I've avoided doing a post on how BrE
pudding is
used to mean (AmE)
dessert because it's one of those AmE/BrE differences that is known by most people with any interest in the two countries. (And
way back in the beginning, I said that this blog wasn't about those things that are well-covered in lists of AmE/BrE differences. This has led me to drag my feet, or perhaps my knuckles, in responding to requests for this topic from American readers Cathy and Jacqueline.) The
pudding/dessert equation has been mentioned in passing
here and
there on the blog. But there are angles on this issue that deserve further discussion. So what the hell, here are some observations on them.
This comes up naturally, since I'm in the US at the moment, and the first 'new' AmE/BrE difference we taught my linguistically insightful five-year-old niece on this visit was "
dessert is called
pudding in England". Her immediate question was the same as reader Cathy's:
If any dessert can be called pudding, what is [AmE] pudding called [in BrE]?
But before I get to that, let's start with a fine-tuning of the general American understanding of the meaning of
pudding in BrE. Yes, it can be used to refer to the sweet course of a meal, served after the main course. But in addition to referring to a course, it can also refer to a particular kind of dish, as it does in AmE. But there's still a translational problem, in that it doesn't refer to the same type of dish in the two dialects. In BrE, the dish-sense of
pudding is:
A baked or steamed sponge or suet dish, usually sweet and served as a dessert, but also savoury suet puddings (e.g. steak and kidney). Also milk puddings, made by baking rice, semolina, or sago in milk. (Bender & Bender, A Dictionary of Food and Nutrition, Oxford UP, 1995)
Here's a photo of a Christmas pudding, from
Cumbria Rural Enterprise Agency. It's kind of like a fruit cake, but it's cooked by
steaming. I know Anglophiles who buy and eat Christmas puddings in the US, but other such puddings are very rare in the US. My personal favo(u)rite is
Sticky Toffee Pudding, and I consider it my duty to sample as wide a variety of STPs as possible in order to try to identify the best. Nominations on a postcard, please! (AmE speakers should usually mentally translate
toffee in BrE contexts to
caramel.)
In AmE,
pudding nowadays refers particularly to creamy, custard-like desserts.
Wikipedia treats this better than other dictionaries I've consulted (BrE translations in
brackets are mine):
The second and newer type of pudding consists of sugar, milk and a thickening agent such as cornstarch [=BrE corn flour], gelatin, eggs, rice or tapioca to create a sweet, creamy dessert. These puddings are made either by simmering on top of the stove [=BrE on the hob; AmE stove = BrE cooker] in a saucepan or double boiler or by baking in an oven, often in a bain-marie. They are typically served chilled, but a few types, such as zabaglione and rice pudding, may be served warm.
As the Wikipedia bit indicates, the steamed, cake-
ish kind of pudding is older than the 'milk pudding' sense
, but it's not the oldest. Originally
pudding referred to more sausage-like things. Hence
black pudding, a blood sausage that is far more common in Britain (especially in the north of England--at breakfast time, for godsakes) than in the US.
On the grammatical angle, note that the BrE dish-sense of pudding is often a count noun (e.g.
I made enough sticky toffee puddings to feed an army) because the puddings are items with well-defined boundaries, whereas in AmE it's usually a mass noun (e.g.
I made enough pudding [not
puddings]
for everyone) since it refers to a substance. (Throughout English, we have the ability to make count nouns out of mass nouns and
vice versa, so in this case I'm talking about the natural state of these words when referring to the food as it is prepared, rather than the senses "a portion of X" or "a smear of X", etc.)
So, what do BrE speakers call the creamy stuff that Americans call
pudding? I think the best answer is that they don't call it anything in particular. There is no such thing as
Jell-o pudding (the form in which most Americans encounter this substance) in the UK. The closest thing to that, although it's more 'mousse-like' is probably
Angel Delight. A baked custard is a kind of pudding-y thing that is found in both countries (though not very popular in either place now, I think, except in the more exotic Spanish/Mexican incarnation,
flan--which Kevin in the comments reminds us is usually called
crème caramel in BrE. See the comments for more on what
flan means). But in the UK
custard usually refers to
pouring custard, which Americans might occasionally come across under its French name
crème anglaise. (This was discussed before, back
here.) Both countries have rice pudding and the less creamy bread pudding.
(Incidentally, Better Half and I were grocery-shopping here the other day, and we happened down the
Jell-o [US trade name, used generically to mean 'flavo(u)red gelatin', i.e. BrE
jelly] aisle. BH was flabbergasted by the range of little boxes to be found there, which included two brands (Jell-o and Royal) and both gelatin/jelly and (AmE) pudding mixes. The
Kraft Foods website lists 20 flavo(u)rs of regular Jell-o, 12 of sugar-free Jell-o, 17 of instant regular Jell-o pudding, 9 of instant diet Jell-o pudding, and 9 of the regular and diet cook-and-serve pudding mixes. So that's 67 products before we even start counting the ones that
Royal makes. I've lived abroad long enough that instead of celebrating such a range of products, I am exhausted by the thought of it and look forward to getting back to a more sensible shopping experience. But only after I've loaded up my suitcase with A1 sauce, low-calorie microwave popcorn and New York State maple syrup.)
Returning to the course-sense of
pudding, the term
dessert is heard in BrE. The first sense below from the OED has been around in BrE since the 17th century at least, while the second, more general sense is noted as more American, but increasingly found in BrE:
1. a. A course of fruit, sweetmeats, etc. served after a dinner or supper; ‘the last course at an entertainment’ (J.).
b. ‘In the United States often used to include pies, puddings, and other sweet dishes’ (Cent. Dict.). Now also in British usage.
Other BrE terms for this course are the more colloquial
afters and
sweet, which is often found in
lists of 'non-U' terms.
Pudding is the least socially marked of these terms.
I believe that the pudding/dessert course is the one that diverges most, food-wise, in the two countries. That is to say, there are lots and lots of British puddings that aren't found in the US and American desserts that aren't found in the UK. And, of course, some of these are sources of amusement--particularly
the name of the British dish spotted dick.
Finally (and not entirely unrelatedly),
pudding is sometimes clipped to
pud (rhymes with
wood), which disturbs me when I see it in writing since I first learned
pud as a slang term for a woman's genitals that rhymes with
bud and is derived from
pudendum. But BrE also has a genital-slang
pud, which means 'penis'. This one rhymes with
wood, since it is derived from
pudding. (The OED notes that this is chiefly used in the masturbatory phrase
pull the/one's pud.)
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