Yorkshire Christmas Pie

In 1858, a Yorkshire Christmas pie was served to Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle. The pie was beautifully decorated but also of such enormous size that it had to be carried into the room on the shoulders of four footmen. Although not all Yorkshire Christmas pies were so large, they were a status symbol because of the expensive ingredients used. This was also true in the seventeenth century, as illustrated by these few lines from Robert Herrick’s poem “Christmas Eve”: “Come guard this night