Smoking Bishop: from A Christmas Carol

If you know nothing else about Dickens, you probably at least know that Oliver Twist wanted more and Ebenezer Scrooge said "Bah humbug."

Old Fezziwig served negus at the ball.

Just about everyone knows the story of A Christmas Carol from a million adaptations and parodies, which are so pervasive that I don't think people realize just how good the book really is. In 1861, a review of Great Expectations said that Dickens had finally mastered a gift that had previously mastered him. That's an apt description, but I think he had mastered it with A Christmas Carol, as well. It has all the things one expects in Dickens - memorable characters with great names, cozy Englishness, biting humor, social commentary, and pathos all told in prose that occasionally gets stunning, with a lot more humor than you'd think, and, for the first time, all in the form of a tight, concise narrative.  It works partly because it's short - Little Paul Dombey, a similar character in Dickens's next novel, gets so saccharine and grating (at least to modern readers) after 300 pages that one realizes how wise Dickens was not to give Tiny Tim too large of a role. There's pathos in Christmas Carol, but it doesn't really have enough time to get too over-the-top. 

What people particularly forget is that it's funny as hell. Consider my favorite line from the beginning, which almost never gets into adaptations:

Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for.

What a smart ass!

The prose in the book is really quite stunning. Here's another bit just from the first few pages:

The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already: it had not been light all day: and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. 

It is, quite simply, a little book containing a lot of passages that are Dickens at his best. It's the ideal place to start reading Dickens - it's short enough that sitting down with it isn't as big a commitment as, say, David Copperfield, and there's probably no danger that you'll lose track of the plot, since you probably already know it. Occasionally the bigger ones get hard to follow. 

Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol because he needed some money. His latest serial novel, Martin Chuzzlewit, wasn't selling very well, and writing up a "Christmas special" seemed like it would be a quick way to make a buck. But if you compare it to most of his other Christmas books, it's hard not to think that he must have been truly inspired when writing Christmas Carol. I think his work on Martin Chuzzlewit even improved after the manic burst of creativity that brought about Carol.

But, anyway, onto the drink! 

Being a shorter book, there's not as much eating and drinking here as there is in some of the longer books - Scrooge actually eats gruel in his house. There's negus at Fezziwig's, and steaming bowls of punch here and there, but the reference to a drink everyone wonders about comes right at the end, when Scrooge is making things right with Bob Cratchit:

“A merry Christmas, Bob!” said Scrooge, with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. “A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you, for many a year! I’ll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob! Make up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!”

One forgets that this doesn't take place on Christmas, but on December 26th, the day after the day when Scrooge wakes up a changed man. It has to be - Scrooge would have had to start working on the smoking bishop the day before. It takes a day to make. 

Smoking Bishop is one of a number of clerical drinks that were big among the Victorians - any drink with "pope" in the name contained burgundy, "cardinal" contained rye or champagne, and "bishop" meant port. Smoking bishop is a hot, spiced wine, spiked with port and flavored with extra fruit. It takes a bit of prep:

- First, take five seville orange. If you can't get seville oranges (and you probably can't), take four normal oranges and one grapefruit. Cut them in half and bake them for about 30 minutes or until they get a bit brown. Some recipes say not to cut them in half until the next day, but I went ahead and did it now (like most Victorian drinks, there are MANY recipes for this).

- Prick five whole cloves into each piece of fruit. This'll make your whole kitchen smell terrific. 

- Put the baked, clove-infused fruits into an earthenware bowl (your crock pot will do) and add a bottle of red wine 1/4 cup of sugar. Cover it up and leave it sitting there for 24 hours.

- Squeeze the juice out of the fruits and into the wine; you can either keep the fruits floating in the bowl or discard them. Most recipes call for passing the whole thing through a sieve at this point, but I think it looks neater with the bits of fruit floating in there.

- Add the bottle of port, then heat it up without actually boiling (again, using a crock pot comes in handy here). 

- Serve in heated glasses and enjoy!

Naturally, there are many variations here - some recipes call for two bottles of wine for each bottle of port, some call for cinammon, anise, ginger or nutmeg. Mine came out a bit more bitter than I imagined, so I wound up adding a bit more sugar than I initially put in, and a bit more cinnamon. Even with the bitterness, it was tasty and warmed me right up after a walk through the cold December wind. It would taste even better if I was drinking it with someone who told me he was doubling my pay, though.

Given its similarity to the grogg I used to make in college, I'm tempted to put some raisins into each glass - they'll get all plump and delicious in the hot liquid.

Mine, smoking!

Now, can you take a shortcut here and just have the oranges in there for an hour or so, if perhaps you decided on Christmas morning to serve it to your family? Probably - I'd say that having the whole mixture on high in the crock pot, perhaps with some extra spices added, would probably be a reasonable short-cut version that I suspect would taste just fine. I believe the main reason you want it soaking is to get the oil from the orange peel, which was (and is) said to have some medicinal value - lots of old time writers talk about how the burning oil helps warm one up. Sounds like psuedoscience, but it's pretty taste psuedoscience, so I ain't complaining!