PLUM PUDDING COMPLETE ABOUT TURN.

“To be successful in life, you need to be stronger than your excuses.”~ Unknown

Dried fruit is really what gives traditional plum pudding its sweetness despite its name. Plum pudding was defined by Noah Webster as a “pudding containing currants or raisins,” when he wrote about it he added, “sometimes enriched with raisins and called plum-pudding.”

“The word plum once meant “raisin”. That name goes back to the late 1600s. Because of the increasing use of raisins and currants as a substitute for prunes in recipes. Over the centuries, the use of plum gradually disappeared but it has been immortalized in the name of various traditional “plum” dishes like plum frumenty, plum pottage, plum porridge, and plum broth—all dishes that are sweetened with raisins or currants are called plum even the plum pie of Little Jack Horner fame. 

The other half of the name plum pudding also has an unexpected meaning. Pudding originally referred to what we call a sausage, a mixture of meat, cereal, spices, and often blood, stuffed into intestines or the stomach, then boiled. 

Over the years, the word was extended to include other similar food mixtures that were boiled, and even to things that were baked. In our modern time, it refers to lip-smacking images of sweet creamy, soft desserts that come to mind when we think of pudding. But originally it involved various meat cuts and products not tantalizing scenes from the bakery.