When is a pudding not a pudding?

In this week's Claire Chats, I look at Tudor puddings, dishes that were not at all what we'd call puddings today.

Here is a recipe from Thomas Dawson's "The Good Housewife's Jewel" (1596)

"To make a pudding

Take parsley and thyme and chop it small. Then take the kidney of veal and parboil it, and when it is parboiled, take all the fat off it, and lay it that it may cool. When it is cold shred it like as you do suet for puddings. Then take marrow and mince it by itself. Then take grated bread and small raisins the quantity of your stuff, and dates minced small. Then take the eggs and roast them hard and take the yolks of them and chop them small, and then take your stuff aforerehearsed, and mingle altogether. Then take pepper, cloves, and mace, saffron, and salt, and put it together with the said stuff, as much as you think by casting shall suffice. Then take six eggs and break them into a vessel, whites and all. Put your dry stuff into the same eggs, and temper them all well together. So fill your haggis or gut, and seethe it well and it will be good."

Pudding recipes

Savoury puddings:

• Haggis - You can find out more information, along with a Scottish recipe from 1856, at http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodpuddings.html#haggis. A modern recipe can be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/haggis_66072.
• Black Pudding - If you don't mind dealing with blood then you can make your own black pudding - https://www.rivercottage.net/recipes/black-pudding

Recipes for traditional British steamed puddings (as in desserts!):

• Jam roly-poly - https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/13354/jam-rolypoly
• Spotted dick - https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2686661/spotted-dick
• Schooldays treacle sponge - https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/13352/schooldays-treacle-sponge
• As-you-like-it steamed pudding - https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2653636/asyoulikeit-steamed-pudding
• Sticky rhubarb & strawberry sponge pudding - https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3378/sticky-rhubarb-and-strawberry-sponge-pudding
• Steamed vanilla sponge with butterscotch sauce & custard - https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1771637/steamed-vanilla-sponge-with-butterscotch-sauce-and
• Christmas puddings - Classic Christmas pudding or Ultimate Christmas Pudding.

Further Reading

• Pudding, boudin, budino and complex historical relationship between desserts and sausages - https://breadcakesandale.wordpress.com/2013/08/29/pudding-boudin-budino-botellus/
• A Cambridge Pudding - http://www.oldfoodways.info/testrecipes/1500-to-1700/a-cambridge-pudding/
• Historic Cambridge recipe to appear on the Great British Bake Off
• This Spanish Pig-Slaughtering Tradition Is Rooted In Sustainability
• What is a pudding?