Christmas pudding | Jamie Oliver Christmas recipes (2024)

FAQs

What is traditionally in the middle of a Christmas pudding? ›

It was common practice to include small silver coins in the pudding mixture, which could be kept by the person whose serving included them. The usual choice was a silver threepence or a sixpence.

Well Christmas pudding (also called plum pudding, Christmas pudd or Christmas pud) is traditionally the main dessert served with Christmas dinner in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa and other countries, but it's origins are very much British. Plum pudding is a very rich dessert which is boiled or steamed.

For the pudding, the most likely cause of mould is moisture. If it's steamed for 8 hours, left to cool completely and then you replace the paper and foil.

It was customary to hide a number of small trinkets in the mixture, a bit like the twelfth night cake. These charms often included a silver coin which signified wealth, and a ring to represent a future marriage. Woe betide the guest who stumbled across a thimble in their serving…

Superstitions say that Christmas pudding must be prepared with 13 ingredients, which are said to represent Jesus and his twelve disciples. It is also said that the mixture should be stirred in turn from east to west, by each family member, to honour the disciples' journey.

Religious significance

It is believed that a Christmas pudding must contain thirteen ingredients. These ingredients each represent Jesus and each of his twelve disciples. Traditionally, brandy is poured over the Christmas pudding and set aflame before serving. The flames are believed to represent Christ's passion.

The tinned pudding is believed to be one of the oldest in the world. A 120-year-old Christmas pudding given to Royal Navy sailors fighting in the Boer War has gone on display.

Handmade at every stage, our St James Christmas Pudding is filled with delicious dried fruits and a well-judged quantity of puss*r's Full-Strength Navy Rum alongside Fortnum's Cognac. Pair with our rich Cognac Butter for added spicy aromas and a delicious, boozy kick.

For dessert, the most traditional is the Christmas pudding, usually served with brandy sauce cream. Bakewell's, fruit mince pies, shortbread and the Scottish Iced Christmas cake are other sweets also served during Christmas Day.

So, as long as it's unopened, your pudding will keep for two years after the production date, which you'll find on the outside packaging.

Can you eat a 5 year old Christmas pudding? ›

Any pudding using fresh fruit for moisture will go off more quickly, whereas a Christmas pudding soaked in booze with high sugar and dried fruit content will last much longer. Some Christmas puddings, made with dried fruit in the traditional way, are fine to be eaten as much as two years after they were made.

As for all puddings, it should be stored in a cool, dry place until Christmas Day. For the US our preference would be to use Pyrex mixing bowls for steaming Christmas puddings.

As mentioned above, most modern coins contain nickel and/or brass, which can react with the ingredients in the pudding. For those who want to honour this age-old tradition, we recommend using specially-made coin tokens that are safe for use.

Why is Christmas pudding also known as plum pudding? The interesting thing is, plum pudding does not contain any plum! This goes back to the Victorian practice of substituting dried plums with other dried fruits, such as raisins.

Can children eat Christmas pudding for having an alcoholic content? Yes. Many foods have traces of alcohol (Ethanol) and many other alcohols can be present in trace amounts. The volume of alcohol in Christmas pudding is not high, even when flambeed and served with Brandy butter or a whisky sauce.

The is the all-time classic sauce to slather over the traditional Christmas Pudding is a brandy sauce. A pudding already will have either brandy or rum in it depending on your taste, so a splash added to a lovely white sauce becomes a perfect partner.

Plum duff, one of the fortifying puddings of Old England, is essentially the same in its beginnings as plum pudding, before it went up-market to become Christmas pudding—in other words a plain boiled suet pudding enlivened with a more or less generous addition of raisins or currants (duff represents a former northern ...

It's deeply rich, made with vanilla pods, caster sugar, cream, whole milk and (yes, you guessed it) a few tablespoons of brandy. It's more festive than serving pudding with simple double cream and can take a supermarket Christmas pudding to the next level or finish off your homemade Christmas pudding perfectly.

Christmas cakes contain much the same ingredients as Christmas pudding, but they're a little less dense and of course they're baked in the oven. Traditional Christmas cakes are usually made a couple of months earlier than Christmas puddings as they really improve in flavour and richness with maturation and feeding.