Pudding

The word pudding is believed to come from the latin word botellus, meaning sausage, possibly leading to the French boudin, originally from the Latin botellus, meaning "small sausage", referring to encased meats used in medieval European puddings.[3] [2]Another is from the West German 'pud' meaning 'to swell'.[2]

According to the Oxford English Dictionary the word 'pudding' dates to the thirteenth century. It refers to the entrails or stomach of a sheep, pig or other animal stuffed with meat, offal, suet, oatmeal and seasonings.[4] By the 1500s the word was used to refer to the guts or entrails or the contents of other people's stomachs especially when pierced with a sword, as in battle.[5] The Oxford English Dictionary describes puddings also as 'A boiled, steamed or baked dish made with various sweet (or sometimes) savoury ingredients added to the mixture, typically including milk, eggs, and flour (or other starchy ingredients such as suet, rice, semolina, etc.), enclosed within a crust made from such a mixture'.[4]

Food historian Regula Ysewijn suggests that the etymology of the word 'pudding' can lead in several directions. One is from the latin word botellus, meaning sausage, possibly leading to the French word boudin. Another is from the West German 'pud' meaning 'to swell'.[2]

One of the first documented mentions of pudding can be found in Homer's Odyssey where a blood pudding roasted in a pig's stomach is described.[4] This original meaning of a pudding as a sausage is retained in Black Pudding, which is a blood sausage originating in the United Kingdom and Ireland made from pork or beef blood, with pork fat or beef suet, and a cereal.[6]

Another early documented recipe for pudding is a reference to asida is found in a tenth century Arabic cookbook by Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq called Kitab al-Ṭabīḫ (Arabic: كتاب الطبيخ, The Book of Dishes).[7][8] It was described as a thick pudding of dates cooked with clarified butter (samn).[9] A recipe for asida was also mentioned in an anonymous Hispano-Muslim cookbook dating to the 13th century. In the 13th and 14th centuries, in the mountainous region of the Rif along the Mediterranean coast of Morocco, flour made from lightly grilled barley was used in place of wheat flour. A recipe for asida that adds argan seed oil was documented by Leo Africanus (c. 1465–1550), the Arab explorer known as Hasan al-Wazan in the Arab world.[9] According to the French scholar Maxime Rodinson, asida were typical foods among the Bedouin of pre-Islamic and, probably, later times.[9] In the United Kingdom and some of the Commonwealth countries, the word pudding can be used to describe both sweet and savoury dishes. Unless qualified, however, the term in everyday usage typically denotes a dessert; in the United Kingdom, pudding is used as a synonym for a dessert course.[1]

Puddings had their 'real heyday...', according to food historian Annie Gray, '...from the seventeenth century onward'. It is argued that 'the future of the boiled suet pudding as one of England's national dishes was assured only when the pudding cloth came into use' and although puddings boiled in cloths may have been mentioned in the medieval era[10][2] one of the earliest mentions is in 1617 in a recipe for Cambridge pudding, a pudding cloth is indicated; 'throw your pudding in, being tied in a fair cloth; when it is boiled enough, cut it in the midst, and so serve it in'.[3][11]

The pudding cloth is said, according to food historian C. Anne Wilson, to have revolutionised puddings. 'The invention of the pudding-cloth or bag finally severed the link between puddings and animal guts. Puddings could now be made at any time, and they became a regular part of the daily fare of almost all classes. Recipes for them proliferated.'[3]

• The proverb, "The proof of the pudding is in the eating", dates back to at least the 14th century. The phrase is widely attributed to the Spanish author Cervantes in his novel The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote. The phrase is often incorrectly stated as "the proof is in the pudding."[14]
• Pudd'nhead Wilson, (1894) written by Mark Twain, reflects the term's use as a metaphor for someone with the mind of a fool.[15]
• The Magic Pudding is a classic Australian children's novel first published in 1918, written and illustrated by author Norman Lindsay. It tells of a bad-tempered, anthropomorphic pudding named Albert who, no matter how often he is eaten, always reforms in order to be eaten again. He is owned by three companions who must defend him against Pudding Thieves who want Albert for themselves.[16]
• Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall, part 2 (1979) ends with the voice of a Scottish-accented schoolmaster, actor Alex McAvoy (1928–2005) shouting, "If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding! How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?!" over and over again.[17][18]
• A website dedicated to the dessert, online since the mid-1990s and consisting only of a low-quality image of it, became famous in Brazil for its humorous and longstanding nature. In 2015, it was hacked by the Islamic State.[19][20]

• List of baked goods
• List of desserts
• List of savoury puddings
• List of sweet puddings
• Mousse
• The Pudding Club

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Puddings.

Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Pudding" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.