New Year’s Eve foods in the Skylands

Spaniards eat twelve grapes at midnight, one with each strike of the clock. The custom is usually credited to Alicante growers with too much fruit in 1909, but by January 1894 Spanish papers were already writing about it and calling it an import from France.

Scotland’s black bun was first a Twelfth Night cake with a bean hidden inside. The Reformation ended that, so it moved to Hogmanay and the first foot, the first visitor after midnight, who traditionally brought coal, whisky and bun. Robert Louis Stevenson called it “a black substance inimical to life.” First-footers of the late 1700s and 1800s also carried the het pint, hot ale with spirits, sugar and spice, in a copper kettle, and offered it to everyone they met.

Italians pair cotechino sausage with lentils, said to look like coins, and in Japan toshikoshi soba goes on the table on December 31 because the noodles cut easily, which lets the household drop the year’s hardships. The Dutch fry oliebollen, doughnuts of unclear origin.