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It’s competition time!
Would you like to be in with a chance of winning a signed copy of both of my new books Knead to Know: A History of Baking and The Philosophy of Puddings? Well here is your chance.
It is very simple to enter: All you need to do is go to the foot of this post, “like” it and leave a comment declaring your favourite Christmastime dessert.
I will select one person at random on 2 December at 7pm GMT. That’s your deadline. Good luck!
If you like the blogs and podcast I produce and would to start a £3 monthly subscription, or would like to treat me to virtual coffee or pint: follow this link for more information. Thank you.
I’m very excited to announce that my next book The Philosophy of Puddings with be published on 24 October 2024, published by the British Library – part of their excellent The Philosophy of… series.
Preorder The Philosophy of Puddings from your favourite bookseller, or from the British Library bookshop.
The word ‘pudding’ is a confusing one if you are not from the British Isles because so many things can be a pudding: steamed sponge, Christmas pud, sticky toffee pudding, plus black and white pudding AND haggis. Add to this the fact that pudding can also be a byword for any dessert. Convoluted craziness.
I have tried to tackle the tricky etymology of the word before – puddings change and morph into so many different things across time that it’s pretty mind-boggling, and I’m so glad to have the opportunity to really study it in depth: a dream come true really. As far as I know there isn’t a book that tracks the word right through history, focussing not just on trends and fashions but also why puddings are so important in British identity.
Here’s what the blurb says:
Just what is a pudding? We all have our favourites, whether it is a school-dinner jam roly-poly with custard, or a Yorkshire with onion gravy, a Burns’ Night haggis or the Christmas plum pudding. The humble pudding started out as a meat boiled in either animal intestine or in a cloth. With the advent of pudding bowls and moulds, the pudding assumed a myriad of identities. Neil Buttery traces the long history of pudding and its importance in British culture and language. He has tried and tested many recipes from across the centuries in his ‘Pud Club’ and shares his extensive knowledge and expertise.
The Philosophy of Puddings features stunning images and photographs from the Library’s collections.
I will present some of my research an online talk in December – the date is to be announced, so make sure you keep an eye out on social media or the ‘Upcoming Events’ page on the blog.
When we think of the food we eat, we think of it in terms of fuel – this is especially the case with starchy food, those made from flour because they are broken down into sugars and then converted slowly into energy in a form the body can use (unless we eat too much of it, then it is turned into fat). However, workers in factories around the world are very aware of the amount of energy trapped in flour: working with large amounts of it can be a dangerous business. Factory explosions have occurred causing damage, injury and death.
The worst accident in the British Isles caused by flour happened on 9 July 1872 at the Tradeston Flour Mill in Glasgow, a century and a half ago. An explosion ripped through the mill seriously injuring 16 and killing 18, among them a mother of three with her three-month-old baby. What caused it? A report published in the journal Nature reported that the ‘origin [was] conclusively traced to the striking of fire by a pair of millstones caused by the stopping of the “feed” or supply of grain to them, and the consequent friction against each other, the result being the ignition of the mixture of air and fine flour dust surrounding the millstones.’[1] It might have been self-contained were it not for the cloud of flour, the explosion itself created. The mill was set up so that several mills were working together in a row, run by steam power, each explosion setting up another sending a cascade of flour bombs ripping through the building.[2] The most recent flour explosion in the UK occurred on 18 November 1981 in the Bird’s Custard factory in Banbury, Oxfordshire where a cloud of cornflour[3] exploded injuring nine.
It has been theorised that it was a flour explosion that exacerbated the Great Fire of London in 1666 when an oven exploded next to several sacks of flour. The (alleged) bakery on Pudding Lane was owned by King Charles II’s own baker, Thomas Farriner. The blaze would continue for five days, destroying 13,500 houses and many important buildings including St Paul’s Cathedral. It killed just six people.
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Notes
[1] Accidental Explosions. Nature 478–479 (1875).
[2] Dalgetty, L. (2022) ‘Remembering the Glasgow Flour Mill explosion that killed 18 people’, Glasgow Live, 10 July.
