Part of the explanation for the UKs high use of dried fruit from the medieval period recipes is the fact that dried fruit was a way of storing ‘sweet’ ingredients before refrigeration was available. Much of the ‘old’ world used dried fruits (raisins, sultanas, currants, plums [prunes], figs and dates). They are easy to store and ship to and around Europe alongside spices. Sugar was not a thing in medieval era so sweetness came from either fruits or honey. Dried fruit and spices weren’t cheap and so the idea of saving them for the Christmas festivities became the norm, so people could enjoy a “rich” treat as part of their celebration. Conversely, most American “sweets” where developed post the production of refined sugar. This meant that American pallets developed an obsession with dishes that are easy to eat and little more than high sugar content cakes, cookies and puddings with very limited flavours. Old world recipes are often challenging to American pallets because they frequently use ingredients that might be defined as “course” compared to the “refined” (but empty) ingredients used in American recipes.
One of the main reasons why North Americans don't like christmas pudding is not because of the fruit cake idea but also the strong taste of brandy or in some cases port as well. We always get this sort of reply from US service people around my area in the East of England Best way for me is after Christmas day the left over Christmas pudding gets fried in a frying pan with just butter and when hot served with brandy butter or double cream
@@jonathanpatrick8506 have you tried having the fried pudding with a fried breakfast? Christmas pudding isn’t massively different to the Scottish “clootie (cloth) dumpling” which is eaten with a fried breakfast.
Alanna, I had two helpings of Christmas Pud yesterday and it was bloody gorgeous! I can never understand how Canadians and US people don't like it. Merry Christmas and a happy new year.
@@AdventuresAndNaps Two slices yesterday, and one today...Made the pudding myself four months ago and basted it regularly with Drambuie. Steamed it for serving in a slow cooker for four hours. Sprig of holly on the top, brandy poured over it, then set on fire....hic! PS I use vegetable suet these days as my son loves Xmas pudding but is a vegetarian.....
I've had 3 medium Xmas puds so far this year, only 1 on Xmas day. I also stocked up with half price Xmas puds in boxing day reductions. Some of them will be good until my birthday in April 😁
@@AdventuresAndNaps , " if you have to add something to the basic then the basic is not very good " , so does that apply to the full English breakfast , curries , steak egg and chips , anything Italian , any sausages etc etc etc etc , basically 90% of all foods ??????
I just love Christmas Pudding! I'll have with custard, I'll have it with cream, I'll have it with vanilla ice cream, and I'll even eat it just on its own. I can't imagine Christmas without it to be honest with you.
I love it too. Only ever eat home made. Anything with dried fruits and spices is delicious and the epitome of Christmas season. I observe Stir Up Sunday every year too. And however full I am, there is always room for a second helping of pudding!
Canadian here, my Mom makes Christmas pudding, I love it but...I've been eating it every Christmas since I was a kid 50 some odd years ago. It's a recipe passed down several generations from England, where my ancestors came from 😊
Rule Number 1 - Never ever microwave a Christmas pudding, even if it says on the pack that you can; it has to be steamed for a couple of hours to get the full and proper effect. Rule Number 2 - To be eaten in small amounts, accompanied by either double cream, custard or (preferably) brandy butter or brandy sauce.
no 3 - it has to be fresh, some just are not right by time they've spent any time on xmas shelves, commercial ones also contain too much of the wrong fat to preserve them & definitely rule 2
It's terrible bc it has dried fruit and nothing can salvage that, even if it didn't have dried fruit it's still by far inferior to other desserts (and I am a native Brit)
The covering it in warm brandy and setting light to it is part of the ritual...and it makes it taste better (not sure it would improve the flavour enough for you though 😜)
Hi Alanna, Brit born, Canadian raised, (in the Kawarthas ;) ) there are three things that make Christmas for this 76 year old, Dark Christmas cake, Mince pies/tarts and Christmas plum pudding. Merry Christmas dear and happiest of New Years, Peace, Love, and all Best Wishes.
I’m Canadian and have had Christmas pudding all my life. Not all Canadians hate it. There are grated carrots and potatoes in my recipe as well as spices and dried fruits.
My father served in the army in WW1. While in the trenches, the company cook managed to produce a Christmas pudding, much to the delight of the men.The cook was complimented by the captain , who asked where he managed to find the cloth it was cooked in The cook took off his tunic and proudly showed that one sleeve of his shirt, which he had been wearing for a week, was missing.
I usually enjoy your videos, BUT … I’ve never seen anybody make such fuss over a simple dish. Many English deserts have dried fruits as a base, Christmas cakes and puddings, Eccles cakes , Dundee cake etc. I’m biased, I was brought up on them,and having reached 70 without coming to any harm, I love them!
Gen X Brit myself, adding a belated comment for the UA-cam algorithm(s), and it occurred to me that I was weaned on to really liking fruit cakes and Christmas pudding via having sultanas in teacakes and scones, alongside the general shift towards tolerating 'bits' in food (which made raisins, then currants also acceptable). But I can remember having that level of grim aversion and despair when faced by 'mincemeat tart' in primary-school dinners... aka 'dead fly flan'... made even worse by the horrible custard.
Canadian here... I love plum pudding. My mother used to make it, using my English grandmother's recipe. She would steam the pudding while we were eating Christmas dinner, flame it tableside and serve it with my father's hard sauce. Absolutely delicious!
It's not a dessert made of fruits. It's a steamed pudding made of dried fruits, suet, flour, nuts, mixed peel, breadcrumbs and eggs, and a good amount of brandy or rum. Served with brandy butter and/or brandy custard and/or brandy cream. When served, one can pour brandy or rum over it, and set fire to it.
When I arrived in the UK 24 years ago, I hated xmas pudding as well as minced pies. But they have both grown on me, it took me a few years, but now I am hunting for those mince pies from October and I would terribly miss the xmas pudding at the end of our xmas meal if we did not have one.
Australian here, it will be 34*c, we eat our Christmas lunch of Roast Turkey, lamb and Chicken with all the roast vegetables. We will also have huge tiger prawns and salads... then...... we will have Christmas pudding, MUST be home made and hung for at least a month but we do cater for preferences of clotted cream or custard..... there is NO WAY we couldn't have our pud !
Canadian born and raised. Not true that Canadians hate Christmas pudding! My late mum always made the best Christmas pudding (complete with rum sauce which was served flaming), always a treat and very much missed. It's all in how it's made and served and like many traditions, needs to be consistent and passed through the generations. Christmas pudding may not be everyone's favourite, but perhaps an acquired taste like liquorice all sorts or Marmite! 🤣
I love it. I'm from Devon so serve it with clotted cream. Never tried it with custard. On boxing day fry slices of leftovers in butter and reflame with brandy. Oh delicious. Still each to their own. Happy New Year!
Oh Alana ur face when u had that Christmas pudding just cracked me up ur hilarious. I absolutely love Christmas pudding and Christmas cake and custard or brandy sauce.💖
Hi Alanna - I think your taste buds just need a bit of training, that's all! Unfortunately my Mum passed away a long time ago when I was about 17 yo (I'm 78 yo now) so this is all from memory. Mum used to start the process by soaking the fruit in the mixture of all the alcohol for a couple of weeks in October. We usually had some relatives staying over Christmas so it was a fairly large pudding, about the size of a soccer ball. After the fruit came the flour and dry spices which were all stirred in by the family members who got to make a silent wish and the silver sixpence was dropped in too. The the mix was covered in the cloth and shaped into a rough ball and kept in the cool pantry until a few days before Christmas when it was opened up and inspected and I expect secretly tasted. Back into its cloth with a drop more brandy until Christmas morning. Mum had a huge saucepan that was big enough for the pudding still in the cloth and so it was slowly simmered until about 2pm when it was ceremoniously turned out of its cloth onto a large serving plate and a large splodge of brandy butter was melted over the top and decorated with a holly twig. Still hot, it was carved up into half-segments with creamy custard poured all over. Delicious - and there were left-overs they were kept in the fridge and pieces cut off as required and re-heated in the oven - didn't last very long though! Love your blogs and you too! Never mind the nay-sayers, they gets their kicks from being nasty!
