock the ash in the coffee-cup saucer. My point is that we are not having Swedish Meatballs this year, because Daughter wants to make some German dish. It’s a roll of pounded meat layered with mustard and pickles. (Not to be confused with the German meal of mustard and pickles wrapped up in hammered meat; that one has more syllables.) I have never been impressed with German food, but this dish has the promise to provide a piquancy missing in Swedish meatballs, which seem like something that answers the question “what if the telephone dial tone was a flavor?”