[3] Bird’s Custard isn’t thickened with egg, but with cornflour/starch and it is by far the main component, the others being colouring and a very fake vanilla flavouring. For more on custard click here.
As promised on the ‘School Meals Service with Heather Ellis’ episode of the podcast, I have written a recipe for a stone-cold school dinners classic for my monthly subscribers. I went for the pink-sponge and custard because quite a few people have mentioned this as a favourite on social media, so it was the obvious choice. Heather Ellis said on Twitter that there were several different colours of these sponges: I also remember brown (though I don’t think it was chocolatey, just coloured brown). Others remembered white, and I wondered if yellow was perhaps a colour? Let me know your thoughts/memories.
Listen to the podcast episode here:
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Filed under baking, Britain, cake, Desserts, food, General, history, Recipes, Twentieth Century, Uncategorized
This post complements the episode of The British Food History Podcast called ‘The School Meals Service with Heather Ellis’:
Speaking with Heather Ellis on the podcast about the School Meals Service and school dinners really fired off some food memories, good and bad. If it has in you too, please let the School Meals Project know about them – and let me know about them too – there’s a postbag episode of the podcast coming in just two or three weeks’ time. Three stuck in my mind: sago or tapioca pudding, pink sponge and custard, and Spam fritters. Of those, my favourite is sago/tapioca pudding – it genuinely is one I cook at home regularly. I know it was called frogspawn by children across the country, but if made well, it is delicious. Honest.
For anyone unfamiliar with it, it is one of a tribe of puddings known as milk puddings which are essentially a starchy ingredient cooked in milk and sweetened with sugar, but in my opinion, they need to also contain cream and flavourings such as bay leaves, vanilla or lemon rind. The best-known of these is rice pudding, but there are also semolina, macaroni and arrowroot puddings. They became popular in schools because they were an excellent way of providing children with their calcium. Sago and tapioca come in the form of small balls or pearls, which turn translucent when cooked in liquid – tapioca pearls are used to make the ‘bubbles’ in bubble tea.
Sago and tapioca can be used interchangeably in recipes and taste the same, but there is a difference between the two; sago comes from the sago palm and tapioca from the cassava plant. The former is found in India and some parts of East Africa, and the latter in the Americas. The starch is extracted from the plants’ pithy centres by grating and squeezing. It is then suspended in a little water to make a paste, which is then passed through a colander to form little pellets that are then dried.[1]
Both are very much associated with Empire, and recipes using sago begin to appear in 18th-century cookery books. In Sarah Harrison’s The House-keeper’s Pocket-book sago is simmered in water and flavoured with sugar, cinnamon and lemon.[2] Elizabeth Raffald has a complex, red-coloured sago pudding containing red wine, sugar, bone marrow and egg yolks. She does have a simpler version closer to what we would recognise today: sago simmered in milk and cream, and flavoured with sack, sugar, eggs and nutmeg.[3] Through the 18th and 19th centuries, the typical way to prepare the pudding would be to cook it on the hob and then bake it in pastry. Mrs Beeton uses sago in two more recipes: a sweet sago sauce for desserts and a sago soup.[4]
If you are unsure about making sago or tapioca pudding (or returning to it after eating the runny school kind of years past), the great food historian Alan Davidson provides some words of encouragement: ‘[I]t is sometimes despised by the ignorant, that is to say, persons who have no knowledge of how good they are when properly made.’ He casts down a caveat, however: ‘[The] texture delights a few cognoscenti in Britain but is repellent to the majority and has no doubt contributed to the virtual disappearance of the pudding from British tables.’[5] And I say that it is a crying shame. It is rarely included in cookery books anymore, not even those specialising in puddings. Justin Gellatly is a fan though, and there are a couple of recipes in Helen Thomas’s excellent Pudding Book, but that’s about it.[6]
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The typical way to cook the pudding these days is to either bake it I the oven or cook it on the hob, and I provide methods for both, though I prefer the latter. It is quick to make and, despite what other recipes say, requires no soaking – just a careful swish in some cold water.
