I cannot verify the following, nor do I know when it occurred. At Paignton Fair, near Exeter, a plum pudding of vast dimensions was drawn through the town amid great rejoicings. No wonder that a brewer's copper was needed for the boiling, seeing that the pudding contained 400 lbs. of flour, 170 lbs. of beef suet, 140 lbs. of raisins, and 240 eggs. This eight hundred pounder or so required continuous boiling from Saturday morning till the following Tuesday evening. It was finally placed on a car decorated with ribbons and evergreens, drawn through the streets by eight oxen, cut up, and distributed to the poor.
Every housewife has her own pet recipe for her Christmas pudding, of undoubted antiquity, none being later than that left as a precious legacy by grandmamma. Some housewives put a thimble, a ring, a piece of money, and a button, which will influence the future destinies of the recipients. It is good that every person in the family should take some part in its manufacture, even if only to stir it; and it should be brought to table hoarily sprinkled with powdered sugar, with a fine piece of berried holly stuck in it, and surrounded on all sides by blazing spirits.
Mince pie, as we have seen in Ben Jonson's masque, is one of the daughters of Father Christmas, but the mince pie of his day was not the same as ours; they were made of meat, and were called _minched_ pies, or _shrid_ pies. The meat might be either beef or mutton, but it was chopped fine, and mixed with plums and sugar. It is doubtful whether it was much known before the time of Elizabeth, although Shakespeare knew it well; but with poetic licence he makes it as known at the siege of Troy (_Troilus and Cressida_, Act i. sc. 2).
"_Pandarus_--Is not birth, beauty, good shape, discourse, manhood, learning, gentleness, virtue, youth, liberality, and such like, the spice and salt that season a man?
"_Cressida_--Ay, a minced man; and then to be baked with no date[79] in the pie,--for then the man's date's out."
[Footnote 79: Dates were an ingredient in most kinds of pastry. See _All's Well that Ends Well_, Act i. sc. 1--"Your date is better in your pie and your porridge than in your cheek."]
Gradually the meat was left out, and more sweets introduced, until the product resulted in the modern mince pie, in which, however, some housewives still introduce a little chopped meat. There is no luck for the wight who does not eat a mince pie at Christmas. If he eat one, he is sure of one happy month; but if he wants a happy twelve months, he should eat one on each of the twelve days of Christmas.