Why 'pudding' refers to sausages and desserts

[nmyhv]

It's called pudding because I'm pudding it in my mouth

[andrade]

Our word for flan here in Brazil is "pudim", usually made with sweetened condensed milk and eggs, very tasty

[jerotoro]

At the time of the divergence of the US and the UK, "pudding" was generally considered a unit of steamed flour-encased fillings, like the boiled one you made. Over in the US, the flour crust came to be strictly associated with "pie", while the "pudding" was considered to be the filling of the pie, and when filling was eaten alone without a crust, the dish was called "pudding". This is how it transitioned from being something encased in a crust, to just a stuff on it's own.

[trickster]

In Japan, "pudding" (プリン) is a loan word that refers to what we would call flan in the US. Most likely adopted after world war 2 when foreign industrialized food products became much more common. It's also the Japanese name for Jigglypuff

[bzymek]

Adam defeated looks while saying the food is 'suprisingly good' made me chuckle

[Idontwantyourcookie]

Another layer of fun etymology, the Japanese have the word 'pudding' imported into their language (プリン), but this word usually refers to creme caramel or flan, not sausages or jello-style pudding

[petervincent]

Australian English ‘Pudding’ usually refers to sweet boiled puddings like the one you made. They are considered an ‘old fashioned’ dessert, and normally they are eaten at Christmas. My grandma used to make them.

However it can also refer to many different soft wet bready desserts.

[alistairkirk]

In case it's not on your radar, there is a superb book called 'Pride and Pudding' by Regula Ysewijn which details the history of all of these 'pudding' dishes and many more besides. It is a completely wonderful book, with the bonus of exquisitely composed illustration, almost raising food photography to the level of the Dutch Golden Age Still-Lifes. Highly recommended!

[neilmunro]

Not sure if intentional or not, but this video is just one day late for Burns Night, a day celebrated in Scotland remembering the poet who gave haggis the title 'chieftain of the pudding race'. You'll find haggis eaten regularly all year in Scotland, but on Burns night, it's a must have! Love it.

[MisterM]

In the UK, we also have Yorkshire puddings and rice pudding, completely different to all the other kinds of pudding.

[janok]

Boudin HAS GOT to be origin of pudding. In Poland, the word for the type of sweet milk dessert is "budyń" and that sounds almost exactly like "boudin". The connection is obvious! That's really amazing, etymology is all kinds of fascinating :)

[XIIIthProductions]

As someone who didn't grow up with English as their native language and then decided to live in the UK, this is such a helpful explaination. I always have to double check when someone is offering pudding here in the UK, as I'm used to the word exclusively referring to the sweet variety.

[jdjk]

Adam, as someone who's really into languages and linguistics, that bit where you transitioned from "boudin" to "pudding" is basically the trick I taught myself to understand weird, seemingly-disconnected etymologies. A lot of words from different languages, sometimes even the same language are in fact the same word, just said differently...

[NamePending]

When you cut into your 1600s pudding, I totally went "Thats fruit pudding!" which is part of a traditional Scottish fry up breakfast.

[toysmostwanted]

As a Filipino that grew up in the Philippines, Pudding to me refers to Bread Pudding; specifically the kind local bakeries make from yesterday's unsold stale bread.

I guess the definition does work. It's crumbled bread soaked in a liquid to form a mash then set into a mold then cooked to solidify.

[therealeatz]

This is amazing. I'm from Louisiana where boudin refers to a very specific type of sausage, so the history of all these words are so interesting.

[Kookiebiskit]

The shot of Adam tugging at the intestine while grinning is beyond cursed. I love it.

[domramsey]

I think you're correct when you say there wasn't a distinction between sweet and savoury foods originally. Sweet things were just put into savoury dishes because they tasted interesting, and probably made the meat and guts taste a bit less bland! It was only over the course of time that the concept of a specifically sweet pudding became a thing, but they were still made in basically the same way. Desserts like Christmas Pudding still are traditionally wrapped in cloth and steamed.

[smartmoose]

My family has a tradition of making "Sweet Haggis" which is basically the Cambridge one you show here but with steel cut oats and currants. Also another one called Suet Pudding that's more like a really wet molasses and raisin cake that's boiled/steamed in a mason jar. Both delicious

[Duron]

In Poland we have a very similar sweet dessert - budyń. The word clearly comes from 'pudding', and it's also a sweet, custard-like dessert mostly made with starch instead of eggs, although traditionally it used to be cooked with eggs, wheat or millet flour, and cooked in tin cake pans (called 'budyń pans' in polish), and it looked more like cake than pudding (or modern budyń, actually). There used to be a savoury version of budyń too, prepared with vegetables, mushrooms and minced meet (mostly poultry and veal), but it's pretty much forgotten in the part of the country I live (Poland ain't small and it's quite diverse, and there are a lot of recipes still being made, so somewhere people still enjoy it, I'm sure). If you can research it a little bit, or you have a polish friend who could help you out, try out budyń - it's nice, you'll enjoy it.