6 Puddings You Hear A Lot About During The Holidays (2024)
It seems like you can’t read a Yuletide tale or sing a carol without the mention of one particular pudding or another. But just where do these festive desserts come from and what’s inside of them?
We decided to uncover some of December’s sweetest treats that you’ve undoubtedly heard about, even if you’ve never seen or tasted them. So let’s get the most obvious one out of the way first.
1. Christmas Pudding
We start with the grandaddy of all December delectables: the appropriately named Christmas pudding. Also known as plum pudding, this dish is a staple of British Christmas dinner but has become popular in several of their former colonies as well.
This magical blend of molasses (called treacle in Britain), sugar, spices, and suet (i.e. cow fat) gets steamed and then covered in brandy before being set on fire as a popular holiday centerpiece.
“Now bring us some figgy pudding” is the well-known refrain of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas." So, here it is.
This seasonal favorite is essentially the same as a Christmas pudding but with the sweet addition of – wait for it – figs. It’s a perfect twist on the classic flavor and allows you to maintain the flaming pizzazz of the original.
3. Black Pudding
If you’re on the subject of puddings this holiday season, you might do yourself and your loved ones a favor and skip over black pudding. While it’s pretty standard breakfast staple in several European countries, blood sausage is still a hard sell in America.
Using dried pigs blood, barley or oatmeal, and a blend of spices, wheat flour, and hog fats, this conspicuously colored “pudding” is an excellent source of iron—but a terrible choice for holiday cheer.
4. Bread Pudding
This dessert is one pudding that has made its way stateside, and we’re all the better for it. Mixing stale bread in a suspension of milk, cream, eggs, and butter makes this dish equal parts creamy and hearty. Throw in sugar and spice and dried fruit (esp. raisins) and you’ve got a winning combination.
5. Banana Pudding
If you’re hearing this request, it’s probably from a toddler, and he or she probably wants the instant variety served with a few Nilla Wafers. But the fancy-pants, original concoction is no slouch either.
First off, the pudding should be sweet vanilla flavored custard separated by layers of ladyfinger or vanilla wafer cookies topped with fresh sliced bananas and whipped cream or meringue. It’s enough to make you go ape!
6. Sticky Toffee Pudding
Again, the English have very different definition of pudding. Or maybe we do. Like the Christmas pudding and figgy puddings before it, the sticky toffee pudding is usually steamed for maximum moisture.
Instead of figs, however, very finely chopped dates are added to the cake, which gets covered in a toffee sauce. And, yes, toffee sauce is the warm, liquid, org*sm-in-your-mouth flavor of melted British toffee. Custard and ice cream are optional additions but come highly recommended.
The idea of plum pudding as a Christmas dish rose to prominence during the Victorian period, as seen in A Christmas Carol (published in 1843) shown in this illustration of the Ghost of Christmas Present from the first edition.
Figgy pudding — also known as plum pudding or Christmas pudding — is a staple of the British Christmas table, she says. "It resembles something like a cannonball, and it maybe feels a bit like a cannonball when it hits your stomach, but it's tradition and we love it," Waugh tells NPR's Michel Martin.
You can't get through the Christmas season without hearing about it, but have you ever stopped wondering what figgy pudding is? In Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, you read that Mrs. Cratchit proudly presented to her guests her Christmas pudding, resembling a speckled cannonball.
Christmas pudding is also called figgy pudding and plum pudding. It's not made with plums, however. It's made with raisins, which were called plums in the Victorian era. Most recipes suggest soaking the raisins in brandy overnight, which I did.
There is a popular myth that plum pudding's association with Christmas goes back to a custom in medieval England that the "pudding should be made on the 25th Sunday after Trinity, that it be prepared with 13 ingredients to represent Christ and the 12 apostles, and that every family member stir it in turn from east to ...
For a long time it's been common practice to include silver Christmas pudding coins, charms or tokens into Christmas pudding. Finding a Christmas coin in your slice of pudding is believed to bring good luck and especially wealth in the coming year.
A Christmas pudding should have 13 ingredients – that represent Jesus and the 12 disciples. Traditionally, these ingredients include: raisins, currants, suet, brown sugar, breadcrumbs, citron, lemon peel, orange peel, flour, mixed spices, eggs, milk and brandy.
Figgy pudding is fruity and very dense, and typically strongly flavored with brandy or rum. Its closest relative would probably be fruitcake, although figgy pudding is typically spicier and crumblier.
Christmas cake is a rich fruit cake. Christmas pudding isnt. It's a steamed pudding with vaguely similar ingredients (dried fruit, ale etc) cooked with flour, sugar, eggs.
Much like a “full breakfast,” Mervis says the ingredients used in figgy pudding can often be a source of contention, but the dish is typically made with dried fruit (traditionally raisins, sultanas, currants and figs), brown sugar or treacle, mixed spices, breadcrumbs, suet, eggs, and alcohol (often brandy, sherry or ...
As for the figgy pudding song, near the end of the 16th century, carolers began to sing the English folk song, “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” When poor folks stood on the doorsteps of the wealthy and sang, “Oh bring us some figgy pudding,” and “we won't go until we get some,” they probably were having a bit of fun, ...
The interesting thing is, plum pudding does not contain any plum! This goes back to the Victorian practice of substituting dried plums with other dried fruits, such as raisins. Dried plums or prunes were so popular that any goods which contained dried fruits were referred to 'plum cakes' or 'plum puddings'.
Dinner at Cratchit's house ends with a traditional Christmas pudding, which Dickens describes as “a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half a quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.” Sometimes called plum pudding, Christmas pudding is made with dried ...
Introduction: My name is Allyn Kozey, I am a outstanding, colorful, adventurous, encouraging, zealous, tender, helpful person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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