How can one NOT like currants, raisins and sultanas? They're sweet and natural and just generally wonderful. Custard? Custard? Brandy butter and double cream is what one should have with Christmas pudding. I love your videos and now I have to feel sorry for you that you're missing out on some of the best tastes in the world 😄 Look after yourself and have a brilliant new year.
As a kid growing up in the 60's and 70's my mum made both Christmas Pudding (including the silver sixpence as it was pre-decimalisation) and Christmas Cake. Both were usually made well in advance of Christmas, especially the cake which she would make around 3-6 months before Christmas and regularly 'feed' with either brandy, whiskey, sherry or rum every week until you were ready to add marzipan and icing
Because Christmas pudding is very rich, a little sugar sprinkled on top works very well. Also, my family and I never "drench" it in custard; we put the same amount you would with any pudding. A lot of Brits don't eat it anymore because it is very filling, and after the biggest meal of the year, it's not what everybody craves straight afterwards, but on Boxing Day, a little Christmas pud fried in butter with a glass of sherry for brunch is one of the best treats you'll ever enjoy!
Fellow Canadian here (albeit much older than you) and I’ll be happy to consume your share of pudding, especially if it has a nice hard pudding sauce. I also make my own fruitcake and occasionally consume haggis.
Happy Boxing Day, Alanna. Christmas Pudding is traditionally prepared soaked in Brandy and set alight. Then pour on rich gravy and serve with Chips and Curry Sauce. At least, that is how my Mother used to make it when we were kids. The daft bint.
I've never heard of anyone having Christmas Pudding with gravy, chips and curry sauce, and never seen it offered like that on a restaurant menu either. Is that a common way of eating it where you are (if so, where is that?), or is it just your own personal (or your mother's) preference?
@@primalengland Yes! That's what I thought too, I thought maybe he was winding Alanna up, but then I saw the daft bint comment about his mother doing that at the end and thought maybe it was real, so I got curious and decided to ask.
Canadian here, my grandparents always had and made Christmas/plum pudding. My parents less so, me never… but I do miss it. Yeah, they would put quarters in there. I also love its cousin Christmas cake.
Just got home started watching this and thought I've got christmas pudding left over. so stopped video to put some in the steamer. Merry Christmas to you and yours
We very rarely ate Christmas pudding when I was a child because we were usually too full but one year we insisted and my poor dad was given the job of setting fire to it and it went up so violently that it melted the front of his polyester sweater 🔥
It's just a matter of acclimatisation. You're doing very well Alanna. Imagine the pride you will feel when you can honestly say that you like Christmas pud. Keep it up chief, keep it up.
Hi Alana! watching you tasting the pudding of the GODS! cracked me up. I can eat Christmas Pudding all the time, cold, hot and doused in alcohol, also nice with a brandy cream in the style of Baileys or just brandy butter. oh and rich fruit cake (cannot abide sponges like Victoria sponge). Happy New Year to you and yours best wishes Mike.
the issue is the microwave, they are crap done in the microwave, all the microwave does is heat it up and remove the moisture from the pudding, the one you had serves 2 to 3 people, the better ones are darker and moist and smell of brandy, the best way to to do it is make your own pudding the way its meant to be... It has its origins in medieval England, with early recipes making use of dried fruit, suet, breadcrumbs, flour, eggs and spice, along with liquid such as milk or fortified wine. Later, recipes became more elaborate. In 1845, cookery writer Eliza Acton wrote the first recipe for a dish actually called "Christmas pudding". i steam the puddings i make, which keeps the moisture in the pudding. 'mary berry' makes a good christmas pudding.
I LOVE Christmas pudding! With cream or custard? Yum! It's served after the Christmas meal, by which time we've all had enough to drink that it makes sense to set it on fire and bring it into the darkened dining room. It's sort of a combination candle, sparkler and dessert. And yes, a sixpence (and sometimes other silver charms, too.)
4:24 I lived my formative (i.e. early drinking) years in Oliver Cromwell country, and in the local Town of St Ives (then in Huntingdonshire) was a pub - the Golden Lion - which we frequented. Outside it is a statue of Oliver Cromwell pointing downwards accusatively. One Christmas, friends and I decided it would be amusing to tie a 'talks balloon' proclaiming "You've been eating christmas pudding!" to his mouth. We drew lots, and I lost. We couldn't find a round balloon, but scavenged a long sausage balloon upon which we scrawled the text. It was an icy night as I has heaved up the pedestal to the statue, only to discover that owing to a problem with perspective and scale, I could only reach OC's upper thigh. So as not to waste the balloon I tied it there, just as a police car came around the corner; but I managed to hide myself. The balloon, located as it was, looked rather more like a male appendage than a talks balloon, and made it into the local newspaper. Over the days it developed an embarrassingly public brewer's droop.
My mum used to make Christmas pudding every year, and it was delicious. I think whatever you grow up eating, you consider normal. I grew up eating black pudding, haggis, Christmas pudding, and mince pies. I'm sure Americans and Canadians eat things i would consider weird. ❤ from Lancashire
I worked in a butcher's shop as a teenager. I saw sausages being made in a sausage making machine which was a meat mincer to which you attached an animal intestine into which you forced minced sausage meat. I wonder it any sausages are made from animal intestine these days? It is the origin of sausages.
@ 4:06 Alana it's Natural Muslin weave known as Cheesecloth, Can be found in all-sorts of fibres, depends on it's usage, Car cleaners use it to apply polish,
Merry Christmas Alanna. I love the taste of Christmas pudding. Interestingly my Canadian son-in-law also loves it - and Christmas cake too. He was delighted not offended we'd make extra Christmas cake especially as he's in town this year. So maybe not all North Americans hate it?
Alanna, I know that in the modern era that the microwave is a thing, but with Christmas pudding and other steamed desserts it should be steamed for a couple of hours ideally to heat it through and moisten it, setting it on fire burns off the alcohol within the pudding, be it Brandy, Whiskey, Rum, etc, leaving the flavour but not the alcohol per se, it can then be served with, a flavoured butter such as Brandy butter, or Custard, Cream, some even like Vanilla ice-cream for the contrast between the hot and the cold.
Alanna - maybe start off with mince pies - get used to sweet spiced dried fruits in suet, then graduate to Christmas cake and pudding... I've loved all since childhood - but there's no other item the rest of the year that's really similar. Hope the spring goes well for you
Dear Alanna I personally have not eaten Christmas pudding for nearly 50 years it’s too heavy after a Christmas dinner and it will make me feel bloated no thank you so what’s left please have a happy Christmas and a wonderful new year ❤️❤️❤️❤️
Thanks Alanna, it's obviously just a cultural cullenary taste difference. I believe most English people would eat Christmas pudding over say Pumpkin pie, any day of the week. Thanks for your content, here's wishing you a happy healthy and peaceful New Year 🤗😘🤗🥂
A belated Merry Christmas Alanna. Yes I love it and even cold it's still delicious. I agree with the comment below. Never, ever, not no how, microwave a Christmas pudding it goes rubbery. Home made ones need to be made at least 3 months before and even if kept for 6 months will still be as good.
There's a light variety of Christmas pudding, which my BC and Aussie grandsons much prefer. Though, to be frank, all but one of them would still prefer sherry trifle. This lighter pudding replaces all the dark dried fruit and dates, with diced dried apricots, dried papaya chunks, golden sultanas, and candied orange, and uses Golden Syrup in place of treacle, and rum instead of brandy. Serve with brandy butter and come away smiling.
The best part of Christmas IS Christmas pudding, I love it!! My mother always used to make Christmas pudding in the days leading up to Christmas, but it would be for the following year! We usually had it served with brandy butter. I cannot understand why you wouldn't like it 😊
Have to say (I'm a Brit...) I love it but then I like raisins so why wouldn't I. What to have with it, for me, depends how you are serving it; hot after Christmas dinner have it with double cream, finishing of the leftovers cold on Boxingday serve it with warm custard. My grandmother used to make them when I was a kid and I remember finding sixpenny pieces (replaced by 5p after decimalisation).
