PLUM PUDDING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 299, 18 December 1935, Page 12

PLUM PUDDING.

ITS EARLY HISTORY.

The pudding was originally only a soup. It was first the liquid in which the much-prized boar's head was boiled. This hoar's head was essentially a dish for Yule-feast. It was the emblem of the boar, the carrier of the sun god's chariot across the heavens. The idea of the boar's head came from Scandinavia to the early Saxons, and it was always included in the Yule-feasts. The broth in which it was boiled was very rich, and when it cooled it formed a jelly. In Tudor times this jelly was given the addition of plums. As plum broth it came on the Christmas tables for years. Gradually meal, fruits and other things were added until the solid pudding, innocent altogether of boar's head broth, came into being. The lights that sparkle all over the pudding when the brandy poured on it is lit, are symbolical of Frey's light when he turns his chariot at Yuletide. The first cut in the pudding was always an old joke at a Christmas table. The person who has the first cut, of course, asks for none of the dainty, since the second cut is the one that carves the first slice out. The best puddings are home-made ones, rich and dark from long boiling, and containing the threepenny bit, the ring, or the silver thimble, so eagerly looked for by the young- people at the Christmas table. The ring is for the bride-to-be during the coming year; the threepenny bit is for the one who is to have wealth and be very lucky; the thimble, which no one wishes to find, is for the old maid or old bac-heioc.