Pudding
In the British Isles, and some Commonwealth countries, pudding
is the common name for dessert.Pudding is either of two general types of
food, the second deriving from the first. Which of these foods are regarded as puddings differs between geographical regions.
First type:
The older puddings are foods that are presented in a solid mass formed by the amalgamation of various ingredients with a binder, which might include
batter (as in
Yorkshire pudding),
blood (
black pudding),
eggs (
bread pudding), or a mixture of
suet and
flour or some other
cereal (
plum pudding). These kinds of puddings can be either
baked,
steamed, or
boiled. This type of pudding is still common in various places, especially the
British Isles, and can be either a main-course dish or a dessert.
As a main course, boiled puddings were a common meal on board ships in the
British Navy in the
18th and
19th centuries, and the usual manner in which daily rations of flour and suet were prepared.
Many dessert puddings of this type resemble
cakes, but are moister and usually served in chunks rather than slices in a bowl, with an accompaniment such as custard or ice cream. This is the type of dish ordinarily meant by the word "pudding" in Australia (e.g.
christmas pudding or the British form of
chocolate pudding). While some other dishes are labelled as puddings in Australia (e.g.
rice pudding or
instant pudding, which belong to the second category, below), in such cases the word is almost always qualified with an adjective.
Second type:
The newer type of pudding is almost exclusively a
dessert-type dish. The usual form is for milk with sugar and other added ingredients to be solidified by means of some gelling or structural agent, including
cornstarch,
gelatin,
eggs,
tapioca (cassava), and other
starches. Forms of these include
custard and
blanc-mange. They are available in forms which require cooking or in instant form. Related foods include
gelatin desserts such as
Jell-O and
aspics.
Suet puddings:
Steamed pies consisting of a filling completely enclosed by suet pastry are also known as puddings. These may be sweet or savoury: for example
steak and kidney pudding.
First type, Savoury*
Black pudding*
Haggis, according to poet
Robert Burns*
Kugel*
Red pudding*
White pudding*
Yorkshire puddingFirst type, Dessert*
Bread pudding*
Bread and butter pudding*
Carrot pudding*
Cheshire pudding*
Chocolate pudding (British style)
*
Christmas pudding (also called plum pudding)
*
Jam Roly-Poly*
Spotted dick*
Sticky date pudding*
Sticky toffee pudding*
Summer puddingSecond type*
Blanc-mange*
Chocolate pudding (American/Asian style)
*
Custard*
Hasty pudding*
Haupia (Hawaiian coconut pudding)
*
Mango pudding*
Rice pudding*
Tapioca puddingNot yet classified*
Corn pudding*
Duff*
EZ pudding*
Figgy pudding*
Fruit puddingMiscellaneous dessertsIn these examples, the word pudding
appears to be the British sense meaning dessert
, rather than puddings as defined in this article.*
Bakewell pudding*
Queen of puddings*
The Pudding Club - dedicated to preserving the tradition of great British puddings.
