Christmas Past

There are few things that conjure Christmas quite like the smell of baking and a warm kitchen. It goes back to my early childhood in Lincolnshire, where the warmest part of the house was the kitchen, my mother and grandmother allaying the Siberian chill sweeping across the frozen landscape, with the zingy scents of citrus and complex spices redolent of a past of which I was not yet aware.

Years later, I came to associate those scents with a bygone era - both my own and those of my ancestors - who baked  history into their cakes and puddings using instructions passed down through the generations. My recipes for Christmas cake and plum pudding, rich and deep with flavours from distant lands, came to me from my grandmother, and to grandma from hers. They combine the history of medieval trade with that of my family, a history of associations, of cultures, of memories.

Come December, we take it in turns to stir the fragrant mixture, binding ourselves to our past and each other, no longer separate ingredients, but part of a whole.