A Happy New Year to all my non-existent readers!On a seasonal note, I am still partial to a little Christmas pudding at this time of year. Over time, tastes seem to have changed, and the sweet course of mince pies and Christmas pudding may be skipped altogether — or there might be an alternative dessert. I suspect that the rich fruit and pastry are not to everyone’s liking now. As a reasonably young person, Christmas pudding was the highlight of the festive meal and I recall that sometimes a second helping was out of the question as it had all been eaten!
In the mid-1970s I moved to Canada. I soon discovered that nuts were a lot more common in cakes and confectionery than I had been used to. They even put them in ice cream! I couldn’t see the point: I disliked nuts, and could not see the pleasure in their hardness and bitterness. (Although I did like savoury peanuts and cashew nuts.) Thankfully I never had a nut allergy.
The first time I was aware of nuts in a Christmas pudding must have been the early 1980s. My father had been given a homemade Christmas pudding by someone he knew, and I’m sure we were told that it was rather good. Well, expecting wonderful things, both my parents and I were disappointed to be munching through significant quantities of nuts, and much adverse comment and moaning ensued! My father spared us from the ordeal of a repeat helping of the unfortunate pudding, when with good intentions he attempted to reheat it in our relatively new microwave oven and somewhat overestimated the time required. Result: one rather charred and inedible pudding! Phew.
But this was only a portent of what was to come. Some 30 years later, and back in the UK, we seem to have become North Americanised (globalised?). Noticeable quantities of nuts are now standard ingredients in our so-called traditional Christmas puddings. Pecans? Come on! The Waitrose one pictured above is a typical example, regrettably.
I don’t dispute that nuts may have always been a key ingredient of Christmas pudding, but back in the day they were chopped or crushed finely enough that you were not aware that you were eating them. I don’t think we even knew what pecans were in the 1970s! So if the manufacturers insist on putting nuts in, make sure they are finely chopped, dammit.