I love it. After Christmas I buy them up cheaply to eat the rest of the year. I admit I do eat those microwaved, both with and without custard. But for the best, make it yourself, then: steam for several hours, typically 4hrs for a 1 lb or 500 g pudding, longer if bigger. store for at least 3 months. when you come to eat it, steam again for at least an hour, usually two. When you put the hot pud on the table, pour warm brandy over it and set it on fire to caramelise the surface. (I'd use 15 ml. Some use more, but it can be a fire hazard!) serve in thick slabs, with or without, thick custard sauce made with full cream milk. Without custard is the most intense flavour, but the custard lets the flavour build more slowly in your mouth, and you can have an odd mouthful without custard for variety. Eat hot: do not let it cool too much. It can be eaten cold, like cake, but that's a shadow of its real character. I can't understand how anyone can not like it! Do you drink port, cream sherry, muscatel, etc, or eat molasses, stewed blackcurrants, raspberries, plums? Christmas pud is one of these intense flavours, that I thought all humans crave. Don't you colonists drink your coffee very strong and black for the same reason?
I like nicking a bit when it’s cold and set in the fridge the next day. Homemade being different to bought. (Have experiments with if it is better light and fluffy end or solid end as can be too firm)
Haggis is made in a sheep stomach and sausage skin is intestines. The best Christmas Pudding that I had was my Mum's, but before it was cooked. Heston Blumenthal's hidden orange one is really good too.
I love Christmas pudding! Brandy butter or cream for me please. I remember when I was at school we had sixpences wrapped in tin foil hidden inside our Christmas puddings (yes, I'm that old!). Waiting to hear how your nephews reacted to the Christmas box you sent them, fruit cake and all! If fruit cakes are offensive to you, it's not surprising you don't like Christmas pudding Please, please please, if you ever try it again heat up the custard first! It should be served hot!
My stomach would probably not agree with this mixture, but whomever loves it, shall eat it. I hope UA-cam will present you (for your channel) with a better gift in the near future. You're a pleasant to watch and always genuine. Have a safe and sober New Year's. America here.🎄🎁🥂
No need to apologize, Alanna, I'm British born and bred and I find the stuff utterly revolting (I have similar feelings about Christmas Cake as well). Working my way through a couple of Chocolate Fudge Yule Logs over the Christmas period... now THAT'S a festive treat! Hope you and yours had a great Christmas and best wishes for the new year.
My wife and I (both Brits) absolutely love Christmas Pudding. In previous years, we have hit the supermarket immediately after Christmas to buy 1-person puddings like the one you had at reduced price, as they have a very long expiration date (typically over a year). We put them in the kitchen cupboard and can then have Christmas Pudding at any time of the year. With custard, of course.
Love Christmas pudding. We always have it at Christmas. We also put money in the Christmas pudding still. Not sure what there is to not like about dried fruit and brandy haha
I am English and love Christmas pudding. Post Christmas I trawl the shops for reduced price puddings, 'cos they last for months. Next, Alanna will give us her analysis of Christmas crackers, wahay! Best Wishes Alanna, thanks for the entertainment.
The beauty of the pudding bag/ cloth was that you could cook the whole meal in one large pot over your kitchen fire. So the basis would be a pottage (soupy stew) and other things would be tied up in cloths and cooked within the pottage - this might be a pudding, some vegetables, or some meat for eating separately. One pot cooking at it's finest! People who make their Christmas Puddings from scratch do still tend to do it on 'Stir Up Sunday' and taking turns to stir the mixture is a very common practice - even f it's done on a random date. Our family uniquely - as far as I have ascertained- serve our Christmas pudding with Almond Blancmange - it serves as a great clean cooling contrast to the very righ pudding. If I'm honest though.....the Blancmange (or 'White Mould' as we call it) is the Big Thing for me, and I only have the pudding so I can have the Blancmange.
To make a proper homemade pudding, the fruit needs to be soaked in quite a lot of alcohol for several days to rehydrate it and make it juicier. For alcohol, we use a cocktail of old ale, sherry, brandy, Madeira and perhaps Calvados or Lambeg (both versions of French apple brandy). Factory made versions (ugh) make the pudding without rehydrating the fruit (like the Tesco version you have) so it looks wrinkled and unappetising instead of plump and juicy In the original pudding with meat, fruit was used to cover the flavour of slightly 'off' meat, as it would be during the midwinter season with no refrigeration. It would probably be the last of the meat until spring.
In the states the nearest thing to my knowledge is fruit cake. This is normally only eaten once a year during the Christmas season and many people don't like it however the ingredient list seems about right for Christmas pudding. Since Christmas pudding seems to be cooked in cloth and about the size of a bowling ball and rather dense the connection is very strong.
If the Christmas pudding is “dense” there is something wrong or it has gone cold. Properly steamed or pressure cooked it is moist and crumbly. Delicious!
Warm Christmas pudding with warm custard is traditional in Australia too. The correct temperature for both make a difference to the flavour. Steaming the pudding changes the flavour too.
I'm not that keen on Christmas pudding but a good one with clotted cream is passable. The thing about it is that it is from a time when you would have very likely been a) hungry and b) cold and that sort of thing would make you feel full and give you energy. It's also made of real ingredients and not the industrially combined chemicals in most modern puddings or treats. I can't really defend Christmas pudding much more than to say it probably counts as food vs what most of us (including me) prefer to eat which is ultra processed, chemically altered, flavoured, stabilised, thickened products high in calories but with almost zero nutritional value.
Christmas pudding is awesome, my wife has been making ours since Christmas 1980, although since moving to the USA in 1995 we have had to go without the suet. Setting fire to it is the best. We also have double cream, brandy butter and rum butter to have with it.
When I was a child, I and my three sisters took turns to stir the (homemade) pudding and yes, there was always a sixpence in there somewhere! Incidentally, mince pies, which I gather Americans also dislike, were also originally full of minced meat.
Home made and matured is far better, but you have to steam it (microwaving it is sacrilege). After turning it out on a plate, add a good amount of brandy and set fire to it. Best to have is white sauce (home made if possible) (not custard). PS as a child we did put a sixpenny coin in (pre-decimalisation) and that coin was similar in colour to five/ten/fifty pence today but much smaller (probably half the size of the five pence coin). Mother use to make homemade in a very large bown and cover it with a t-towel and held on with string to mature. Yes you only need a small amount as it is "heavy" but it is a wonderful treat at this time of year.
The secret of the pudding cloth is that when flour is rubbed into a cotton cloth it behaves like a waterproof covering for the pudding. The flour swells on contact with the cooking water and blocks the holes in the cloth, effectively turning the interior of the wrapping into an oven. This is why a boiled pudding can get a crispy crust on the outside. We used to eat Bacon pudding made like this in the 60s and 70s but getting hold of suet became increasingly hard with the growth of supermarkets. On a more unpleasant note, we were once invited to an elderly neighbours house for some of her famous Plum Duff, unfortunately she left the kitchen door open as she got the pudding out of the boiling pan, to our horror we saw that she had used a pair of her husbands long johns (underwear) as the pudding cloth, she had tied a knot in a leg and forced the filling down that leg then bound it with the other leg at the top. We had to be polite, all of us eat it.
my nan used to make them in January fill a bucket with all the fruit and mixture she then soaked it in different spirits and kept adding to it ,she then put it in a muslin bag steamed it and poured Scotch over it her fav, then we had it with cream bleeding lovely
I like Christmas pudding but never have space for it after the main course so have it in the evening or on boxing day with hot custard, hot mince pies and cold very thick cream. The contrast of the hot and cold works well. Making mince pies, Christmas cake and sausage rolls with the children was my family's Christmas tradition. I gave up making Christmas cake as no-one except me would eat it so I just buy a tiny one for myself. I buy a small Christmas pudding so everyone can have a taste rather than a huge bowlful. I used to make savoury suet puddings, bacon rolypoly, steak and kidney pudding etc. I use a muslin cloth. Not sure if thats correct as the thing my mother used looked like an old bedsheet.
Love it! 😜 Don’t always manage to eat it Christmas Day now, after a big dinner and my wife won’t eat it, but I buy a large one which will last a few months. Cut a piece, microwave for a minute or so, pour on double cream, gorgeous! 🤪
I can take or leave shop-bought Xmas puddings, but proper home-made ones (to my wife's grandmother's recipe), fed appropriately at regular intervals (both with rum and brandy) are lush. A single batch will provide for about 4 or 5 years, and a 6 monthly feeding will ensure that those older puddings are incredibly boozy and delicious. And yes, reheat by steaming, not microwave. Then bring to the table flaming in brandy. Mince pies and fruit cake (not Christmas cake, though!) I could eat every day.
