Going Cold Turkey: Alternative Christmas Dinners
The Food Programme
BBC
4.4 • 976 Ratings
🗓️ 19 December 2025
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Annie Gray always rejects turkey and the trimmings at Christmas. She believes they are a construct of a bygone era and will often eat pizza on the big day instead. She explores alternative dinners from Christmases past, present and future. She visits Bath to discover what would have been eaten over Christmas in the Regency period and bakes traditional mince pies - made with minced meat. She'll look at how Christmas is celebrated differently around the world and will discuss Christmas dinners to come with a food futurologist.
Presented by Dr Annie Gray Produced in Bristol by Robin Markwell for BBC Audio
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | Hello, Greg Jenner here, host of You're Dead to Me, the comedy podcast that takes history seriously and then laughs at it. |
| 0:13.4 | This Christmas, forget about socks. We've got the best present of all. |
| 0:17.2 | Dead people! |
| 0:18.2 | All that sounds like zombies. Sorry, it's not zombies. Let me start again. |
| 0:21.8 | In our new family-friendly podcast series, |
| 0:24.0 | Dead Funny History, |
| 0:25.0 | historical figures come back to life |
| 0:26.8 | but just long enough to argue with me, |
| 0:28.7 | tell their life stories, |
| 0:29.7 | and sometimes get on my nerves. |
| 0:31.8 | You're dead to me. |
| 0:32.8 | Dead Funny History. |
| 0:34.1 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:42.3 | Music History. Listen on BBC Sounds. This week on the food programme, we're going full on festive and asking one big question. |
| 0:48.3 | What is it that makes Christmas dinner Christmas dinner? |
| 0:52.4 | I'm Dr. Annie Gray, a food historian and self-proclaimed |
| 0:57.1 | Scrooge when it comes to the so-called traditional Christmas dinner. I've studied it, |
| 1:03.3 | cooked it in historic costumes in various stately piles, and I've even written a book about it. |
| 1:09.9 | But here's the thing. I can't bring myself to actually eat that classic meal of turkey and all the trimmings. |
| 1:16.6 | I find it too big and too stressful. |
| 1:19.6 | I also really don't like turkey, and I especially don't like the way it's eclipsed, |
... |
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