3000 TONS OF INDIGESTION. 3000 TONS OF INDIGESTION.

Otago Witness, Issue 2493, 25 December 1901, Page 64

3000 TONS OF INDIGESTION. 3000 TONS OF INDIGESTION.

t * f AN ARTICLE PULL OF "PLUMS." i ; Il is about 300 years since English people - fiist began to show signs of their presc j passion for plum pudding; and at fiist t s ' dis.h was called plum-soup, boiled in plen I of water, without a cloth, and served j a #emi-liquid. The Anglo-Saxon ra [ stands alone in making this indigestit > compound the typical Christmas dish. [ With us its popularity seems to grc ! gifater year by year, and on Chrisitm | Day there will be boiled in London alo: some 3000 tons of our national daimtv. j The biggest puddings ever made" we ( no doubt those sent some little time sin , to a German grand duke. '. ! \. well-known English baroness wished I teach his highness to love our national dia So she had a couple of puddings, weighk 2cwt each, and costing 25gs for the pai sent to him at a time of some local fesi j vals. Alas for the good fare ! The pu< dings arrived safely from London ; but was found that there were no saucepai large enough in the royal kitchen, or eve in the grand ducal dominions, to hold tl monsters. i To-day, no one who understands th ' business tries to make a pudding over ha | a hundredweight in size. Bigger ones cai not be properly cook«d. The outside ; boiled to insipidity, while the middle : i almost raw. j Years ago every housekeeper made Ik \ osru Christmas pudding, and would hay taken it as an imputation on her culinar skill had anyone suggested her doing ot'hei wise. To-day enormous quantities ai made and sold ready cooked by the coi feetioners. Mr Buszard. the well-know; dealer in Oxford street, London, was th pioneer in this direction, and his trade i j ready-cooked puddings ha* so prawn an< j spread that it is almost impossible to mcc ) the demand. | Early in August a staff of about 50 hand j start Christmas-pudding making, and the j are kept unceasingly at it till Decemibe j draws to an end. Altogether, about 70,00 i ■ puddings are made, the average weight o ! each being about 71b. About a third o these 'are sent abroad, for no Englibhrnaj in exile thinks his Christmas complet without a plum pudding. The hot plains of India do not &een altogether the place for a diet of roa» beef and solid pudding, jet between 10, (XX and 15,000 puddings are sent each year bi this one house alone to India and the Fa: East. Evea before Khartoum had fallei orders to send puddings there lor Christ mas were being got ready for execution and since the Soudan has passed into oui hinds quite a number of plum pudding; have been requisitioned for there. In mo&i cases it- is the friends at home <rho hav< this substantial memento of our island-lift despatched to the exiles. Months before Christinas, puddings ar< safely on their way to pioneers in the verj heart of Africa. The African traveller en joys his slice of pudding none the less be cause he has to keep his gun cocked and his eyes open to guard again&t dangerous 'beasts j while eating it. The foreign trade of Mr Buszard if al | most wholly with English-speaking people. Foreigners sometimes" send for puddings ; but they cannot &cc the merits of our national dainty. The Sultan of Morocco once had a pudding despatched to him ; but he did not repeat the order. At the great Army and Navy Stores in Victoria street, London, where probably the west largest business in ready-made puddings of the first grade k done, the manager says they make about 16 tons in the season, and each year the trade is going up by lea,ps and bounds. Large numbers of people now adopt the plan of saving themselves the trouble of mixing and cooking. At the stores they start mixing, to meet the foreign order, about June, turning more and more hands or to work as the season goes on, til] about the end of November there are perhaps 60 or 70 doing nothing else 'but pudding-mixing. The stores also do an enormous Indian busine**. their depot at Bengal distributing great quantities. The trade is so rapidly growing that makers are usually sold out by Climtimas Eve An amusing scene took place at Buszard's last Christmas Eve. Only one pudding was left — a mpnster weighing over a quarter of a hundredweight, and costing 355. Two men rushed at it, each insisting that he had asked for it first. "Sure I must have it !"' said one of the bidders, an Irishman. "I don't mind what I pay. but I am going to send that to mv old mother for her Christmas dinner. I don't m.' if I give sgp for it." The Irishman finally secured the treasure, and it is to be hoped that hi morher enjoyed her nice little 281b pudding. Within the last year or two the trade in ready-made puddings has stretched out in another direction. Some of the big biscuit films have gone in for making and selling these articles through grocers. Naturally, with them, the price is a onsjderation. and they hardly aim at the same class of customers as fashionable West End confect;ouers do. With the leading dealers price is quite secondary. It is safe to say that if one of them found a way of making a slightly better pudding than anyone else, even ot tuple the cost of to-day," his bus-ine^ v. ouki go up with the increase of