Puddings and Pies

Appears in

Published 2015

About

In the earlier edition of this work, I wrote, ‘Whilst sweets, pies and tarts are common to many countries, the true home of the pudding is England.’ I should have said, Great Britain, for on further research I have found that puddings (differing, of course, in detail) appear more or less simultaneously on both sides of the Border, especially throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

It is true that as a nation the Scots are soup-lovers rather than pudding-lovers (in England it is the other way about) and that until recently puddings appeared mainly on middle-class and upper-class tables (as did soup in England).¹ Yet Meg Dods’s Manual, which was published shortly before Mrs. Beeton was born, contains a far greater number of recipes for puddings and sweets than does the first edition of that lady’s immortal work; and the popularity of the pudding on ‘genteel’ tables in Scotland is testified by Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus (b. 1797), who refers in her Memoirs to ‘my mother’s first cook, Nellie Grant, she who could make so many puddings, 99 if I remember aright’.