My late grandmother decided to put a tiny, metallic, silver, horseshoe in her Christmas pudding but failed to warn anyone. She had saved it after it had decorated one of her five daughters wedding cakes. As we ate the pudding my mother started to choke to such an extent that I performed the Heimlich manoeuvre on her expelling the horses across the dining table. As she leaned on the table, red faced and trying to catch her breath my grandmother calmly looked up from her place at the table and said, 'You got the horseshoe, that means your going to be very lucky'. The luck was surviving the Christmas pudding!
Custard ? Oh my lord , at the Day Centre the old folk like custard but its a no . Cream, single,double, clotted or brandied please . The fact that Americans would find it offensive only makes me love it more
I was born here and have lived here my whole life....and I only started to like Christmas Pudding when I turned 18, Give it another 10 years and you might like it...
I was born in 1951. My mum made her own in the cloth and we did have a silver sixpence in it and it was served with Clotted Cream and not custard, but, custard is an option. ❤
Hi Alanna, thank you for making this video it was of great interest to me. It’s very impressive that you did your homework on the origins of our Christmas Pudding. Even more impressive was how much you tried to eat it in spite of already having tried it on numerous occasions. I’d like to try and help you understand why North Americans including Canadians do not like it or fruit cake. “STODGY” Historically as you rightly pointed out we Brits adore thick heavy gloopy food. It stems back from our climate being wet, cold & miserable in the winter months. Manual labour was so tough burning up huge amounts of calories working out doors when your wet and the wind cuts through you. Having a stew or pottage ready when the family got home was easy with ready available root veg , with oats or barley. ( see Haggis) Not only did it warm you up it was high value carbs & protein. Simple to make it could also be left to warm on a fire or stove. Hence we developed a taste for stodgy food. I ramble on so on to Christmas pudding. As you are so interested I suggest you look at the European spice wars. Spice was seen as a currency and as such decadent. Rightly you pointed out the pudding switched from meat to fruits. Traditionally Christmas was a day of rest where nobody worked. Something nice to eat & drink was saved back. Christmas pudding could be made in advance. Also the tradition of a Yule log came about because if you could put one huge well seasoned log on the fire nobody would need to go outside to fetch more wood. My family observe stir up Sunday however we do enough fruit to split it up later for. Christmas pudding, Christmas Cake & mince meat for mince pies. When serving the pudding it important you have some sort of sauce as it is just to Stodgy to eat stand alone. We choose to make a white sauce adding Brandy and sugar. You should serve equal portions of both. We also add a dollop of clotted cream to the top of the hot pudding slice. This allows the pudding to become glossy and easier to digest. You don’t need very much as post a Christmas dinner it’s just something sweet and acidic with the peel from oranges & lemons to help with digestion. I’m sorry if this is a little long winded but you seemed very interested. I have American friends and this very subject has fascinated us also. You just don’t like dried fruit, lots of spices with stodgy. The spices I add are nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, allspice. Regards Barry.
Setting fire to the pudding is the best part of Christmas (and adds to the flavour)! I've literally never heard of anyone putting custard on it - it's usually brandy butter or cream. I personally love a Christmas pudding, but it is quite a strong flavour (especially a mature one like you had). I loved the history of the pudding; I was familiar with parts of it, but not the specifics related to Christmas pudding (so the general history of puddings and Cromwell banning Christmas). All puddings used to be cooked in stomachs or intestines, then as you say pudding cloths and later pudding basins, before the word pudding expanded its meaning to be largely synonymous with dessert. Have you tried sticky toffee pudding? I'd say it's similar to Christmas pudding, but much sweeter and without the raisins.
My mum used to spend ages making Christmas pudding every year. I was never that keen on it and it was only the custard or cream that made it palatable.
8:11 Stirring the Christmas Pudding, we do that, I've been doing that for sixty-three years, and parents did it before that. 9:13 You need to make your own pudding so you can adjust the recipe to suit your own taste (if too spicy, don't put so much spice in next year). Microwave or steam, but add a little water and cover with cling-film to stop it drying out. 9:25 plain flour, suet, seedless raisins, currants, sultanas, mixed peel, chopped almonds, dark brown sugar, prunes, mixed fruit, brown loaf breadcrumbs, eggs, dark beer/stout, mixed spices, nutmeg, shredded lemon, shredded cooking apple, milk, wine/brandy. 11:47 a 'Like' is doubtful cos you're not doing it right! 12:15 if the pudding cracks when tipping it out, someone in the family will die during the coming year. In olden days with large families there was a good possibility this would happen anyway, so it proves it's true. 12:54 there y'go, it's delicious! 13:30 see 9:13 14:51 the family that suffers together, stays together.
That being said to make a proper Christmas Pudding can take weeks if not months. The dried fruit that you detest so much should be soaked in the alcohol for days, my Mum always used rum. When the Christmas Pudding is assembled (and yes, we did stir it, and yes, sixpences were wrapped in greaseproof paper and put in, it then has to be fed every week with more alcohol. My Mum would make a large batch that would last us up five years! I have NEVER had custard on one preferring brandy butter and single cream, and yes, I do like Christmas Pudding, but unfortunately we only ever buy them now which is why I suggested Heston Blumenthal's hidden orange one. I have to admit that when you turned it out, despite being a Tesco 'Finest' one, my mouth was watering.
Reminds me of the Claxton fruit cake I just got before Christmas. I love those. I've never had Christmas pudding but dried fruit and spices don't sound so bad to me?
I absolutely love the taste of this - not just a tradition! I think that brandy butter and cream is the best. I also love a good fruit cake and would choose it over most chocolate ones! I , however, have yet to enjoy a pumpkin pie. Had them as a kid and loathed it! But would’nt the world be a boring place if we all liked the same things? He he. Happy Christmas! 🎄
Part of the explanation for the UKs high use of dried fruit from the medieval period recipes is the fact that dried fruit was a way of storing ‘sweet’ ingredients before refrigeration was available. Much of the ‘old’ world used dried fruits (raisins, sultanas, currants, plums [prunes], figs and dates). They are easy to store and ship to and around Europe alongside spices. Sugar was not a thing in medieval era so sweetness came from either fruits or honey.
Dried fruit and spices weren’t cheap and so the idea of saving them for the Christmas festivities became the norm, so people could enjoy a “rich” treat as part of their celebration.
Conversely, most American “sweets” where developed post the production of refined sugar. This meant that American pallets developed an obsession with dishes that are easy to eat and little more than high sugar content cakes, cookies and puddings with very limited flavours.
Old world recipes are often challenging to American pallets because they frequently use ingredients that might be defined as “course” compared to the “refined” (but empty) ingredients used in American recipes.
One of the main reasons why North Americans don't like christmas pudding is not because of the fruit cake idea but also the strong taste of brandy or in some cases port as well. We always get this sort of reply from US service people around my area in the East of England
Best way for me is after Christmas day the left over Christmas pudding gets fried in a frying pan with just butter and when hot served with brandy butter or double cream
Great response Andrewpinks4925.
@@jonathanpatrick8506 have you tried having the fried pudding with a fried breakfast? Christmas pudding isn’t massively different to the Scottish “clootie (cloth) dumpling” which is eaten with a fried breakfast.
Andrew - 'Coarse'!
@@stevebarlow3154oops!
Alanna, I had two helpings of Christmas Pud yesterday and it was bloody gorgeous! I can never understand how Canadians and US people don't like it. Merry Christmas and a happy new year.
Merry Christmas!! 🎄
@@AdventuresAndNaps Two slices yesterday, and one today...Made the pudding myself four months ago and basted it regularly with Drambuie. Steamed it for serving in a slow cooker for four hours. Sprig of holly on the top, brandy poured over it, then set on fire....hic! PS I use vegetable suet these days as my son loves Xmas pudding but is a vegetarian.....
North Americans are weird and their food is laced with toxins that are banned in most of the sensible world.
I've had 3 medium Xmas puds so far this year, only 1 on Xmas day.
I also stocked up with half price Xmas puds in boxing day reductions. Some of them will be good until my birthday in April 😁
@@AdventuresAndNaps , " if you have to add something to the basic then the basic is not very good " , so does that apply to the full English breakfast , curries , steak egg and chips , anything Italian , any sausages etc etc etc etc , basically 90% of all foods ??????
