Raise a glass to the great Christmas Pud!

Christmas pudding was made for … Christmas!

And, of course, it is the only seasonal food that is alcoholic!

The allure of the Christmas pudding is quite extraordinary … few foods have such iconic power as that brandy-soaked, fruit-filled, deliciously dense concoction … which is the set alight and carried to the table with such ceremony!

It was Charles Dickens who captured the familiar scene in a Christmas Carol (1843) where he describes the pudding thus: “Like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a- quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight (adorned) with Christmas holly stuck in the top”

But what’s really intriguing is that the Christmas pudding is considered so important that, even though we eat it only once a year … it has its own national day – Stir-Up Sunday!

Stir –Up Sunday

This is the traditional day when families gather round the kitchen table to stir the Christmas pudding mixture. It falls four or five weeks before Christmas Day, on the last Sunday before the season of Advent.

A long time ago Christmas pud was actually porridge … with fruit and alcohol (of course)!

In Henry V111’s time the King went a-hunting, and, hungry, he was fed at a woodcutter’s cottage – and was served “plum pottage”. He liked it so much; he got the royal cooks to make it!

In the next century Oliver Cromwell, the Puritan, banned it … which showed that it must be good stuff.

And it was in the Victorian era that despite being utter prudes, the Victorians made the pud the centre of their Xmas table …. Hooray for the Victorians….

In fact, let’s raise a glass to the Pud!