I’ve left the amount of sugar to you. If you intend to eat the pudding with sweet jam, go for around 90 grams, if you are eating it on its own, or with tart fruit like rhubarb or gooseberry, perhaps use 120 grams of sugar.
Serves 6 to 8 people, depending upon greediness. If more appropriate, half the amounts.
Around 30 g butter (if baking)
120 g sago or tapioca pearls
90–120 g caster sugar
1 litre full-fat milk
150 ml double cream
Flavourings: 3 or 4 strips of pared lemon rind, a lightly-crushed fresh bay leaf, a few drops of vanilla extract (or replace caster sugar with vanilla sugar), almond extract, cocoa, etc.
Oven method:
Preheat the oven to 160°C. In a baking dish of 1¼ litre capacity dot the bottom with small knobs of butter. Place the sago pearls in a jug and pour over plenty of cold water to release any starch. Pour through a sieve and then scatter the sago over the base of the dish with the sugar, milk, cream and flavourings. If using cocoa powder, whisk it into the milk before pouring into the dish. Place in the oven and bake for 60-90 minutes, stirring every now and again to disperse lumps. When the time is up, and you want a browner top, you could place it under a hot grill for a few minutes. Leave the pudding to stand for 10 minutes before serving.
Hob method:
Wash the sago pearls as described above and place them in a saucepan with the remainder of the ingredients, bar the butter. Bring slowly to a simmer, stirring gently. Leave to simmer for around 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. After the 15-minute mark, keep a closer eye on it: cook a further 10 to 15 minutes, but stir more frequently, scraping any stuck bits from the base. Sago pearls stick and catch easily!
Stop cooking when the pearls are soft and gelatinous. Let the pudding stand for 10 minutes before serving. If it seems a little on the thick side, stir a little more milk through it.
References
[1] Beeton, I. (1861). The Book of Household Management. Lightning Source; Davidson, A. (1999). The Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford University Press.
[2] Harrison, S. (1751). The House-keeper’s Pocket-book And Compleat Family Cook (5th ed.). R. Ware.
[3] Raffald, E. (1769). The Experienced English Housekeeper (First Edit). J. Harrop.
[4] Beeton (1861)
[5] Davidson (1999)
[6] Gellatly, J. (2016). Bread, Cake, Doughnut, Pudding: Sweet and Savoury Recipes from Britain’s Best Baker. Penguin Books Limited; Thomas, H. (1980). The Pudding Book. Hutchinson & Co.
This pudding has been on my ‘to post’ list for absolutely ages. It has become of my favourites, though as you will discover as you read the post, not everyone agrees with me. I’ve called it a forgotten food, but it is still well-known in Ireland. It was popular in many parts of England too, but it doesn’t seem to get made anymore. Carrageen pudding is a set dessert akin to jellies, blancmanges and flummeries, but it is made from the gelatinous seaweed carrageen, also known as Irish moss. It used to be gathered in Yorkshire and South-West England, going by the name ‘Dorset Moss’.1
I first made it in 2015 as part of one of my semi-regular Pud Clubs; I always liked to make one risky pud, and carrageen pudding was it. I flavoured it the traditional way with sugar, lemon and brandy. I didn’t particularly like the taste: there was something of a Lemsip about it. If I remember rightly, it was voted worst pudding of the day. However it wasn’t the flavour that put people off; it is more gummy than a gelatine set dessert, and doesn’t dissolve cleanly in the mouth. As John Wright puts it: it doesn’t have an acquired taste – it barely has any – ‘more of an acquired texture.’2 That particular Pud Club was the closest I’ve seen anyone get to vomiting at one of my paid food events.
I returned to it later in the year after I’d had the idea for a seaside-themed popup restaurant, and though I could use it in the dessert course. I refined the recipe, adding some whipped cream to give it a mousse-like texture and flavoured it with elderflowers. I combined it with a gooseberry sherbet, and I was pretty pleased with it.
