Christmas pudding
Christmas pudding is a dish traditionally served in Great Britain , Ireland and some Commonwealth countries on Boxing Day. In contrast to German puddings , the English dish is not originally a dessert . The German name for this food is napkin dumpling or flour bag .
preparation
Christmas pudding is a cooked or steamed pudding and contains, among other things, dried fruit (e.g. raisins ), nuts and usually beef kidney fat , the latter sometimes being replaced by vegetable fat. The mostly dark pudding is often soaked with brandy or other alcohol. In the UK, many families have their own recipes, which can vary from region to region.
Traditionally, Christmas pudding was cooked in a pudding towel. Since the beginning of the 20th century at the latest, however, it has mainly been prepared in a pudding form . The pudding is prepared a few weeks before Christmas. Before serving, the pudding is boiled. Once taken from the pudding form, the pudding is usually poured with brandy and flambéed at the table. The Christmas pudding is often eaten with brandy butter or custard .
history
Christmas pudding was already known in England in the 15th century and is also known as plum pudding . Despite this name, the dish initially contained no plums ; In the past, raisins and other dried fruits were called plum , hence the name. The pudding wasn't a special Christmas meal at first. It goes back to a dish called plum pottage , which consisted of shredded beef or mutton , onions and dried fruit, thickened with breadcrumbs and refined with spices and wine. The consistency was thick. It was not a dessert, but the first course of the meal. Since the 16th century, raisins have been added and the meat has been omitted and replaced with fat. Plum pudding became a feast that was eaten on All Saints' Day , Christmas, and New Year . Around 1670 it was called Christmas pottage . A simple variant was called plum duff and was an everyday food.
In the time of Oliver Cromwell and Puritanism , this pudding was one of the Christmas attributes that were officially banned in England.
Today's version of Christmas pudding was mostly created in the 19th century. Common ingredients are beef fat, sugar, syrup (black treacle made from sugar cane ), raisins, breadcrumbs, eggs, spices and alcohol, sometimes also flour, orange or lemon peel, grated carrots or apples and almonds . The consistency is pretty firm. After boiling, the pudding can be kept for about a year if stored between 4 and 7 ° C - depending on the method of preparation, it can be much longer. On December 22nd, 2015 in Nottingham, England, a 46-year-old Christmas pudding discovered when an apartment was closed was tasted, and its taste was judged to be “amazing”. The food had previously been microbiologically examined and found to be harmless.
literature
- Alan Davidson : The Oxford Companion to Food. 2nd edition, edited by Tom Jaine. Oxford University Press, Oxford et al. 2006, ISBN 0-19-280681-5 , p. 185: Christmas pudding.
Web links
- About the history of plum pudding and historical recipes
- Perfect Christmas pudding , BBC Recipes (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Decades-old Christmas pudding tastes 'amazing'. BBC News, December 22, 2019, accessed December 22, 2019 .