The Fourth Day of Christmas Party and Menu Ideas
Entertaining Themes and Recipes Based on Four Colly Birds
Nov 3, 2009
According to the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas", the gift associated with the fourth day of Christmas was four colly (or calling) birds. Scholars generally agree that colly or calling birds were actually blackbirds. These garden songbirds don’t generally appear on the shelves of the game butcher so recipe ideas have been based loosely round the theme.
Throw a Nursery Rhyme or Gold Rush Themed Party
The old English nursery rhyme, "Sing a Song of Sixpence" includes the line “four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie” so why not host a party themed around children’s nursery rhymes? Invite guests to arrive as a nursery rhyme character such as Jack and Jill, Humpty Dumpty, or a cat with a fiddle.
Base party food around beans (Jack and the Beanstalk), eggs (the traditional form of Humpty Dumpty), honey, rye bread, oranges and lemons and lamb (Baa, Baa Black Sheep). Alternatively serve a real nursery tea with lashings of bread and butter, jam, jelly, blancmange and ice cream, fairy cakes and Victoria sponge.
Or, hold a ‘49er gold rush party. In Agatha Christie’s book, A Pocket Full of Rye, there is a reference to a fictional Blackbird gold mine in Africa. Guests could dress up in dungarees, undershirts, long johns and checked, brushed cotton top shirts. Base foods around bacon and beans and stews such as this delicious braised rabbit and olives dish.
Recipe for Rabbit and Olive Casserole
Ingredients (serves 4):
- 8 rabbit pieces
- 4 oz black olives
- 4 oz green olives
- 2 carrots
- 2 cloves garlic
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tin chopped tomatoes
- 1 oz butter
- 1 tsp freshly chopped thyme
- ¼ pt chicken stock
- Salt and pepper
Method:
- Preheat the oven to gas mark 4, 180 C, 350 F
- Peel and slice the carrots and peel and crush the garlic
- Slice the olives, removing any stones
- Whizz the tomatoes up in a liquidizer
- Put the garlic, oil and butter in a in a flameproof oven dish and sauté the rabbit for a few minutes and then add the tomatoes, chicken stock, carrots and herbs and season with the salt and pepper
- Bring the mixture to the boil then cover the dish and pop in the pre-heated oven to cook for about 1 ½ hours
- Add the olives and cook for a further ¾ hour
- Serve with mashed potatoes and peas or cabbage.
Readers may also be interested on this article Themed Parties on the Twelve Days of Christmas for further information on the popular Christmas song. If these ideas based on blackbirds don’t appeal, why not consider those offered in the article The Third Day of Christmas Party and Menu Ideas or based on five gold rings in the article The Fifth Day of Christmas Party and Menu Ideas.
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