Chestnuts, walnuts, and hazelnuts are commonly used. One tradition involved making small pills from walnut, hazelnut, nutmeg, butter, and sugar, which were then swallowed before sleep on Halloween night to induce prophetic dreams. Another tradition involved using walnut shells for fortune-telling, such as tying small objects inside the shells to predict marriage or creating little boats with lighted candles placed in a tub to indicate potential relationships based on the boats' movements.
Halloween Food Traditions To add a Halloween twist, nuts can be scattered around the room to create a treasure hunt. Some sealed walnut shells might even conceal smaller rewards. Cabbage, kale, and leeks are common ingredients in traditional Halloween meals,…show more content… Mischievous youngsters found various uses for cabbage in their Halloween pranks. Cabbages were used as easy missiles, dragged and thrown at doors. The "Burning of the Reekie Mehr" was a Scottish ritual involving hollowing out the cabbage stalk, filling it with tow, lighting it, and blowing it (preferably through keyholes) to create long flames. There are stories of pranksters tying ropes to cabbages in fields to make them appear to move. Cabbage plays a central role in the traditional Irish and Scottish Halloween dish, colcannon, which is sometimes referred to as "Colcannon Night" in certain regions. Sometimes, a ring or other predictive tokens are hidden within the colcannon, a mashed mixture of cabbage, potatoes, and onions. Halloween was also a time for grain harvesting, with oats and barley often used in Halloween fortune-telling rituals. A corn dolly, or cailleach, made from maize kernels, was created to symbolize the grain harvest. The figure, representing either a young maid or an elderly lady, depending on when it was carved, was then hung in the kitchen until Christmas. A variety of cakes and baked goods were associated with Halloween, many used for fortune-telling. The "fortune cake" could be any cake with small symbols…show more content… The Irish word "bachstai," meaning "poor house bread," gave rise to the pancake recipe boxty, which was served often on both Halloween and Boxing Day. Champ, a potato-based traditional Irish Halloween dish, comprises mashed potatoes, milk, butter, and spring onions; fortune-telling tokens are often concealed inside. On Halloween, people would eat Stampy, a sweet potato cake that consisted of potatoes, sugar, cream, and caraway seeds. The soul cake may have been the most significant food item. One of the first documented Halloween practices, "souling" or "soul-caking," was common throughout the British Isles in the past (as it was mentioned in Festyvall, published in 1511). Reports of soul-cake distribution continued until the early 1900s in some regions, particularly in Derbyshire, Lancashire, Shropshire, and Cheshire; traditionally, this would have occurred around the end of November, on All Souls' Eve. Although adults might sometimes join in, souling was mostly done by youngsters. An 1880 account has a modernised rendition of an old souling rhyme: On All Saints' Day (not All Souls' Day), the kids visit people's homes at various times and sing a monotone doggerel, with lines that vary somewhat depending on the size of the group (three to six kids each group). Here is the most comprehensive version I can provide: Spirit! spirit. a kind of soul-cake. One for Peter, one for Paul,
