Bring Us Your Piggy Pudding (Again)

Maybe it’s because I dress for winter like I’m a Dickens-era street urchin. Or maybe I’m just a sucker for an old-fashioned redemption story. Either way, my all-time favorite story is A Christmas Carol.

So every year I prowl the channels and watch as many adaptations as possible. And it’s always the same: whether it’s Alastair Sim, George C. Scott, or even that one with Mr. Magoo, the real star, for me, is Mrs. Cratchit’s plum pudding. That sounded naughtier than I intended.

There’s something about that fiery ball of sweetness — the ceremony, the suspense, the way she breaks through that first cut — that makes me want to build a time machine and sit by the Cratchits’ hearth, waiting for Bob’s nod of approval.

Across the pond, this holiday dessert has more aliases than the jolly fella himself — plum, figgy, Christmas… and courtesy of my childhood ears listening to We Wish You a Merry Christmas, “piggy pudding.” I was basically forty when I learned England doesn't celebrate the season with savory pork desserts.

But these are the same people who came up with black pudding — a blood sausage — so my brain wasn’t totally off the rails, right?

And despite its annual guest-starring role — plus a handful of Americans with proud British family trees — this thing never really made the jump to the U.S.

Piggy pudding isn’t that far-fetched. The original recipe was savory — medieval peasants figured out a way to preserve dried meat with fruit and a splash of liquid in a cloth bag. Over the centuries, the meat quietly disappeared, the fruit took over, and the whole thing drifted from survival food into something more like a dense holiday cake. By the Victorian era, it had become a sticky, sweet brick of cinnamon-spiced comfort studded with candied peel and currants — each bite a little sugar-boozy scavenger hunt.

This dessert is also a full-blown British ritual. Traditional recipes call for thirteen ingredients (Christ plus the twelve disciples), families stir from east to west, and a sprig of holly goes on top like a tiny crown of thorns. It’s part theology, part superstition, part “because Grandma said so.”

These are actually my gloves, not Peter Cratchit's

And then there’s Stir-Up Sunday — the last Sunday before Advent — when families gather to “stir up” the pudding, tuck in a silver coin, and let it mature for weeks. Come Christmas Day, it’s reheated, doused in brandy or rum, lit on fire, and carried to the table like the grand finale.

I’m not really a religious guy, but I can be if dessert is involved. Cheers to this InternationalFoodigenous — may it finally make it to our holiday table one of these years.

If you want to reenact some 19th-century patriarchal approval this holiday season 😉, here’s a delicious recipe worthy of a head nod from the spouse.