Carrageen is a common seaweed found throughout the coasts British Isles, except for parts of Lincolnshire and East Anglia.2 It is found in rockpools, is branched and a dark red colour. The wonderful food writer Theodora Fitzgibbon describes it as ‘a branching mucilaginous seaweed found on all rocks in Ireland’, which does not sound appetising, I realise. She goes on the comfort the reader, telling us that ‘it does not taste at all marine when properly prepared.’3 It is picked and dried in the sun, typically in April and May, and during the process it lightens from a dark red-brown to a creamy brownish beige, tinged with a pink-red hue.
To prepare carrageen, it is reconstituted in cold water, drained and then simmered in fresh water. It quickly turns viscous, bubbling away like the contents of a witch’s cauldron. The gloopiness is caused by the release of a trio of closely-related carbohydrates together called carrageenan.2 To extract it properly, the whole lot has to be squeezed through some muslin (cheesecloth). These carbohydrates are not digested by the body, and are therefore an excellent source of soluble fibre. Indeed, carrageen has been used as a treatment for a range of stomach and digestive complains and it ‘is considered extremely salutary for persons of delicate constitutions’.4 Its viscosity also made it a common treatment for sore throats and chest complaints. It also ‘fills plaster pores, makes wallpaper dressings…and fixes false teeth.’1
Today carrageenan is commonly found in factory foods. For example, fat-free yoghurts no longer able to set properly are thickened with carrageenan. It is perfectly safe to eat, but foods that contain it should be avoided, because its inclusion is a dead giveaway that the food has been highly processed. Eat your yoghurt lipid intacta.
Don’t let my previous description put you off making this dessert; I really think I have the recipe right. The texture is good and is certainly better than using cornflour to set desserts.
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References
It is always an exciting day when I happen upon an ingredient I have never cooked or eaten, but have read about. I was, therefore, very excited when I approached the market stall of organic dairy farmers Hook & Son at London’s Borough Market at the end of December last year. They specialise in raw dairy products – indeed, it was spotting raw milk and butter that originally piqued my interest – but then I saw on their products list amongst the more typical dairy produce: colostrum. I immediately bought some (along with some excellent raw salted butter).
Colostrum is the name given to the milk produced by female mammals from their mammary glands for the first few days after giving birth to their young. It is very rich and is particularly high in protein: in the case of cows, around five times the protein of whole milk. Because it is the milk produced in order to give a newly-born calf a nutritional boost, it is not a commercial product. A calf should not be ‘deprived of this first natural aperitif’ as Dorothy Hartley put it.1 Whilst this is true, the reality is that there is a great deal of surplus colostrum ever since dairy cows have been bred to produce huge amounts of milk following the agricultural revolution of the 18th century. It was surplus because the highly nutritional colostrum – the beestings (sometimes spelt beastings) as they were called – gave calves diarrhoea.2 Some was reserved for motherless calves.
Leftover beestings would be sent into the community in jugs where it was considered a great treat. ‘It could not be bought’, Florence White tells us, ‘the farmer’s wife used to send a jugful to some of her oldest and best customers’, she would insist that the jug came back unwashed. Superstition held that ‘[t]o return the jug washed [would] bring about the death of the new-born calf.’3 It is today a niche foodstuff, and is typically considered ‘unmarketable’. Today colostrum is dried into powder and sold as a supplement to calves that would otherwise miss out in this very important food.4
Colostrum has been described as ‘golden yellow and as thick as double cream’.1 Well as you can see from my photograph, mine was certainly golden in colour: like a rich egg yolk custard. Upon inspection, however, it did not seem thick at all; in fact, I’d go so far as to say that it appeared watery. I tasted it and rather than it tasting lusciously creamy, it lacked sweetness. In fact, it had an almost savoury minerality about it. It still tasted nice; just not what I was expecting.
