Pudding is my favourite course of every meal — treacle pudding, apple crumble, chocolate fudge cake… Mmm. Years ago, though, I definitely wouldn’t have liked to eat puddings. Not at all. Can you guess which of these is true?
A. Puddings in the old days were not sweet, like today. They were made of sausages and all sorts of bits and pieces from animals.
B. Centuries ago, a pudding was a term used for a buffoon – a joking fool who would entertain crowds with his antics.
C. The first puddings were served up to Kings and Queens with birds cooked inside them.
ANSWER: A!
That’s because the first puddings were made of sausage, fat, and even animal intestines. In fact, the Romans’ word for ‘intestines’ — part of the human stomach — could also mean ‘little sausage’, and it passed into French as boudin and then into English as ‘pudding’.
The earliest puddings were usually made by stuffing a sheep’s stomach with parts of the same sheep, including its heart and lungs. Then the stomach was boiled! (I hope you’re not reading this over lunch.)
As time and puddings went on, sweet ingredients replaced the sheepy ones (hooray!), and they were also often steamed in a bag. Today, we’ve kept the name, but don’t always use the same method.
So, next time you’re tucking into your hot chocolate fudge cake, spare a thought for medieval diners who were served with such delights as ‘blood pudding’, or tasty ‘fish hog pudding’ (made of, er, whale).
And by the way, songbirds really were once baked in pies, just like in the nursery rhyme. They used to be served up on special occasions and were considered very tasty!