Puddings

Ask Americans to name a pudding, and they might mention chocolate pudding or rice pudding; if the respondent is old enough, perhaps tapioca pudding, bread pudding, or even plum pudding will come to mind. If asked to define “pudding,” he or she might say that it is a soft, flavored custard made with starch, eggs, and milk. Few people would mention blood pudding, but, in fact, it shares the same roots with all the other puddings.

Nathan Bailey’s 1776 dictionary defined pudding as “a sort of food well known, chiefly in England, as hog’s puddings, etc.” Sheridan’s dictionary (1790) described pudding as “a kind of food generally made of flour, milk, and eggs; the gut of an animal; a bowel stuffed with certain mixtures of meal and other ingredients.” In James Barclay’s dictionary, published in 1820, pudding was defined as a “kind of food boiled in a bag; or stuffed in some parts of an animal; or baked. The gut of an animal.” These descriptions seem far removed from chocolate pudding.