Editor’s Note: Ask The Fiddler is a lifestyle advice column that aims to remedy more chaos and confusion than it creates. Questions may be submitted to us here at Art of the Prank, and good luck.
Dear Fiddler,
Why are there no plums in plum pudding?
Jack in Muncie
Dear Jack,
First of all, Jack, let”™s address an underlying issue. You”™re expecting someone else to put plums in your pudding. Whoa up! This is America. If you want plums in your pudding, by golly, roll up your shirtsleeves and stuff away. Self-reliance, that”™s the spirit!
But the problem you address goes a bit deeper than plums. By modern standards, there isn”™t even any pudding in plum pudding! What I mean is, that pasty stuff you buy in the store that”™s labeled pudding.
True old-timey plum pudding is more like sausage.
The earliest consisted of minced beef or another dried meat, or fish, dried fruit, suet, sugar and oats. All that got stuffed into a pig intestine, as with haggis.
They say it”™s best not to ask how sausage is made and that probably goes for vintage pudding as well, but, for the curious, here”™s a site offering a very serious history of pudding.
Many sites and publications claim, as you say, that there are no plums in plum pudding. But, don”™t believe everything you read. I found several respectable recipes calling for plums. I”™ll mention a few in due course.
First, some history. Those olden plum puddings had interesting names, according food writer Maggie Black. She mentions white porray, joutes, charlet, cawdel fery, bukkenade, mortrews or mawmeny and the gold-and-white ‘blanc desore’. Try any of that at your local drive-through.