Traditional Christmas recipes that will take you back to your childhood

We know that smells evoke memories,they can make us travel to that moment in which we experienced something andeven remind us of people and places. The same goes for flavours, as taste andsmell are closely related to memory. The proximity of the pathways to the limbicsystem causes stimuli to be associated with various emotions and, therefore,are more easily stored. This is what we know as 'taste memory', which hasbecome so fashionable in recent years in all neuromarketing forums. Due to ourcurrent pace and lifestyle, celebrations and recipes that marked our childhoodand are typical of specific towns and geographical areas have been lost overtime. 

A clear example is what has happenedto Christmas meals. Although it's one of the most conservative celebrations, wefollow less and less 'traditional recipes', changing the menu for other dishesthat are easier to make and even substituting homely dinners in for meals atrestaurants. 

This Christmas, we want to bring youback to those childhood memories in the village or city, with your family andsurrounded by the things that once made us happy; we will achieve this throughthe most typical recipes and flavours of the Christmas holidays. 

Typical Spanish Christmas recipes

1. Homemade consommé. It's the quintessential first course of any Christmas lunch or dinner. It's usually savoured alone, but inmany areas, it's enjoyed with 'galets', a typical Catalan pasta; in otherplaces, it's enjoyed as a 'giblets soup' version with boiled egg yolks andchicken liver, or as a 'broth with meatballs', in which the broth is servedwith 'meatballs' cooked in the stew. 

2. Lamb shoulder and leg. It's the undisputed star of any Christmas meal. Lamb and,especially, shoulder or roasted leg with potatoes is a classic dish that hasendured the test of time. It's a simple recipe, but it requires a lot of loveand patience to cook it to obtain tender and juicy meat. 

3. Stuffed turkey or capon. Stuffed roasted turkey, capon, broiler or even chicken is the mosttraditional dish for Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve dinners, as it can beprepared in advance and can feed many people. 

4. St Stephen's cannelloni. It's the typical dish of the 26th of December in Catalonia. Nocelebration of St. Stephen doesn't feature this dish. Although today it's madein many ways, back in the day it was customary to use the leftover meat fromthe previous days to fill the cannelloni. The most fascinating thing about StStephen's cannelloni is that they are made with the meat taken from soups,broths and meat dishes from previous days mixed with a generous dash of brandyand some foie gras that give it thatauthentic flavour of our grandmothers' recipes. 

5. Anise rolls. They accompany the sweet potato cakes on the trays of Christmassweets. Typical of the Valencian Community and the Region of Murcia, thesepastries originated in ancient Rome and spread throughout much of theMediterranean. The dough is very similar to that of sweet potato cakes, alwaysflavoured with a generous dash of dry anise.

6. Sweet potato cakes. They originated in the Valencian Community at the time ofAl-Andalus, when a new way of sweetening sugar cane was created and gave way toa golden age of confectionery. These pastries are a kind of sweet dumpling withsweet potato jam inside and are a classic at Christmas dinner parties.