I just love Christmas Pudding! I'll have with custard, I'll have it with cream, I'll have it with vanilla ice cream, and I'll even eat it just on its own. I can't imagine Christmas without it to be honest with you.
How Poetic .
Same , i even make my own.
It's better with Creme Fresh.
I love it too. Only ever eat home made. Anything with dried fruits and spices is delicious and the epitome of Christmas season. I observe Stir Up Sunday every year too. And however full I am, there is always room for a second helping of pudding!
Try frying the leftovers. You can thank me later.
Canadian here, my Mom makes Christmas pudding, I love it but...I've been eating it every Christmas since I was a kid 50 some odd years ago. It's a recipe passed down several generations from England, where my ancestors came from 😊
You know what we need after the heaviest meal of the year? The heaviest pudding ever made.
And then, three hours later turkey and pork sandwiches, followed by Christmas cake
@@admiralcraddock464 And a steady stream of booze and chocolate throughout the day
Always room for a little bit o' pud.
Rule Number 1 - Never ever microwave a Christmas pudding, even if it says on the pack that you can; it has to be steamed for a couple of hours to get the full and proper effect.
Rule Number 2 - To be eaten in small amounts, accompanied by either double cream, custard or (preferably) brandy butter or brandy sauce.
Totally agree with rule number 1. Rule number 2 will not happen for me. I find it too moreish
no 3 - it has to be fresh, some just are not right by time they've spent any time on xmas shelves, commercial ones also contain too much of the wrong fat to preserve them & definitely rule 2
It's terrible bc it has dried fruit and nothing can salvage that, even if it didn't have dried fruit it's still by far inferior to other desserts (and I am a native Brit)
The covering it in warm brandy and setting light to it is part of the ritual...and it makes it taste better (not sure it would improve the flavour enough for you though 😜)
And hope you had a merry Christmas 🎅🏻
Hi Alanna, Brit born, Canadian raised, (in the Kawarthas ;) ) there are three things that make Christmas for this 76 year old, Dark Christmas cake, Mince pies/tarts and Christmas plum pudding. Merry Christmas dear and happiest of New Years, Peace, Love, and all Best Wishes.
I’m Canadian and have had Christmas pudding all my life. Not all Canadians hate it. There are grated carrots and potatoes in my recipe as well as spices and dried fruits.
Potatoes? Potatoes?? Seriously, no. No one in the entire history of the United Kingdom has ever put potatoes in a Christmas pudding.
Would you like to bet on that?
@@lauraharmour
We are in the Uk and have mashed potatoes in our puddings. Goes back to wartime recipes when fruit was scarce, but it actually lightens the texture.
I ❤ Christmas pudding at Christmas. It's great with brandy sauce or double whip cream. Even ice cream. Lock someone else mentioned pumpkin pie help🤮
Happy Boxing Day, from the Pacific West Coast of Canada. It's okay, depends whose grandmother is making it.
My father served in the army in WW1. While in the trenches, the company cook managed to produce a Christmas pudding, much to the delight of the men.The cook was complimented by the captain , who asked where he managed to find the cloth it was cooked in The cook took off his tunic and proudly showed that one sleeve of his shirt, which he had been wearing for a week, was missing.
I usually enjoy your videos, BUT … I’ve never seen anybody make such fuss over a simple dish. Many English deserts have dried fruits as a base, Christmas cakes and puddings, Eccles cakes , Dundee cake etc. I’m biased, I was brought up on them,and having reached 70 without coming to any harm, I love them!
Gen X Brit myself, adding a belated comment for the UA-cam algorithm(s), and it occurred to me that I was weaned on to really liking fruit cakes and Christmas pudding via having sultanas in teacakes and scones, alongside the general shift towards tolerating 'bits' in food (which made raisins, then currants also acceptable). But I can remember having that level of grim aversion and despair when faced by 'mincemeat tart' in primary-school dinners... aka 'dead fly flan'... made even worse by the horrible custard.
Christmas pudding and mince pie are my favourite Christmas treats!
Mine too! And, I am Canadian!
Day after boxing day now so of to the shops to see if they is any Christmas pudding reduced in price for a new year's treat!
I love both too.
Canadian here... I love plum pudding. My mother used to make it, using my English grandmother's recipe. She would steam the pudding while we were eating Christmas dinner, flame it tableside and serve it with my father's hard sauce. Absolutely delicious!
Its a dessert made of fruits.... americans have a dessert made of pumpkin.....glass houses Alanna
Spot on!!
I was just thinking that
Pumpkin pie is awesome.
It's not a dessert made of fruits. It's a steamed pudding made of dried fruits, suet, flour, nuts, mixed peel, breadcrumbs and eggs, and a good amount of brandy or rum. Served with brandy butter and/or brandy custard and/or brandy cream. When served, one can pour brandy or rum over it, and set fire to it.
I know what it is regardless of what descriptors you choose most people understand the concept of starter, main , dessert @@lauraharmour
When I arrived in the UK 24 years ago, I hated xmas pudding as well as minced pies. But they have both grown on me, it took me a few years, but now I am hunting for those mince pies from October and I would terribly miss the xmas pudding at the end of our xmas meal if we did not have one.
Australian here, it will be 34*c, we eat our Christmas lunch of Roast Turkey, lamb and Chicken with all the roast vegetables. We will also have huge tiger prawns and salads... then...... we will have Christmas pudding, MUST be home made and hung for at least a month but we do cater for preferences of clotted cream or custard..... there is NO WAY we couldn't have our pud !
Canadian born and raised. Not true that Canadians hate Christmas pudding!
My late mum always made the best Christmas pudding (complete with rum sauce which was served flaming), always a treat and very much missed.
It's all in how it's made and served and like many traditions, needs to be consistent and passed through the generations.
Christmas pudding may not be everyone's favourite, but perhaps an acquired taste like liquorice all sorts or Marmite! 🤣
I love it. I'm from Devon so serve it with clotted cream. Never tried it with custard. On boxing day fry slices of leftovers in butter and reflame with brandy. Oh delicious. Still each to their own. Happy New Year!
Oh Alana ur face when u had that Christmas pudding just cracked me up ur hilarious. I absolutely love Christmas pudding and Christmas cake and custard or brandy sauce.💖
I have a Christmas pudding every year made by a good friend of mine,, and I love it!! Forget custard, have it with cream or brandy butter. Delicious!
And light the brandy
Custard makes the pudding 😊
Hi Alanna - I think your taste buds just need a bit of training, that's all! Unfortunately my Mum passed away a long time ago when I was about 17 yo (I'm 78 yo now) so this is all from memory. Mum used to start the process by soaking the fruit in the mixture of all the alcohol for a couple of weeks in October. We usually had some relatives staying over Christmas so it was a fairly large pudding, about the size of a soccer ball. After the fruit came the flour and dry spices which were all stirred in by the family members who got to make a silent wish and the silver sixpence was dropped in too. The the mix was covered in the cloth and shaped into a rough ball and kept in the cool pantry until a few days before Christmas when it was opened up and inspected and I expect secretly tasted. Back into its cloth with a drop more brandy until Christmas morning. Mum had a huge saucepan that was big enough for the pudding still in the cloth and so it was slowly simmered until about 2pm when it was ceremoniously turned out of its cloth onto a large serving plate and a large splodge of brandy butter was melted over the top and decorated with a holly twig. Still hot, it was carved up into half-segments with creamy custard poured all over. Delicious - and there were left-overs they were kept in the fridge and pieces cut off as required and re-heated in the oven - didn't last very long though!
Love your blogs and you too! Never mind the nay-sayers, they gets their kicks from being nasty!
How can one NOT like currants, raisins and sultanas? They're sweet and natural and just generally wonderful. Custard? Custard? Brandy butter and double cream is what one should have with Christmas pudding. I love your videos and now I have to feel sorry for you that you're missing out on some of the best tastes in the world 😄 Look after yourself and have a brilliant new year.
As a kid growing up in the 60's and 70's my mum made both Christmas Pudding (including the silver sixpence as it was pre-decimalisation) and Christmas Cake. Both were usually made well in advance of Christmas, especially the cake which she would make around 3-6 months before Christmas and regularly 'feed' with either brandy, whiskey, sherry or rum every week until you were ready to add marzipan and icing
My grandmother (1883 - 1977) used to make the most fantastic Christmas puddings.
