Pudding

I never thought understanding a pudding could be so difficult...

What the hell is a real pudding?

This is what I thought a pudding was meant to be. In Brazil,
"pudim" is very popular and 

   It really took me a while to understand what a pudding meant in British culture. When I translated the word to Portuguese, I thought it was supposed to designate a dessert we also have in Brazil, called “pudim”. It is similar to a flan and usually cooked with condensed milk, milk, eggs and sugar.

   Things got even more complicated when I saw some pictures of puddings that looked like cakes, and also when they started calling savoury dishes as puddings. There were even sausages being called puddings! It was too much for me... So I went to Google. And I ended up really surprised when I read that all the options above were true.

   Apparently, the word “pudding” comes from the French word “boudin”, which has come from the Latin “botellus”. It means “small sausage”, and was used to identify encased meats used in Medieval European cooking. These sausages were usually done with the intestines and blood of a pig or sheep, and then stuffed with oatmeal, spices and meat. That’s where expressions such as “black pudding” and “blood pudding” come from.

   With time, pudding has been used to designate any kind of dish boiled in a bag – that’s where the savoury puddings appeared, for example. During the 18^th and 19^th centuries, these puddings were very common aboard Royal Navy ships and often used as the primary dish. The main ingredients were flour, suet and some kind of meat.

This is an example of blood pudding. Very different
from what I expected...

   Along with the savoury puddings came the sweet ones as well. At first, they were cooked just with flour, nuts and sugar, but pretty soon fruits, jam, spices and meringues were incorporated.  In recent cookery, creamy puddings also appeared: these are made with sugar, milk and a thickening agent, such as cornstarch, gelatine, eggs, rice or tapioca. All these sweet puddings may come in various textures and shapes – most of them resemble as cakes nowadays. 

   In a broader sense, that’s where the idea of using the word “pudding” as a synonym for “dessert” came from: you could cook puddings in so many ways that they could designate almost any kind of sweet dish. The word also refers to the idea of a dish that concludes the meal. This term is also used in other Commonwealth countries, as New Zealand, Hong Kong and India.

Modern puddings

   To find out a little bit about how puddings were represented in British culture, I have decided to start by searching through the websites of Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver. They both have TV shows about cooking and I had previously watched a few episodes of each back home. I thought they would be good examples on how modern cooking deals with this whole tradition of the pudding.

   At Nigella’s website, I got 229 results from the search, which I thought was quite impressive. I later found out that not all recipes are hers, but there are also several ones submitted by the website’s community. I also got impressed by the variety of ingredients she uses: I even managed to find a “Liquorice Pudding” recipe!

   What immediately caught my attention is the way she describes most sweet pudding recipes. She is known for using a flirtatious tone and lots of adjectives, which I think suit very well the idea of pleasure from eating a dessert – that’s why we leave it for last, isn’t it? It is also important to say that Nigella used the word “pudding” in its broader meaning. In her website, I could find examples of savoury puddings, such as “Steak and Kidney Pudding”, but also recommendations about desserts like trifles, syllabubs and creams.

   At Jamie’s website, however, there were only 23 recipes for puddings. Only three of them were savoury, and all the sweet ones were actually named “pudding”, which made me realise that he might distinguish the words “pudding” and “dessert”. The photographs are also curious: most of them show the puddings in their traditional pudding bowl shape.

   What I liked about his recipes is that he manages to offer some really traditional ones, such as the ones he credits to his mom or grandmother, and also post other recipes with modern twists, which he is known for. His descriptions are more practical than Nigella’s, but still have many adjectives; sadly, some recipes don’t even have a “personal” description. He also talks a lot about the history of his dishes, explaining where he got the recipe from or why he has decided to change it.

   Here are two nice examples of the different ways Nigella and Jamie cook their puddings. I have selected two of their versions for Christmas puddings, which are very famous and traditional dishes here in the UK.

Our Easter puddings! Yummy!

Making my Easter more British traditional

   I have decided to try my puddings for the blog in a very special occasion: Easter! Me and my Brazilian friends had lunch together, and I was responsible for bringing the desserts. I thought it’d be a good idea to bring different puddings and taste them together with my friends... And also in a situation in which most puddings are eaten here in England.

   As I had no idea on how to cook a traditional pudding, I did some research on popular flavours and went to the market to get something already done. I ended up buying four different puddings from Sainsbury’s, which you just put on the microwave and voilà! They were really good, though: very moist, with a soft texture on the inside and creamy toppings outside.

   We have tried Belgium chocolate, sticky toffee, vanilla with red berries and spotted dick puddings. Everyone’s favourite was the chocolate one, of course, but the one with the red berries topping was also eaten quite fast. There were a lot of leftovers from the spotted dick though, because most of my friends don’t really like raisins, and from the sticky toffee, because we found it too sweet.