The French can find foreign food hard to swallow. They put Roquefort on their cheese burgers and refuse to give up their daily baguette (who can blame them?). But a culinary cannonball did once breach their defences.
Back in 1814, those on the other side of La Manche were introduced to the steamy pleasures of “plomb-poutingue” by Antoine Beauvilliers in his book L’Art du cuisinier. He was referring to what we now call Christmas pudding, that dark mix of suet, syrup, sugar and spice that 40 million Brits attempt to eat after their turkey and roast potatoes. The “poutingue” was, it seems, one of the few stars of the English larder.
Pehr Kalm, a visiting Swede, reported in 1748 that “the art of cooking as practised by Englishmen does not extend much beyond roast beef and plum pudding”.
Some sources trace the dish back to frumenty, a 14th-century porridge of wheat boiled in milk. People began to thicken the brew with breadcrumbs, adding meat as well as raisins, currants, prunes, wines and spices. This made a broth known as plum pottage.
The invention of pudding cloths - to hold the ingredients together when they were boiled - turned the pottage into a plump lump, fit for any special occasion.
Such an occasion was Christmas, the celebration of which was banned by Cromwell in 1644. Puddings were a “lewd custom” and their ingredients “unfit” for God-fearing people. It was left to George I to revive the dish, though the Quakers still insisted it was “the invention of the scarlet whore of Babylon”, aka the Catholic church. But the pudding prospered under Victoria. Her husband, that champion of Christmas trees and carols, made it the crowning glory of the festive royal table. Anthony Trollope is credited with first use of the title “Christmas” in his 1868 novel Dr Thorne. (Plums had long disappeared as an ingredient.) Some say that the ritual of setting fire to the pudding with brandy represents Christ’s passion, while the decorative holly is a reminder of the crown of thorns. The tradition of inserting a silver coin is to bring health, wealth and happiness to the finder - as well as a trip to the dentist.
The dish can be made up to a year in advance. Thirteen ingredients should be used to represent Christ and his disciples, and the pudding should be stirred from east to west in honour of the three wise men. Now, where did I put that compass?
Stephanie Northen
