GREAT BRITISH PUDDINGS
Country Living
You can always trust Jane Austen to get straight to the point. Unerringly, she knew that a good apple pie played a considerable part in the question of domestic happiness, especially when made with British Bramleys, the only apple in the world grown for cooking. When Robert Greene, in 1589, wrote in Arcadia that Thy breath is like the steame of apple-pyes, I doubt he was having a Mr Kipling moment.
Apple Pie rules the waves: Moms Apple Pie (A.P. that sings the stars and stripes and where do you think they got it from in the first place?), Tarte aux Pommes (stingy slivers of continental crust), Tarte Tatin (confused upside down A.P.), and Apple Strudel (nothing more than rolled up A.P.) are all but variations on a theme. Chaucerian in its quintessential Anglo-Saxon marriage of fruit and crust, the Apple Pie is British to the, er, core.
Apple and pie are like horse and hounds, Eton and Oxford, Ant and Dec. And how impoverished the English world and language would be without mischievous apple pie beds, beaming girls with apple pie cheeks and rooms in apple pie order. No wonder we so love a pud that reminds us of Wodehouse and William, jolly japes and spiffing treats and a world forever rosy as a shiny pippin.
Except when it comes to Trifle. Where the Apple Pie is laddish, Trifles, with all those frilly layers, are inherently more girly. Boozy, a little wobbly, crowned with whipped cream, theres nothing so wanton as a golden, red and white Trifle showing itself to the world in curvaceous, cut glass bowls. Its a girls night out with custard and jelly.
British puddings are simultaneously a little suggestive and part of a noble tradition. In the Kingdom of Puddings (coat of arms: rolling pin rampant with three sugar bags and escutcheon spice rack on azure gingham background), just consider the Queen of Puddings, rich and golden, anointed with rivulets of jam and crowned with cream. But there is a pudding for everyone: spongy puddings with citrus sauces or heavyweight battalions of steamed suet ones; fruity pies and sticky tarts that wear the mantel of centuries on their pastry shoulders; jammy roly-poly puddings and baked nutty crumbles, both so appositely named.
Yet, relatively few survive from the Victorian golden age when puddings once enriched both mealtimes and vocabulary. Regal puddings named for Empress, Duchess, Baroness and Aunt Nelly alike. Puddings for students, politicians, soldiers and sailors College, Cabinet, Guards and Admirals. Gone is the even earlier rogues gallery of duffs, heavies and stirabouts; forgotten, yesterdays quaking puddings, sparrow dumplings and clary fritters. And quite vanished, the 18th century, chilled lemon pudding with the campest name of all: You Cannot Leave Me Alone.
Occasionally, one of these glorious puddings can be spotted in its original domestic habitat, like a camera-shy creature in a David Attenborough programme: Canary, from its defining taste of lemons; Eve, in deference to the thick layers of apples; Black Cap from the blackcurrant jam in the bottom of the bowl. Even Hasty pudding, once a popular stand-by made with the simplest of store cupboard ingredients, is a rare bird these days.
Once, Monday pudding was made from the remains of Sunday pudding, in itself a dried fruit pudding reheated on the Sunday so as not to cook on the Lords Day. And for the virtuous, there was the taste of Paradise pudding, flavoured with brandy and spices. Queer Times pudding, however, may be one that is best forgotten boiled flour, syrup and baking soda but a cold weather belly-filler all the same.
Regional puddings are also more honoured in the breach these days: once, stagecoach travellers could alight in Cheshire to feast on Chester pudding. Arriving in Devon, you could look forward to sticky Exeter pudding, and in East Anglia, there would be almond puddings at the White Horse Inn, Ipswich. Monmouth, Tadcaster and Cheltenham all gave their name to puddings but, like the remnants of an ancient chivalric order, Bakewell and Eton are amongst the few that still fly the flag. How sad, that in Canterbury you cannot find the eponymous pudding made with breadcrumbs, lemon and brandy, or that at Barnstaple Fair, you are unlikely to find stalls selling pears simmered in scrumpy. Or at the Speech House Inn, in the Forest of Dean, no crumb remains of their once celebrated pudding, served with hot jam sauce (though theyll still give you the recipe).
Perhaps the fancy name change from Burnt Cream to Crème Brulee ensured the survival of this 17th century custard pot with its caramelized sugar topping reputedly invented by a chef at Trinity College Cambridge. Happily, luscious Sussex Pond pudding was rescued from culinary oblivion by Jane Grigson, and Sharrow Bay magnificently reinvented traditional Sticky Toffee pudding, but it took a Swiss, Anton Mossiman (even before the heroic pudding campaigns of Gary Rhodes), to restore unto us the divine Bread and Butter pudding.
Theres something about puddings that links them intimately with the winter months, yet traditionally Spring was the time for pancakes, custards and batter puddings, a way to make use of surplus eggs when the hens stepped up production, so timely because nothing complements early, forced Champagne rhubarb better than good, home-made custard. The pudding calendar once also featured seasonal items such as Kent Lent Pie, made with milk, ground rice and currants to break the monotony of abstention. But, we still look forward to Summer pudding, that simple but magical combination of berries, bread and basin. And, what more exquisite to follow a meal of fresh salmon than gooseberry fool or a cool junket sprinkled with rose petals?
The Great British Pudding is alive and well, perhaps it never really went away. I am sure I am not the only one who works backwards through a menu and chooses their pudding before anything else. The last but not least bit which is always the best bit the pudding. Not dessert. Or sweet. Pudding. Proper puddings. Like Caesar (sort of), I am wary of those around me with a lean and hungry look, cautious of those who claim to be too full for pud. Too full for pudding? Dear reader, these words are amongst the most sorrowful in the English language.
Puddings are more than the sum of their parts, however delicious. They are a taste of home: home from school, home from the hills, home from abroad. And, if home is where the heart is, its also where the Treacle Tart sits cooling on the shelf, the Spotted Dick burbles in its pot, sweet Syllabub chills in its elegant dish, and the Rice pudding lazily acquires its love-or-loathe-it chestnut sheen. Where the Apple Pie awaits the cream, strewn with sugar crystals, aromatic with cinnamon and nutmeg or a blushing hint of quince.
If the proof of the pudding is in the eating, then the 18th century French writer Misson, on a visit to England, was spot-on when he wrote, Blessed be he that invented Pudding, for it is a Manna that hits the Palates of all Sortes of People. Quite. Now, custard or cream? Perhaps, Ill phone a friend.
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