BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
Dad’s carving the turkey, Mum’s roasting the veggies, and Grandma’s pudding is about to get hot. But what would be on your table if the great composers were invited to Christmas dinner? Here’s a list of the top 10 foods to prepare for a feast worthy of the masters.
1. Turkey stuffed with truffles
This was Rossini’s favourite dish, and a perfect (albeit expensive) addition to the Christmas table. Although the Tournedos Rossini and Eggs Rossini are dishes that were named after the composer, we’ve chosen the turkey purely because it made him cry when, on a sailing trip, he witnessed it fall overboard.
2. Risotto
It’ll be tough to make a risotto as well as Verdi, who once planned to whip up the dish to impress an actress named Ristori, according to a letter from Verdi’s wife.
3. Paganini’s Ravioli
We bet this dish could rival Verdi’s risotto, as the composer’s Genovese Ravioli with Beef Ragout recipe was written on a manuscript that ended up in the Library of Congress. Now that’s a good ravioli.
4. Eggs Berlioz
You know you’ve achieved the peak of success when you have an egg dish named after you. That’s just what Berlioz did, and this soft-boiled egg dish comes with croustades, duchess potatoes, mushrooms and truffles in a Madeira sauce.
5. Waldorf salad
This salad boomed in the ’70s – but Bartok liked it before it was cool. Three decades before it appeared in those colourfully dated cookbooks of the era that fashion forgot, Bartok had a taste of this salad in Los Angeles. It was also the first time he had tried an avocado – so be sure to throw one of those in.
6. Eggs in a Mould Bizet
This obscure dish has eggs – cooked predictably in a mould – served on artichoke hearts. But the staple is the inclusion of minced pickled tongue. A poke at the technical challenges of wind players, perhaps?
7. White foods
Unfortunately, Erik Satie will have to pass on….well, pretty much everything on the table so far. Make sure you serve up some fresh milk, white cheese, and a good coconut dessert for Satie. He won’t touch your meal if it exudes any colour but white.
8. A bottle of port
A feast is nothing without a good drink, and if Handel could have his pick it’d be a bottle of port. He has been known to duck out of parties to have a sip of the good stuff – using musical inspiration as his excuse, no less.
9. A barrel of wine
This popular drink will wash down the Christmas feast. You might want to avoid indulging in it 18th Century style, however, as lead was often used as a sweetener. Handel knows the risks more than anyone, having suffered from confusion and stomach colic as likely consequences of his lead poisoning. Poor, dear Beethoven was another connoisseur/sufferer.
10. Mozartkugeln
These gorgeously packaged little treats can be found in most good quality chocolate shops – but they’ve actually been around for more than a century. Created in Salzburg in 1890, the chocolates were named after the great composer, and we’re sure he would have loved them.
Images via Wikimedia Commons. By Boby Dimitrov (originally posted to Flickr as Christmas eve table) [CC BY-SA 2.0] ; and PetarM [CC BY 3.0 rs]
