Food & Beverages
Tartans have been designed for favourite treats - beverages and signature foods.
Click any picture to navigate to the page of interest for more information about this tartan or its associated day.
Eggnog with nutmeg
Dec 15
Eggnog Month
Eggnog is traditionally consumed throughout Canada and the United States at Christmas every year, often from American Thanksgiving through the end of the Christmas season. Eggnog may have developed from posset, a medieval European beverage made with hot milk that was curdled with wine or ale and flavoured with spices. In the Middle Ages, posset was used as a cold and flu remedy and remained a popular remedy throughout the 19th century.
Gingerbread Spices
Dec 17
Gingerbread House Day
December is the month devoted to traditional Christmas foods, and gingerbreads and cookies are one of the most anticipated of Christmas treats. With many variations of ingredients, gingerbread is usually flavoured with ginger, molasses, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, allspice, coriander, star anise, mace, cardamom, and black pepper. In Germany, gingerbread cookies called Lebkuchen have long been a fixture at street festivals, often in the shape of hearts frosted with sugary messages.
Christmas Punch
Dec 22
Wassailing Days and Christmas Carolers!
Wassail is a hot, mulled punch often associated with Yuletide drunk from a 'wassailing bowl'. The earliest versions were warmed mead – ale brewed with honey – into which roasted crab apples were dropped and burst to create a drink called 'lambswool'. Later, the drink evolved to become a mulled cider made with sugar, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg, topped with slices of toast as sops and drunk from a large communal bowl.