Just Desserts

by Helen Gaffney

The British repertoire of puddings - the steamed puds, pies, tarts, trifles, flans, flummeries and fools - is unequalled anywhere. From early times it seems the British nation had a sweet tooth and today even French gastronomes, normally so unfairly critical of British food, admit that our variety of puddings is probably greater than in any part of the world. Visitors to British homes always hope to get, for pudding at least, a crisp treacle tart or apple pie with a dollop of incomparable British cream.

British puddings have a long and honourable pedigree. Almost all have descended from two ancient confections, 'the stately pye' or pudding, filled with dates and raisins, currants, flour, suet, nuts and almonds plus meat or fish finely shredded or minced, and a festival dish called frumenty - a soft jellied milk pudding made of wheat or barley cooked very gently and long and then eaten with milk and honey - a sort of early breakfast cereal.

In time eggs, cream and then sugar - this last more slowly because it was scarce and expensive - came to join the other ingredients. The puddings at this stage were often contained in a bag, an animal's stomach (haggis still is) - or in a great thick pastry crust or 'coffyn'.

This led to custard pies and custard pie jokes followed quickly after - good Queen Bess was one of the first to laugh when, after the 'coffyn' containing the custard had been brought on and her assembled guests had been served, her jester flew into the room and, leaping over the heads of the company, dived straight into the gooey mess, splattering the courtier's velvets

The Queen's taste for sugary comfits and confections had a notable effect on her teeth. These were remarkable black - according to one observer, who added that this seemed to be "a defect to which all the English seemed subject, owing to their too great use of sugar".

It was certainly true that puddings were served grandly in those days. There were on great occasions huge numbers of puddings on the table with a vast cloved and gilded pippin-pie in the centre breathing its scented steam.

"Your breath is like the steam of apple-pie" was a nice compliment in those days, although in fact the surreptitious chewing of cloves, which sweetened the breath, was also a remedy for toothache.

The grander the occasion, the grander the sweetmeat course. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a banquet was not the feast itself but the sweet course that followed it, which was designed to provide entertainment as much as an opportunity to eat wonderful confections. Pies would be opened to release the well-known four-and-twenty blackbirds or even frogs, which in the words of one seventeenth century writer "made the ladies skip and shreek".

All good things have to come to an end and by the end of the seventeenth century fat pink Venuses were no longer required to appear from very large pies and the fountains of wine were still. However, the good old country dishes were still enjoyed throughout the countryside; the batter puddings and plate pies and steamed puddings such as Granny's Leg - a currant-speckled, roly-poly, pastry object boiled in a cloth. There is hardly a town in Britain that does not boast of a local pudding - or at least of a dish sold at local fairs, or junkets as they were called - thus giving the name to yet another pudding which could be made on the spot with warm milk from the cow.

So the pudding is still a great favourite in Britain and a freshly made rhubarb flan or Brown Betty is certainly hard to beat. Let us hope that the fashion for slimness will not lead us to give up our wonderful puddings. They may be to much for an ordinary working day, but are tremendous at weekends, when for once most of us can sit down and dedicate ourselves to the business of eating and pudding can have its pride of place.