Ireland

In Ireland the main Christmas meal falls on Christmas Day. Turkey is now the usual bird, though some families keep the older tradition of roast goose with a bread, sage and thyme stuffing. Spiced Beef, cured for a week or more, is sliced cold and often eaten as early as Christmas Eve. Much is made well ahead: Christmas Pudding is stirred by the whole household before Advent, sometimes with a silver coin in the mix, and served aflame on the day, while Christmas Cake is baked in October or November and fed with whiskey. Guests who drop by in December are offered buttered Barmbrack with tea.

The Irish chapter is everyday cold-weather food, much of it cooked in one pot. Irish stew of lamb, potatoes and onions, Dublin coddle of sausages, bacon and potatoes, and bacon and cabbage with parsley sauce are winter meals, along with pea and ham soup, made from stored peas and cured pork, and leek and potato soup, since leeks stand in the field through cold weather. Boxty, the potato pancake of the border counties, is eaten hot with butter. Irish apple cake is served warm with cream or custard, and on Shrove Tuesday, February 9, families make thin pancakes with sugar and lemon.

The Irish menu begins with Dublin Bay Prawns with Garlic Butter: langoustine tails fried for a minute or so on each side and finished with lemon, with brown bread for the butter. The main course is Beef and Guinness Pie, steak braised in stout under a puff pastry lid and served with mashed potatoes. Dessert is an Irish Whiskey Chocolate Torte from modern Irish country cooking, served in slices with whipped cream.

The Irish menu runs from the Good Friday fast to the Easter Sunday dinner that ended Lent. On Good Friday, March 26, 2027, fish is still the usual meal in many households: a fish pie of white and smoked fish under mashed potato, and mussels, once gathered by hand on the strand by people who lived by the sea. Hot cross buns belong to the same day. Easter Sunday, March 28, brings roast spring lamb with mint sauce or a glazed Easter ham, then simnel cake with eleven marzipan balls for the apostles. Nettle soup and rhubarb crumble come from the Irish spring.