Being rich in fat and protein, colostrum was a foodstuff in its own right, but it was more often consumed cooked. This special milk has a rather curious property in that when it is poured into a saucepan and heated, it thickens just like a custard without having to add egg yolks or cornflour. The reason is down to the proteins. Regular whole milk contains broadly three types of protein: casein, whey protein and immunoglobulins (aka antibodies). The vast majority of the protein is made of casein in whole milk. This protein is temperature stable and doesn’t unfold (‘denature’) when hot. Therefore regular milk doesn’t gel or thicken. Colostrum however is very high in whey proteins (5x more than whole milk) and immunoglobulins (80x more than whole milk), both of which denature between around 55°C and 70°C.5 There is so much protein that colostrum will thicken and set like a custard all on its own. There can be so much protein in there that it has to be diluted with milk.
More typically, it was made into a thick ‘porridge’ with sugar and various flavourings: in Yorkshire it went under the name ‘bull jumpings’,6 in Wales it was called pwdin llo bach (calf’s pudding),7 but more generally, it was called beestings pudding. It is made by simply heating colostrum in a saucepan with sugar, some spices and dried fruit. It could also be set in the oven if more convenient. In fact it could be baked inside a pastry case like a Yorkshire curd tart (but without the curds or eggs!).
There was a certain amount of trepidation when I made mine – I thought that perhaps it would be too thin to thicken up. Well I needn’t have worried, it thickened readily with a pleasant slight graininess, just like a curd tart. Whilst it did feel rather odd to be eating colostrum, I have to admit it was a delicious milk pudding – one I heartily recommend.
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Beestings pudding takes a matter of minutes to make. It tastes very much like the filling of a Yorkshire curd tart, especially if the pudding is flavoured with allspice. If you like, the pudding can be baked in shallow dish, or even better, a blind-baked sweet shortcrust pastry base. Follow the instructions for baking a Yorkshire curd tart if you fancy having a go at that.
Serves 4
500 ml colostrum
60 g caster sugar
60 g raisins
Pinch salt
Pinch freshly grated nutmeg or ground allspice
Place all of the ingredients in a small saucepan over a low to medium heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar.
When the sugar has dissolved, turn up the heat to medium. It’s a bit like making custard now, but the heat can be higher: keep stirring until the beestings thicken – as if by magic – as it comes to a simmer.
When the beestings are thick like creamy, but slightly granular, porridge, it is ready.
Divide between four bowls and serve, or refrigerate and eat cold.
References
As I promised in my last post, I have a second cheese recipe for you that uses a traditionally-made British cheese. Harvey & Brockless sent me a whole loads of excellent cheeses and other goodies, and tucked in there was probably my favourite British blue cheese, Isle of Wight Blue:
‘Established in 2006 by mother and son Julie and Richard Hodgson, Isle of Wight Cheese Co. flagship blue is soft and creamy with a bluey green natural rind and blue veins.’
It’s strong, yet mellow and very creamy. Nothing like a Stilton at all (I love a good Stilton too, of course).
This is exactly the sort of cheese Professor Peter J. Atkins and I were talking about in my podcast episode about the British cheese industry, and how there is a resurgence in traditional styles and methods: softer cheeses made in small batches in small farms – before the behemoth that is Cheddar came along!
This cheese, because of its blue cheese flavour, low acidity and smooth consistency, is perfect to make into an ice cream. Cheese ice creams used to be popular, hitting a peak in the Regency period: indeed, the Prince Regent himself tucked into Parmesan cheese ice cream. My ice cream, like Prince George’s, is sweetened, but it is not over-sweet. It’s very simple to make – a case of mixing soft cheese into some cream and sugar. A curdy, hard or crumbly cheese would not work here.
I’ve combined it with a dessert classic: pears poached in red wine. There’s a recipe in Forme of Cury for it, so it really does have quite the vintage. The poaching wine is sweet and spiced and is reduced to a delicious, tart and slightly fiery spooning sauce. On the side: a nice digestive biscuit.
This is a well tried-and-tested recipe: it’s popped up on restaurant and pop-up restaurant menus in the past, but I originally made it as part of The Telegraph Fabulous Foodie competition all the way back in 2015. It was judged by none less than Xanthe Clay, John Gregory Smith and Jeremy Dixon and it took me to the grand final. So if you are still unsure as to whether you’ll like it, take it from them, not me, that it is good!