It was always a highlight of Christmas dinner when I was a lad.
Because Christmas pudding is very rich, a little sugar sprinkled on top works very well. Also, my family and I never "drench" it in custard; we put the same amount you would with any pudding.
A lot of Brits don't eat it anymore because it is very filling, and after the biggest meal of the year, it's not what everybody craves straight afterwards, but on Boxing Day, a little Christmas pud fried in butter with a glass of sherry for brunch is one of the best treats you'll ever enjoy!
I love xmas pudding, but then again I love sprouts and marmite
I hate sprouts but like the others.
Fellow Canadian here (albeit much older than you) and I’ll be happy to consume your share of pudding, especially if it has a nice hard pudding sauce. I also make my own fruitcake and occasionally consume haggis.
Happy Boxing Day, Alanna. Christmas Pudding is traditionally prepared soaked in Brandy and set alight. Then pour on rich gravy and serve with Chips and Curry Sauce. At least, that is how my Mother used to make it when we were kids. The daft bint.
😂 Merry Christmas!!
I read the first part of that and thought WTF! 😂
I've never heard of anyone having Christmas Pudding with gravy, chips and curry sauce, and never seen it offered like that on a restaurant menu either. Is that a common way of eating it where you are (if so, where is that?), or is it just your own personal (or your mother's) preference?
@@neilp1885 I thought his joke was amusing.
@@primalengland Yes! That's what I thought too, I thought maybe he was winding Alanna up, but then I saw the daft bint comment about his mother doing that at the end and thought maybe it was real, so I got curious and decided to ask.
Canadian here, my grandparents always had and made Christmas/plum pudding. My parents less so, me never… but I do miss it. Yeah, they would put quarters in there. I also love its cousin Christmas cake.
Just got home started watching this and thought I've got christmas pudding left over.
so stopped video to put some in the steamer. Merry Christmas to you and yours
Christmas isnt Christmas without Christmas pudding
We very rarely ate Christmas pudding when I was a child because we were usually too full but one year we insisted and my poor dad was given the job of setting fire to it and it went up so violently that it melted the front of his polyester sweater 🔥
omg 💀
Amazing 😂 Mum did the same to a Christmas Pudding one year but it was just the napkins that got charred… Melted jumper is another level though haha
An excessive amount of brandy, methinks.
🤣
Hi, we normally buy 4 of the large Tesco Christmas Puddings, 1 Christmas day, 1 New Years Day, 1 Easter and 1 Mum's Birthday. Love them.
It's just a matter of acclimatisation. You're doing very well Alanna. Imagine the pride you will feel when you can honestly say that you like Christmas pud. Keep it up chief, keep it up.
Hear In the north east of England a pudding sweat or savory boiled in a cloth is called a clotty pudding
Hi Alana! watching you tasting the pudding of the GODS! cracked me up. I can eat Christmas Pudding all the time, cold, hot and doused in alcohol, also nice with a brandy cream in the style of Baileys or just brandy butter. oh and rich fruit cake (cannot abide sponges like Victoria sponge). Happy New Year to you and yours best wishes Mike.
the issue is the microwave, they are crap done in the microwave, all the microwave does is heat it up and remove the moisture from the pudding, the one you had serves 2 to 3 people, the better ones are darker and moist and smell of brandy, the best way to to do it is make your own pudding the way its meant to be... It has its origins in medieval England, with early recipes making use of dried fruit, suet, breadcrumbs, flour, eggs and spice, along with liquid such as milk or fortified wine. Later, recipes became more elaborate. In 1845, cookery writer Eliza Acton wrote the first recipe for a dish actually called "Christmas pudding".
i steam the puddings i make, which keeps the moisture in the pudding. 'mary berry' makes a good christmas pudding.
I LOVE Christmas pudding! With cream or custard? Yum! It's served after the Christmas meal, by which time we've all had enough to drink that it makes sense to set it on fire and bring it into the darkened dining room. It's sort of a combination candle, sparkler and dessert. And yes, a sixpence (and sometimes other silver charms, too.)
4:24 I lived my formative (i.e. early drinking) years in Oliver Cromwell country, and in the local Town of St Ives (then in Huntingdonshire) was a pub - the Golden Lion - which we frequented. Outside it is a statue of Oliver Cromwell pointing downwards accusatively. One Christmas, friends and I decided it would be amusing to tie a 'talks balloon' proclaiming "You've been eating christmas pudding!" to his mouth. We drew lots, and I lost. We couldn't find a round balloon, but scavenged a long sausage balloon upon which we scrawled the text. It was an icy night as I has heaved up the pedestal to the statue, only to discover that owing to a problem with perspective and scale, I could only reach OC's upper thigh. So as not to waste the balloon I tied it there, just as a police car came around the corner; but I managed to hide myself.
The balloon, located as it was, looked rather more like a male appendage than a talks balloon, and made it into the local newspaper. Over the days it developed an embarrassingly public brewer's droop.
My mum used to make Christmas pudding every year, and it was delicious. I think whatever you grow up eating, you consider normal. I grew up eating black pudding, haggis, Christmas pudding, and mince pies. I'm sure Americans and Canadians eat things i would consider weird.
❤ from Lancashire
"I didn't set it on fire." That's really going to help Americans to understand it better!
I worked in a butcher's shop as a teenager. I saw sausages being made in a sausage making machine which was a meat mincer to which you attached an animal intestine into which you forced minced sausage meat. I wonder it any sausages are made from animal intestine these days? It is the origin of sausages.
She has yet to be introduced to haggis! And she likes black pudding, which really is disgusting.
@ 4:06 Alana it's Natural Muslin weave known as Cheesecloth, Can be found in all-sorts of fibres, depends on it's usage, Car cleaners use it to apply polish,
Christmas pudding with brandy sauce is fantastic, merry Christmas to you
Thank you! You too!
How can you not like it? I find that hard to believe.
Merry Christmas Alanna. I love the taste of Christmas pudding. Interestingly my Canadian son-in-law also loves it - and Christmas cake too. He was delighted not offended we'd make extra Christmas cake especially as he's in town this year. So maybe not all North Americans hate it?
It is muslin cloth. My grandmother used them for steak and kidney pudding
Alanna, I know that in the modern era that the microwave is a thing, but with Christmas pudding and other steamed desserts it should be steamed for a couple of hours ideally to heat it through and moisten it, setting it on fire burns off the alcohol within the pudding, be it Brandy, Whiskey, Rum, etc, leaving the flavour but not the alcohol per se, it can then be served with, a flavoured butter such as Brandy butter, or Custard, Cream, some even like Vanilla ice-cream for the contrast between the hot and the cold.
Alanna - maybe start off with mince pies - get used to sweet spiced dried fruits in suet, then graduate to Christmas cake and pudding... I've loved all since childhood - but there's no other item the rest of the year that's really similar. Hope the spring goes well for you
That's not drowning it in custard!!! Fair play you keep giving it a go! Enjoy the rest of the Festive Hols! 🙏🙏
She obviously thinks paddling is swimming!
Dear Alanna I personally have not eaten Christmas pudding for nearly 50 years it’s too heavy after a Christmas dinner and it will make me feel bloated no thank you so what’s left please have a happy Christmas and a wonderful new year ❤️❤️❤️❤️
Yo can wait a while before eating it .....
Thanks Alanna, it's obviously just a cultural cullenary taste difference. I believe most English people would eat Christmas pudding over say Pumpkin pie, any day of the week. Thanks for your content, here's wishing you a happy healthy and peaceful New Year 🤗😘🤗🥂
Love Christmas Pudding. I get my manservant to bring me one fresh on Christmas morning. I then give him the rest of the day off.
😂
A belated Merry Christmas Alanna. Yes I love it and even cold it's still delicious. I agree with the comment below. Never, ever, not no how, microwave a Christmas pudding it goes rubbery. Home made ones need to be made at least 3 months before and even if kept for 6 months will still be as good.
