The Christmas pudding

The Christmas pudding comes from old English dishes of meat, grain, spices and dried fruit boiled together, called pottage. "Plum" meant dried fruit such as raisins and prunes.^1,3 Over time the meat dropped out and the sweet fruit stayed, and "plum pudding" was the usual name by the 1700s.¹ An early plum pudding recipe is in Mary Kettilby’s cookbook of 1714. The name "Christmas pudding" first appears in Eliza Acton’s cookbook of 1845, which includes "The Author’s Christmas Pudding".^1,9

Stir-up Sunday is the last Sunday before Advent. Its name comes from the first words of a prayer in the Book of Common Prayer, "Stir up, we beseech thee".⁴ The pudding needs weeks to age, so people made it that day, and each person in the family stirred it and made a wish.^4,5

Small silver coins, often a sixpence, were hidden in the pudding. Whoever found one was said to have good luck in the year ahead.^5,1 Isabella Beeton’s Victorian recipe boiled the pudding for five or six hours, then two more on the day, and it says to put a sprig of holly on top and set brandy alight.⁶

Charles Dickens described one in "A Christmas Carol" in 1843. In Stave Three Mrs Cratchit carries in the pudding "like a speckled cannon-ball", with brandy burning around it and holly on top.⁷ If you light one, an adult should do it.