It’s hard to imagine Christmas dinner without Turkey. A University of Warwick food historian has explored its history and how it took over as the traditional Christmas dinner.

It is estimated that the UK eats over 10 million turkeys each year. Food historian Professor Rebecca Earle from the University of Warwick has looked into the history of this North American bird to understand how it took over as the 21^st Century’s traditional Christmas Dinner.

From America to British plates

It wasn’t until the nineteenth century that they began to feature regularly on British Christmas tables. In fact, today’s Christmas dinner is an indirect result of European colonialism.

Turkeys originated in North America, where the wild birds thrived from Canada to Mexico. The Aztec emperor Moctezuma probably ate them in a stew.

After Spanish conquistadors colonised the Americas in the sixteenth century they brought lots of new foods to Europe, including turkeys, not to mention those other Christmas staples of potatoes and chocolate.

Turkeys proved popular and spread rapidly around sixteenth-century Europe, with a 1581 cookbook published in Frankfurt listing over 20 recipes for “Indian chicken”.

The demand for turkeys was so high that great herds were driven from Languedoc over the Pyrenees to markets in Spain.

Merchants in Bordeaux shipped turkeys – stuffed with truffles – to Dublin. When bad weather delayed the crossing in 1757, the anxious turkey-seller advised the captain to wipe the birds regularly with a damp napkin to keep putrefaction at bay. The turkey’s attractive plumage beguiled painters. The Dutch artist Pieter Claesz painted a spectacular, feather-topped turkey pie in 1627.

Low and Slow – How were they prepared?

Hannah Glasse’s bestselling eighteenth-century century cookery book described how “to roast a turkey in the genteel way”, and after all how else would you want to roast your bird?

This entailed removing all the bones and then stuffing the bird with sausage meat, after which it was sewn back up “that it may look just as it did before”. Glasse recommended serving this culinary tour-de-force with oyster or celery sauce.

Because they were so grand and festive, turkeys quickly found a place at banquets and holiday meals, including Christmas.

A 16th century English poem describes a Christmas spread containing “Beefe, mutton, and porke, shred pies of the best, pig, veal, goose and capon, and turkey well drest”, along with cheese, apples, nuts and “good drink”.

Christmas menus in those days were festive but flexible; only slowly did turkeys start to become an expected part of the holiday meal. Hannah Glasse describes a luxurious Yorkshire Christmas pie that contains turkey, goose, chicken, partridge and pigeon, in a huge crust. She warns it will take four hours to bake.

By the nineteenth century the Victorian cooking guru Mrs Beeton could claim they were an expected feature of “a Christmas dinner with the middle classes”. Her 1861 Book of Household Management included both dozens of recipes, and advice on how to deal with the inevitable leftovers, including curry.

Written by Food Historian Professor Rebecca Earle, Department of History at The University of Warwick.

ENDS

For further information contact:
Helen Annetts
Media & Communications Officer (Press Office)
Helen.Annetts@Warwick.ac.uk / 07779 026720

Notes to Editors

Rebecca Earle

Rebecca Earle is a writer and professor of history at the University of Warwick. Mostly she writes about the cultural significance of food and eating in the early-modern and modern world but is currently researching the surprising and consequential last voyage of the Santiago Apostol, a Spanish ship captured (twice) in 1793.

University of Warwick

The University of Warwick is one of the UK’s leading universities, marking its 60th anniversary in 2025. With over twenty-eight thousand students from 147 countries, it's currently ranked 9th in the UK by The Guardian University Guide. It has an acknowledged reputation for excellence in research and teaching, for innovation, and for links with business and industry. The recent Research Excellence Framework classed 92% of its research as ‘world leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’. The University of Warwick was awarded Midlands University of the Year by The Times and Sunday Times.