I've got plenty to say about the seasonal repertoire. Main complaint about the baked stuff, is, it's all the same ingredients, over and over!
Think about it: Christmas Cake, Plum Pudding and Mince Pies all contain just about exactly the same ingredients!
Dried vine fruits - raisins, currants, sultanas. Came in with the Crusades, from those exotic lands of the eastern Mediterranean.
Nuts, sometimes; they keep very well through the winter - hazelnuts are local, walnuts and sweet cherstnuts also abundant, almonds imported in quantity since time immemotial.
Spices; cloves and cinnamon ansd allspice and nutmeg - formerly a rare and expensive luxury item, saved up for the special festive baking.
The dried and sugared, (or sometimes fresh), rinds of the citrus family of fruits (in season at this time of year, of course) and the juices of same.
Other candied fruits, sometimes - such as cherries or pineapples.
Booze; a preservative and flavour enhancer.
Fats like suet, lard and butter
Usual baking background ingredients like flour and eggs.
Sugar both white and brown, and syrups: golden syrup, treacle, molasses - all are by-products of the sugar-making industry.
We can see here the historical origins of the seasonal food - in the olden days this would have been honey, of course. Still used, and good, by the way. Sweet food was traditionally a scarce expensive luxury, before cheap cane sugar from the West Indies became generally available.
But if you don't have very good recipes and discriminating taste-buds, all the Christmas baked stuff may well end up tasting the same...
