As Plum Pudding Ignites, It Evokes Centuries Old Christmas Tradition

What sweet will you eat with your Christmas dinner?

Thanksgiving serves up marshmallowed sweet potato pie. Easter has all those yummy chocolates. For Christmas, if you’re even a tiny bit British, the choice is most likely plum pudding, a treat that tracks all the way back to the 14th century, when it was also known as “furmenty,” a name derived from the Latin word for grain, a basic ingredient. Five centuries later, the Victorians renamed it Christmas Pudding to link it specifically to the holiday season.

Call it what you will, the perfect English pudding was usually brought to table on Christmas Eve–except in Yorkshire where years spent under Danish law had created dietary Independents who spooned theirs out on Christmas morning. Either way, Edge Hill University nutritionist Hazel Flight explains that preparing the pudding was traditionally a group effort. As trinkets such as a coin were tossed into the bowl, each member of the family would stir the mix three time and make a secret wish. In the end, whoever found the sixpence was believed to have good fortune for the coming year.

Making their way around the world, the Brits took their pudding with them which is why today Christmas pudding is standard holiday fare and a lingering symbol of the former Empire in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa. For Americans, the tradition of a Christmas pudding was firmly established even before Independence. As early as 1742, a cookbook titled The Williamsburg Art of Cookery featured a recipe that included “a pound of each of a variety of dried fruits and sugar, plus half a pound each of candied peel (citron, orange, and lemon).” For good measure , the author tossed in one pint of brandy and 12 eggs. A century later, the American poet sisters Alice Cary and Phoebe Cary’s Jennie June’s American Cookery Book featured a recipe for a bread-based pudding made by soaking stale bread in milk then adding suet (beef fat), candied citron, nutmeg, eggs, raisins and brandy.

Although the modern Christmas holidays can sometimes feel food foolish, what with all that sitting around and eating and drinking, the ingredients in a Christmas pudding are actually pretty nutritious. The traditional dried fruits such as raisins (the original “plums”) and prunes (the true plums) are sugary but low glycemic and won’t raise havoc with your blood sugar levels. They, plus the added nuts (walnuts, hazelnuts, pecans, and almonds) are packed with dietary fiber, vitamins, and minerals such as potassium and iron, brain-boosting and heart protective antioxidant polyphenols, and the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin. The spices–cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and allspice–lend aromatic antioxidants to protect body cells. Finally, some cooks add a secret ingredient: a carrot. The bright orange veggie brings beta-carotene, used to create Vitamin A for your eyes.

No wonder then that the Christmas plum pudding has made its way into classic literature. In Agatha Christie’s short story, “The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding,” the legendary detective Poirot is asked to attend a Christmas celebration in order to apprehend a jewel-thief who has taken advantage of an unwary eastern prince. But the dessert’s true starring role comes at dinner in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol when Mrs. Cratchett enters, “flushed, but smiling proudly —with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quarters of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.”

Does all that good news make you want to whip up your own version? Find the required recipe at one of these sites:

https://savortheflavour.com/british-christmas-recipes/#puddings

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/plum-pudding-recipe-1938314

https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/superb-english-plum-pudding-20010

https://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/plum-pudding

https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/plumpuddingplumduff_89799