The Bookworm's Guide to Holiday Feasts

With the Thanksgiving holiday nearly upon us in the United States, many of us are overwhelmed at the prospect of preparing the traditional feast. Whether you’ve been asked to bring a dish to share, or you’re responsible for producing the whole affair, Icarus Swam has you covered for each course. These dishes leap out of the pages of literature, so if your gathering includes fellow bookworms, you can enjoy an inside joke. Or if your family is like mine, you can enjoy a giggle by yourself whilst your loved ones bond over concern that maybe you’re spending too much time alone.

Bread

Breaking bread is an ancient representation of coming together. Even in our carb-conscious times, sharing bread is a symbol for building common ground and bridging divide. At the holiday feast, bread marks our way back to our loved ones:

“Hansel had no pebbles, but he made little balls of bread between his fingers and dropped them at each intersection, and each time they changed direction, to mark the way.”¹ -Neil Gaiman, Hansel & Gretel

Bread is typically offered throughout the meal, regardless of which course is being served. Of course, you can buy bread at any bakery, but if you prefer to bake your own, you can try this recipe. If you have a wheat allergy, intolerance, or Celiac disease—or you’re baking for someone who does—this recipe is the best gluten free version I’ve made.

Hors d'oeuvres

If finances are tight or if you find yourself at a gathering empty-handed, take your cue from Oscar Wilde’s wickedly funny play, The Importance of Being Ernest and say that you had specially ordered cucumber sandwiches.

JACK: “Why cucumber sandwiches? Why such reckless extravagance in one so young? Who is coming to tea?”² –Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Ernest

One of the play's main characters, Algernon "Algy" Moncrieff, is questioned about spending so much money on the luxury of expensive cucumber sandwiches for his Aunt August, whom he is preparing to host. But things go a little wonky:

ALGERNON: …[Jack puts out his hand to take a sandwich. Algernon at once interferes.] Please don’t touch the cucumber sandwiches. They are ordered specially for Aunt Augusta. [Takes one and eats it.]

Yeah, good ole Algy eats the cucumber sandwich. In fact, he eats all the cucumber sandwiches, which makes it awkward when Aunty shows up:

ALGERNON: [Picking up empty plate in horror.] Good heavens! Lane! Why are there no cucumber sandwiches? I ordered them specially.

LANE: [Algy's butler. Gravely.] There were no cucumbers in the market this morning, sir. I went down twice.

ALGERNON: No cucumbers!

LANE: No, sir. Not even for ready money.

Quick thinking, Lane.

Of course, cucumbers are far more affordable today than they used to be. If you’re a Millennial, feel free to modernize and substitute avocado toast for cucumber sandwiches.

Soup

When it comes to the soup course, a good clam chowder will leave them clam—oring for more:

“But when that smoking chowder came in, the mystery was delightfully explained. Oh! sweet friends, hearken to me. It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuits and salted pork cut up into little flakes! the whole enriched with butter, and plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt…we dispatched it with great expedition.”³ -Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Fish

If you’re feeling directionless about the merits of various seafood dishes, I recommend crab-stuffed avocadoes. These sound just as irresistible to me as they did to Esther Greenwood:

“Arrayed on the Ladies’ Day banquet table were yellow-green avocado pear halves stuffed with crabmeat and mayonnaise, and platters of rare roast beef and cold chicken, and every so often a cut-glass bowl heaped with black caviar.”⁴ –Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Be careful in your preparations and check the quality of your crab meat. You don’t want to be responsible for inducing anyone to “feel peculiar” or be “in terrible danger of puking.” (Plath, 42)

Salad

You could make a traditional salad, sure. But why stick with a boring salad when you could sneak in your veggies and make it interesting? Fried green tomatoes could be the jazz hands of your holiday table.

“The place was jam-packed full of railroad men at lunchtime, so Grady Kilgore went to the kitchen door and hollered in, "Fix me a mess of them fried green tomatoes and some ice tea, will ya, Sipsey? I'm in a hurry." ⁵ –Fannie Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Fried green tomatoes are both delicious and a substantive statement: you’re a tough cookie and you're not going to go to pieces if holiday struggles get real. “Unripe tomatoes are firmer and drier than ripe ones, so they have less of a tendency to disintegrate when you put them in hot oil.”⁶

There ain’t no holiday feast in the world you can’t handle. You got this.