There's a light variety of Christmas pudding, which my BC and Aussie grandsons much prefer. Though, to be frank, all but one of them would still prefer sherry trifle. This lighter pudding replaces all the dark dried fruit and dates, with diced dried apricots, dried papaya chunks, golden sultanas, and candied orange, and uses Golden Syrup in place of treacle, and rum instead of brandy. Serve with brandy butter and come away smiling.
The best part of Christmas IS Christmas pudding, I love it!!
My mother always used to make Christmas pudding in the days leading up to Christmas, but it would be for the following year!
We usually had it served with brandy butter.
I cannot understand why you wouldn't like it 😊
christmas pudding is gorgeous
Love Christmas pudding but ideally needs brandy sauce
Brandy sauce is also an acquired taste - I love Christmas pudding but always with cream.
Have to say (I'm a Brit...) I love it but then I like raisins so why wouldn't I. What to have with it, for me, depends how you are serving it; hot after Christmas dinner have it with double cream, finishing of the leftovers cold on Boxingday serve it with warm custard.
My grandmother used to make them when I was a kid and I remember finding sixpenny pieces (replaced by 5p after decimalisation).
Had some yesterday. Tasted amazing with cream and custard. No brandy on mine though. Driving…
You burn the brandy so alcohol disapears....!!!
I love it. After Christmas I buy them up cheaply to eat the rest of the year. I admit I do eat those microwaved, both with and without custard. But for the best, make it yourself, then:
steam for several hours, typically 4hrs for a 1 lb or 500 g pudding, longer if bigger.
store for at least 3 months.
when you come to eat it, steam again for at least an hour, usually two.
When you put the hot pud on the table, pour warm brandy over it and set it on fire to caramelise the surface. (I'd use 15 ml. Some use more, but it can be a fire hazard!)
serve in thick slabs, with or without, thick custard sauce made with full cream milk. Without custard is the most intense flavour, but the custard lets the flavour build more slowly in your mouth, and you can have an odd mouthful without custard for variety. Eat hot: do not let it cool too much. It can be eaten cold, like cake, but that's a shadow of its real character.
I can't understand how anyone can not like it! Do you drink port, cream sherry, muscatel, etc, or eat molasses, stewed blackcurrants, raspberries, plums? Christmas pud is one of these intense flavours, that I thought all humans crave. Don't you colonists drink your coffee very strong and black for the same reason?
I grew up with it. English heritage. A very small slice and some Brandied hard sauce will fill you up, big time! Also, minced pie!
I like nicking a bit when it’s cold and set in the fridge the next day. Homemade being different to bought. (Have experiments with if it is better light and fluffy end or solid end as can be too firm)
Everyone in my house adores you Alanna 😎 👍🏻
You're too kind! 🙏
Haggis is made in a sheep stomach and sausage skin is intestines. The best Christmas Pudding that I had was my Mum's, but before it was cooked. Heston Blumenthal's hidden orange one is really good too.
I love Christmas pudding! Brandy butter or cream for me please.
I remember when I was at school we had sixpences wrapped in tin foil hidden inside our Christmas puddings (yes, I'm that old!).
Waiting to hear how your nephews reacted to the Christmas box you sent them, fruit cake and all! If fruit cakes are offensive to you, it's not surprising you don't like Christmas pudding
Please, please please, if you ever try it again heat up the custard first! It should be served hot!
My stomach would probably not agree with this mixture, but whomever loves it, shall eat it.
I hope UA-cam will present you (for your channel) with a better gift in the near future. You're a pleasant to watch and always genuine. Have a safe and sober New Year's. America here.🎄🎁🥂
No need to apologize, Alanna, I'm British born and bred and I find the stuff utterly revolting (I have similar feelings about Christmas Cake as well). Working my way through a couple of Chocolate Fudge Yule Logs over the Christmas period... now THAT'S a festive treat! Hope you and yours had a great Christmas and best wishes for the new year.
My wife and I (both Brits) absolutely love Christmas Pudding. In previous years, we have hit the supermarket immediately after Christmas to buy 1-person puddings like the one you had at reduced price, as they have a very long expiration date (typically over a year). We put them in the kitchen cupboard and can then have Christmas Pudding at any time of the year. With custard, of course.
Love Christmas pudding. We always have it at Christmas. We also put money in the Christmas pudding still. Not sure what there is to not like about dried fruit and brandy haha
Christmas pudding is my very favourite dessert! We usually save one after Christmas so we can have another in mid-year! Merry Christmas!
fear the pudding! lol, the boy who swallowed the coin in the pudding,took him to the doctors,still no change :D
I am English and love Christmas pudding. Post Christmas I trawl the shops for reduced price puddings, 'cos they last for months.
Next, Alanna will give us her analysis of Christmas crackers, wahay!
Best Wishes Alanna, thanks for the entertainment.
They don't last for months. They last for years. I've had four year old Christmas puds just recently and they are the biz!
The beauty of the pudding bag/ cloth was that you could cook the whole meal in one large pot over your kitchen fire. So the basis would be a pottage (soupy stew) and other things would be tied up in cloths and cooked within the pottage - this might be a pudding, some vegetables, or some meat for eating separately. One pot cooking at it's finest!
People who make their Christmas Puddings from scratch do still tend to do it on 'Stir Up Sunday' and taking turns to stir the mixture is a very common practice - even f it's done on a random date.
Our family uniquely - as far as I have ascertained- serve our Christmas pudding with Almond Blancmange - it serves as a great clean cooling contrast to the very righ pudding. If I'm honest though.....the Blancmange (or 'White Mould' as we call it) is the Big Thing for me, and I only have the pudding so I can have the Blancmange.
Hi I need the Canada visa please help
To make a proper homemade pudding, the fruit needs to be soaked in quite a lot of alcohol for several days to rehydrate it and make it juicier. For alcohol, we use a cocktail of old ale, sherry, brandy, Madeira and perhaps Calvados or Lambeg (both versions of French apple brandy). Factory made versions (ugh) make the pudding without rehydrating the fruit (like the Tesco version you have) so it looks wrinkled and unappetising instead of plump and juicy
In the original pudding with meat, fruit was used to cover the flavour of slightly 'off' meat, as it would be during the midwinter season with no refrigeration. It would probably be the last of the meat until spring.
In the states the nearest thing to my knowledge is fruit cake. This is normally only eaten once a year during the Christmas season and many people don't like it however the ingredient list seems about right for Christmas pudding. Since Christmas pudding seems to be cooked in cloth and about the size of a bowling ball and rather dense the connection is very strong.
If the Christmas pudding is “dense” there is something wrong or it has gone cold. Properly steamed or pressure cooked it is moist and crumbly. Delicious!
Warm Christmas pudding with warm custard is traditional in Australia too. The correct temperature for both make a difference to the flavour. Steaming the pudding changes the flavour too.
I'm not that keen on Christmas pudding but a good one with clotted cream is passable. The thing about it is that it is from a time when you would have very likely been a) hungry and b) cold and that sort of thing would make you feel full and give you energy. It's also made of real ingredients and not the industrially combined chemicals in most modern puddings or treats. I can't really defend Christmas pudding much more than to say it probably counts as food vs what most of us (including me) prefer to eat which is ultra processed, chemically altered, flavoured, stabilised, thickened products high in calories but with almost zero nutritional value.
Christmas pudding is awesome, my wife has been making ours since Christmas 1980, although since moving to the USA in 1995 we have had to go without the suet. Setting fire to it is the best. We also have double cream, brandy butter and rum butter to have with it.
When I was a child, I and my three sisters took turns to stir the (homemade) pudding and yes, there was always a sixpence in there somewhere! Incidentally, mince pies, which I gather Americans also dislike, were also originally full of minced meat.
Home made and matured is far better, but you have to steam it (microwaving it is sacrilege). After turning it out on a plate, add a good amount of brandy and set fire to it. Best to have is white sauce (home made if possible) (not custard). PS as a child we did put a sixpenny coin in (pre-decimalisation) and that coin was similar in colour to five/ten/fifty pence today but much smaller (probably half the size of the five pence coin). Mother use to make homemade in a very large bown and cover it with a t-towel and held on with string to mature. Yes you only need a small amount as it is "heavy" but it is a wonderful treat at this time of year.
The secret of the pudding cloth is that when flour is rubbed into a cotton cloth it behaves like a waterproof covering for the pudding. The flour swells on contact with the cooking water and blocks the holes in the cloth, effectively turning the interior of the wrapping into an oven. This is why a boiled pudding can get a crispy crust on the outside.
