Food historian Glyn Hughes rediscovers the Old English Christmas, and the Older English Yule. Here are Kings and Puritans, Yule Babies, Christmas Pottage, Queen Victoria's mincemeat recipe, Christmas Cheese and Salmagundi. Here is Durham Fluffin, Pepper Cake, the shape for mince pies and nearly one hundred actual, original, dishes gleaned from from half-a-thousand years of English cookery books. Here you can rediscover the Spirit of Christmas Past and, I hope, make it part of Christmas yet to come. (You're excused putting tripe in the mincemeat, but if you really want to, you'll find the 1764 recipe here) Part of the Foods of England project.