The Main Course

This is the main attraction, the thing everyone is going to remember. Of course, you can stick with traditional fare, there’s no shame in the comfort of a crave-worthy roast turkey:

“Harry had never in all his life had such a Christmas dinner. A hundred fat, roast turkeys; mountains of roast and boiled potatoes; platters of chipolatas; tureens of buttered peas, silver boats of thick, rich gravy and cranberry sauce.”⁷ –J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

However, if you’re slightly more adventurous, you could try some delicious grilled mutton kidney:

“Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods’ roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.”⁸ -James Joyce, Ulysses

If you’re dining with children or other such picky eaters who will turn their nose up at the first whiff of pee, save yourself the hassle of cajoling them. Holden Caulfield has you covered, so give the little phonies what they want: grilled cheese and chocolate milk:

"When I'm out somewhere, I generally just eat a Swiss cheese sandwich and a malted milk. It isn't much, but you get quite a lot of vitamins in the malted milk."⁹ –J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

Dessert

If you’re celebrating in the U.S., it’s obligatory to have an apple pie. It’s practically sacrilegious to skip this American standard:

“I ate another apple pie and ice cream; that's practically all I ate all the way across the country, I knew it was nutritious and it was delicious, of course.”¹⁰ -Jack Kerouac, On the Road

What could be more nutritious than apple pie? But, if you really want your gathering to be unforgettable, you must include Madeleines in your spread:

“…one day in winter, as I came home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did not ordinarily take. I declined at first, and then, for no particular reason, changed my mind. She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called 'petites madeleines,' which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim's shell.”¹¹ -Marcel Proust, Swann's Way

My delightful friend, Siheme, who grew up in France, came to my house toting Madeleine pans to teach me how to make these. They were so good that they overwhelmed my senses and I was left with an exquisitely-detailed memory of how good they were.

The English Translation for Siheme’s memorable Madeleines:
120 g butter
1 lemon
200 g flour
½ tsp baking powder
3 eggs
150 g sugar
3 tsp milk

You should use a special madeleines pan; grease it and fill each cookie mold 2/3 full of batter.

Melt the butter. Zest and juice the lemon. Sift the flour and baking powder.Beat the eggs and sugar. Add the flour and baking powder. Add the lemon zest, lemon juice, milk, and melted butter. Chill for 20 minutes. Bake at 350° for 10 minutes.

If you should find yourself in the role of guest this holiday season, beware that you could encounter some dubious delicacies. Remember that just because something is different than what you’re used to, it isn’t necessarily bad. It might be more splendid than you can imagine. But even if you’re served awful offal, take the lead from Babette’s guests:

“They promised one another that for their little sisters’ sake they would, on the great day, be silent upon all matters of food and drink. Nothing that might be set before them, be it even frogs or snails, should wring a word from their lips.”¹² –Isak Dinesen, “Babette’s Feast”

Happy holidays to you and yours. Have I neglected any fictional feasts? Share your favorite literary foods in the comments below!

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Notes:

1.       Gaiman, Neil, et al. Hansel & Gretel: a Toon Graphic. Toon Books, an Imprint of RAW Junior, LLC., 2014. p. 24
2.       Wilde, Oscar. “Act I.” Importance Of Being Ernest. Macmillan Press, 1994.
3.       Melville, Herman. Moby Dick: Or the Whale. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1899. p. 57
4.       Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar: A Novel. Harper Collins, 2006. p. 24
5.       Flagg, Fannie. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe: A Novel. Random House, 1987. p. 326
6.       Anderson, L.V. “Sometimes Fried Green Tomatoes Shouldn't Be Green.” Slate Magazine, Slate, 11 July 2013, slate.com/culture/2013/07/fried-green-tomatoes-recipe-with-breadcrumbs-some-red-tomatoes-work-too.html.
7. Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Scholastic, 1999. p. 203
8.       Joyce, James. Ulysses. Oxford University Press, 1998. p. 53
9.       Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. Little, Brown and Company, 1951. p. 107-108
10.       Kerouac, Jack. On the Road. Penguin Books, 1976. p. 15-16
11.   Proust, Marcel. Remembrance of Things Past: Volume I - Swann's Way & Within a Budding Grove, French Pleiade edition, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrief and Terence Kilmartin. Vintage Books, 1982. p. 48
12.   Dinesen, Isak. “Babette’s Feast.” Anecdotes of Destiny and Ehrengard. Vintage International, 1993. p. 26