Plum Pudding |
The World's Biggest Plum Pudding!
England was ruled for years by Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell considered feasting and revelry immoral. Under his rule, eating plum pudding was banned.
Cromwell deemed plum pudding “unfit for god-fearing people” in 1664 and anyone caught eating it could be fined or sent to prison!
Parliament never officially repealed Cromwell’s ban and it remains technically illegal to consume plum pudding in England, but once Crowell’s rule was over, and Charles II had returned, the English could once again enjoy such treats.
Eating Plum Pudding on Royal Oak Day (ideally washed down with a good English Ale) is a great way to remember and celebrate our freedom from tyranny (anti-monarchists seem to prefer 'Nettle Tart'?!)
The development of Plum Pudding can be traced back to the early 15th century. It was popular in England centuries before the Victorians named it “Christmas pudding”.
Plum Pudding originated as a mixture of minced meat, suet, oatmeal and dried plums thickened with bread crumbs seasoned with spices, and bound together with eggs. This mixture would have either been eaten as a kind of thick soup or stuffed into animal stomachs and boiled in cauldrons over open fire.
When, in the 16th century new kinds of dried fruit (like raisins) became available in England, they were added. The name ‘plum’ soon came to mean any dried fruit. Gradually the meat was replaced entirely by the fruit and suet.
Preparing these puddings using stomach linings demanded lots of hard work – stomach linings need a lot of cleaning and are awkward to fill. For this reason, boiling plum pudding in cloth proved a much more practical alternative.
Before bundling the mixture in, a pudding cloth should be made watertight by wetting and buttering it thickly. After a number of hours of boiling, the result is a characteristic globe-shaped plum pudding. Making plum pudding using pudding cloths became very popular during the seventeenth century.
Today it is far more typical to use a bowl for making plum pudding. But for really big puddings, a large pudding cloth still works best!
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