I'm sure we're all counting down the days to our biggest gorge-out of the year, and no doubt many of you will have encountered a pseudo version of our national Christmas favourites - here are some interesting facts about our christmas food traditions... 

Christmas dinner-bird, the turkey, is, as we all know, from America. However, when hungry Europeans first encountered turkeys, they mistook them for a type of Eastern European guinea fowl known as a turkey-cock. The trans-Atlantic bird has been known as a "Turkey" ever since. 
 

The Medieval Christmas dish was a pie made from tripe that all, rich and poor, could afford to eat. The phrase "humble pie" comes from this seasonal meal but "umble pie" means nothing more than "tripe pie".
 

Sprouts, that familiar Christmas brassica, are, in fact, mutant cabbages that first appeared on slopes in Belgium and were planted all across the world. Carrots, too, changed in the Low Countries. Carrots started out white, purple, black or yellow until the Dutch, loving the colour orange, changed almost all carrots to their national colour.