We used to eat Bacon pudding made like this in the 60s and 70s but getting hold of suet became increasingly hard with the growth of supermarkets.
On a more unpleasant note, we were once invited to an elderly neighbours house for some of her famous Plum Duff, unfortunately she left the kitchen door open as she got the pudding out of the boiling pan, to our horror we saw that she had used a pair of her husbands long johns (underwear) as the pudding cloth, she had tied a knot in a leg and forced the filling down that leg then bound it with the other leg at the top.
We had to be polite, all of us eat it.
my nan used to make them in January fill a bucket with all the fruit and mixture she then soaked it in different spirits and kept adding to it ,she then put it in a muslin bag steamed it and poured Scotch over it her fav, then we had it with cream bleeding lovely
I like Christmas pudding but never have space for it after the main course so have it in the evening or on boxing day with hot custard, hot mince pies and cold very thick cream. The contrast of the hot and cold works well.
Making mince pies, Christmas cake and sausage rolls with the children was my family's Christmas tradition. I gave up making Christmas cake as no-one except me would eat it so I just buy a tiny one for myself. I buy a small Christmas pudding so everyone can have a taste rather than a huge bowlful. I used to make savoury suet puddings, bacon rolypoly, steak and kidney pudding etc. I use a muslin cloth. Not sure if thats correct as the thing my mother used looked like an old bedsheet.
It's made at home with love. It tastes wholesome unlike chocolate stuff that tastes manufactured. You can eat everything else all year.
Thank you. Can’t bear the pudding myself, but loved the history lesson, so thank you and merry Christmas.
Love it! 😜 Don’t always manage to eat it Christmas Day now, after a big dinner and my wife won’t eat it, but I buy a large one which will last a few months. Cut a piece, microwave for a minute or so, pour on double cream, gorgeous! 🤪
No one tell her that some people fry up slices of left over pudding to be served with spiced cream.
I can take or leave shop-bought Xmas puddings, but proper home-made ones (to my wife's grandmother's recipe), fed appropriately at regular intervals (both with rum and brandy) are lush.
A single batch will provide for about 4 or 5 years, and a 6 monthly feeding will ensure that those older puddings are incredibly boozy and delicious.
And yes, reheat by steaming, not microwave. Then bring to the table flaming in brandy.
Mince pies and fruit cake (not Christmas cake, though!) I could eat every day.
My late grandmother decided to put a tiny, metallic, silver, horseshoe in her Christmas pudding but failed to warn anyone. She had saved it after it had decorated one of her five daughters wedding cakes.
As we ate the pudding my mother started to choke to such an extent that I performed the Heimlich manoeuvre on her expelling the horses across the dining table. As she leaned on the table, red faced and trying to catch her breath my grandmother calmly looked up from her place at the table and said, 'You got the horseshoe, that means your going to be very lucky'.
The luck was surviving the Christmas pudding!
Custard ? Oh my lord , at the Day Centre the old folk like custard but its a no . Cream, single,double, clotted or brandied please .
The fact that Americans would find it offensive only makes me love it more
I always get cravings for Christmas pudding sometime around June. I can't just have it once a year.
I was born here and have lived here my whole life....and I only started to like Christmas Pudding when I turned 18, Give it another 10 years and you might like it...
I was born in 1951. My mum made her own in the cloth and we did have a silver sixpence in it and it was served with Clotted Cream and not custard, but, custard is an option. ❤
Hi Alanna, thank you for making this video it was of great interest to me. It’s very impressive that you did your homework on the origins of our Christmas Pudding.
Even more impressive was how much you tried to eat it in spite of already having tried it on numerous occasions. I’d like to try and help you understand why North Americans including Canadians do not like it or fruit cake.
“STODGY”
Historically as you rightly pointed out we Brits adore thick heavy gloopy food. It stems back from our climate being wet, cold & miserable in the winter months.
Manual labour was so tough burning up huge amounts of calories working out doors when your wet and the wind cuts through you. Having a stew or pottage ready when the family got home was easy with ready available root veg , with oats or barley. ( see Haggis)
Not only did it warm you up it was high value carbs & protein. Simple to make it could also be left to warm on a fire or stove. Hence we developed a taste for stodgy food.
I ramble on so on to Christmas pudding. As you are so interested I suggest you look at the European spice wars. Spice was seen as a currency and as such decadent. Rightly you pointed out the pudding switched from meat to fruits. Traditionally Christmas was a day of rest where nobody worked. Something nice to eat & drink was saved back. Christmas pudding could be made in advance.
Also the tradition of a Yule log came about because if you could put one huge well seasoned log on the fire nobody would need to go outside to fetch more wood.
My family observe stir up Sunday however we do enough fruit to split it up later for. Christmas pudding, Christmas Cake & mince meat for mince pies.
When serving the pudding it important you have some sort of sauce as it is just to Stodgy to eat stand alone. We choose to make a white sauce adding Brandy and sugar. You should serve equal portions of both. We also add a dollop of clotted cream to the top of the hot pudding slice. This allows the pudding to become glossy and easier to digest.
You don’t need very much as post a Christmas dinner it’s just something sweet and acidic with the peel from oranges & lemons to help with digestion.
I’m sorry if this is a little long winded but you seemed very interested. I have American friends and this very subject has fascinated us also.
You just don’t like dried fruit, lots of spices with stodgy.
The spices I add are nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, allspice.
Regards Barry.
Setting fire to the pudding is the best part of Christmas (and adds to the flavour)! I've literally never heard of anyone putting custard on it - it's usually brandy butter or cream.
I personally love a Christmas pudding, but it is quite a strong flavour (especially a mature one like you had).
I loved the history of the pudding; I was familiar with parts of it, but not the specifics related to Christmas pudding (so the general history of puddings and Cromwell banning Christmas). All puddings used to be cooked in stomachs or intestines, then as you say pudding cloths and later pudding basins, before the word pudding expanded its meaning to be largely synonymous with dessert.
Have you tried sticky toffee pudding? I'd say it's similar to Christmas pudding, but much sweeter and without the raisins.
My mum used to spend ages making Christmas pudding every year. I was never that keen on it and it was only the custard or cream that made it palatable.
8:11 Stirring the Christmas Pudding, we do that, I've been doing that for sixty-three years, and parents did it before that.
9:13 You need to make your own pudding so you can adjust the recipe to suit your own taste (if too spicy, don't put so much spice in next year).
Microwave or steam, but add a little water and cover with cling-film to stop it drying out.
9:25 plain flour, suet, seedless raisins, currants, sultanas, mixed peel, chopped almonds, dark brown sugar, prunes, mixed fruit, brown loaf breadcrumbs, eggs, dark beer/stout, mixed spices, nutmeg, shredded lemon, shredded cooking apple, milk, wine/brandy.
11:47 a 'Like' is doubtful cos you're not doing it right!
12:15 if the pudding cracks when tipping it out, someone in the family will die during the coming year. In olden days with large families there was a good possibility this would happen anyway, so it proves it's true.
12:54 there y'go, it's delicious!
13:30 see 9:13
14:51 the family that suffers together, stays together.
That being said to make a proper Christmas Pudding can take weeks if not months. The dried fruit that you detest so much should be soaked in the alcohol for days, my Mum always used rum. When the Christmas Pudding is assembled (and yes, we did stir it, and yes, sixpences were wrapped in greaseproof paper and put in, it then has to be fed every week with more alcohol. My Mum would make a large batch that would last us up five years!
I have NEVER had custard on one preferring brandy butter and single cream, and yes, I do like Christmas Pudding, but unfortunately we only ever buy them now which is why I suggested Heston Blumenthal's hidden orange one. I have to admit that when you turned it out, despite being a Tesco 'Finest' one, my mouth was watering.
Reminds me of the Claxton fruit cake I just got before Christmas. I love those. I've never had Christmas pudding but dried fruit and spices don't sound so bad to me?
I absolutely love the taste of this - not just a tradition! I think that brandy butter and cream is the best. I also love a good fruit cake and would choose it over most chocolate ones! I , however, have yet to enjoy a pumpkin pie. Had them as a kid and loathed it! But would’nt the world be a boring place if we all liked the same things? He he. Happy Christmas! 🎄