Alan Davidson

Eve’s Pudding

Appears in
Oxford Companion to Food
Oxford Companion to Food

By Alan Davidson

Published 2014

  • About

Eve’s pudding is the modern name of a baked pudding with a lower layer of chopped apples and an upper one of a sponge mixture flavoured with lemon and vanilla. This is really a descendant of a grander pudding of the 18th century, Duke of Cumberland’s pudding, which was boiled. The apples were therefore inside rather than underneath. The surrounding pudding was made of a very highly egged suet mixture. It was served with melted butter, wine, and sugar.

The name ‘Mother Eve’s Pudding’ appears in a 19th-century verse recipe for a boiled pudding which is like the Duke’s, but without suet and with currants. The name of the Duke, who was the bloody victor of Culloden, may have been suppressed to suit Victorian sensibilities; but the anonymous poet is none too tender-hearted: ‘Six ounces of bread (let your maid eat the crust …)’.