Give it a go, you won’t be sorry. Also, see below for an excellent way of using up left over ice cream and sauce.
Serves 4 to 6
For the ice cream:
1 x 225 g round of Isle of Wight Blue at room temperature
450 g double cream
1 ½ tbs icing sugar
In a bowl, break up the cheese as best you can and beat into it one third of the cream. You won’t be able to blend it in perfectly, but a little texture is no bad thing.
Sift the icing sugar with the reminder of the cream in a second bowl and whip until just slightly floppy, then fold into the cheese.
Freeze it in an ice cream churn if you have one. Alternatively, place in a tub, pop in the freezer and beat it with a small whisk every 20 to 30 minutes or so until it becomes too difficult; at that point you are done, and it can be left in the freezer until required. If you don’t want to freeze it, you can whip the cream a little more and use it like clotted cream.
For the pears:
4 to 6 unripe conference pears
500 ml red wine
100 g caster sugar
1 cinnamon stick
2 long peppers (or ¼ tsp black peppercorns)
¼ tsp ground ginger
Peel the pears, leaving the stalks intact. Slice the bottom so that the pear is able to stand up sturdily. If you have one, use a melon baller to remove the core from beneath.
Bruise the cinnamon stick and long pepper (or crack the peppercorns) and place in a pan with the wine and sugar. Put over a medium-low heat and stir to dissolve the sugar. Once dissolved, add the pears.
Bring to a simmer and cover the pan, turn down the heat and poach until tender. This will take around 20 minutes. The pears won’t be completely submerged, so to ensure an even colouring from the wine, turn them half way through cooking.
Remove the pears and set aside. They can be stored in the fridge for up to four days.
Now make the syrup: turn up the heat and bring the wine to the boil and let it reduce by around three-quarters or more, until viscous. Pour into a jug or jar and allow to cool.
To serve:
Remove the ice cream from the fridge around half an hour before you want to serve. Place a pear in the centre of a plate – it may need another trim at the bottom if it’s been in the fridge a day or two – and carefully spoon a couple of teaspoons of the syrup over the tip of the pear.
Place a biscuit next to the pear – I used a homemade digestive (post coming soon), but a hob-nob would also work very well – and place a scoop or quenelle of ice cream on top the biscuit.
Leftovers: there will probably be leftover ice cream and syrup, the latter of which keeps for weeks. Treat yourself to a very grown-up ice cream cookie sandwich using digestives instead of cookies, cheese ice cream instead of vanilla, and red wine syrup in place of raspberry sauce.
This post complements the episode ‘Christmas Special 2021: Christmas Pudding’ on The British Food History Podcast.
On Stir Up Sunday I made my Christmas Pudding, using Sam Bilton’s Great Aunt Eliza’s plum pudding recipe, and now it is time to cook it and get it ready to serve for the big day. If you missed the first post click here to catchup.
I fed the pudding a couple of tablespoons of rum (but brandy is also good) twice, and I found the best way to do this was the untie the pudding, open the top and sprinkle in the rum, before retying with fresh string.
On Christmas Day, get your big pot of boiling water just like you did for the first boiling. Simmer the pudding for 2 hours, making sure the pudding doesn’t touch the base of the pot and scorch.
When ready, remove from the pan and gingerly cut away the string and carefully unwrap the pudding; don’t worry too much about it breaking because it develops a skin made from the flour that had been dredged on the cloth before its first boiling, keeping it all together. Pop it on a serving dish with a sprig of holly.
When you want to serve it, flame with rum or brandy, turn the lights down and carry it into the dining room. There will be applause.
I served the pudding with rum butter, but you can also serve it with brandy butter (which I must admit, I don’t like as much as the rum butter), or good old custard. I’ll be publishing a post tomorrow with my recipe for brandy or rum butter.
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The pudding was delicious, I must say, and it will forever be my standard, so thanks again to Sam Bilton for her letting me use the recipe.
Listen to the podcast episode for more information, including the history and folklore surrounding Christmas pudding, plus a cooking spot, and a handy guide to flaming your pudding safely and effectively!
British Food: A History 