One Family and Empire Christmas Pudding

The King's Christmas Pudding made from the 1927 recipe published by the Empire Marketing Board

Towards the end of our previous post The Pudding King we touched on the subject of plum pudding as a potent emblem of British patriotism. We also explained how the dish was reinvented in the early decades of the twentieth century for a variety of political reasons, including the emergence of its role as an imperial symbol. The story about plum pudding which follows is from a time when Britains's vast empire included almost one fifth of the world's land surface and one quarter of its population. Its colonies provided the mother country with a remarkable range of raw materials, including many food items. It is ironic that a number of celebratory British food stuffs are made from ingredients that cannot be grown in the British Isles - plum cake, plum pudding, mince pies and marmalade all depend on exotics imported from warmer climates.

It is often said that plum pudding was first consumed at Christmas in the medieval period and then banned during the Commonwealth by Cromwell until revived by George I in the early eighteenth century. However, we have not found any contemporary sources which verify these claims. So far, the earliest reference we know that firmly associates plum pudding with Christmas is in the diary of Henry Teonge, a British naval chaplain who served on board a number of Charles II's ships. On Christmas Day 1675, somewhere off the west coast of Crete on board His Majesty's Ship Assistance, he wrote in his journal,

'Our Captaine had all his officers and gentlemen to dinner with him, where wee had excellent good fayre: a ribb of beife, plumb-puddings, minct pyes, &c. and plenty of good wines of severall sorts; dranke healths to the King, our wives and friends; and ended the day with much civill myrth.'*

Perhaps HMS Assistant's cook bought the dried fruit, sugar and spices to make the pudding in the market at the ship's last port of call, the Levantine town of Iskendarun. 

From at least the time of Henry Teonge until the Great War, roast beef and plum pudding were the British celebratory foods of choice for all sorts of festive occasions, not just Christmas. By the first half of the nineteenth century, cookery authors such as Elizabeth Hammond and Eliza Acton had started to call it Christmas Pudding rather than Plum Pudding, a process that Food History Jottings research assistant Plumcake has discovered had started back in the eighteenth century, or possibly earlier. We will say more about Plumcake's findings in another post.** Charles Dickens also played some part in fixing the pudding as a dish more specifically linked to Christmas. Despite this more specialised role during the Victorian period it continued to be served at occasions such as jubilee ox roasts and other junketings. During the First World War plum pudding took on a new patriotic role as a symbol of solidarity. Embroidered silk Christmas cards showing a pudding struck with allied flags became a popular souvenir, which soldiers sent from the trenches to their loved ones back home. 

No doubt these striking images of plum puddings spiked with the flags of the nations had some influence on the members of the British Women's Patriotic League, who in the decade after the Great War urged families to buy Empire goods. In 1922 they inaugurated the first Empire Shopping Week, during which they set up displays of food and produce from Empire countries and encouraged the big West End stores to follow suit. This was a period of unbridled free trade when Californian dried fruit was coming into Britain on the back of an aggressive advertising campaign. The American importers were aware that dried fruit sales in Britain were rather poor other than at Christmas time and attempted to boost the market by publishing advertising leaflets with raisin recipes for cakes and raisin loaves which could be eaten all year round. Australian vine fruit growers were horrified with the American competition, as were the rank and file of the British Women's Patriotic League, who recognised the debt that Britain owed to the Australians for their sacrifices during the war (though of course the Brits also owed a great deal to American troops!). In 1924 they urged the housewife to 'make your Christmas Pudding an Empire Pudding' and to boycott imports from non-Empire sources. They published a leaflet with a recipe which listed ingredients from various Empire countries. The concept of the Empire Christmas Pudding was born.

Spiked with both the Australian flag and the Union Jack this giant Christmas Pudding paraded in London in 1925 was sandwiched between a stuffed emu and a kangaroo. 

In 1925 when the Lord Mayor's Show explored the theme 'Imperial Trade', the Australian fruit growers paraded a huge Christmas Pudding pulled by a team of white horses. Emblazoned on the back of the pudding were the words 'make your pudding of Empire products'. None of these initiatives came directly from the British government, who in these difficult economic times wavered between unfulfilled whispers of protectionism and unregulated free trade. They could not formulate a firm policy on supporting Empire trade and at first were very quiet on the whole issue. However in 1926 they inaugurated a rather ineffective quango called the Empire Marketing Board (EMB), whose main purpose was to research the production, trade and use of goods throughout the British Empire and to promote the idea of 'Buying Empire'.

Taking their initiative from the British Women's Patriotic League, the EMB adopted the idea of the Empire Pudding. A short time before Christmas 1926 they issued a recipe in the form of a poster with an image of Britannia holding a flaming plum pudding surmounted by a union jack flag.

The Empire Marketing Board's first campaign poster. Only a few Empire countries are listed.  Courtesy of Public Record Office

The EMB's campaign was a little late in the day, but they did boost their publicity by asking the ruling monarch King George V if he and the Royal Family would eat the empire pudding on Christmas Day. He agreed and as a result the pudding also became known as the King's Christmas Pudding.

The last ingredient in the 1926 recipe above was a silver 3d. bit 'for luck!' 

Another body which promoted the pudding was the Empire Day Movement, led by the charismatic Irish peer Reginald Brabazon 12th Earl of Meath. Lord Meath masterminded a publicity stunt in which the pudding was made at Vernon House, the headquarters of the Overseas League in London. He ensured this event was filmed for a newsreel called Think and Eat Imperially, which was shown in cinemas all over the Empire, giving the campaign a tremendous amount of publicity. As early as 1909 Meath had realised the power of  the cinema as a promotional tool. In that year he commissioned a film of a vast Empire Day gathering in the town of Preston. This remarkable archive movie  has survived and I have supplied a link to it at the very end of this posting.

The chef adds Australian sultanas to the mix, while Lord Meath (on the right) looks on

Meath's vision of Empire saw Britain and its distant colonies as one large extended family. So at his publicity event, he invited representatives of the various empire countries to stir up the pudding. The various ingredients were also delivered to the chef by ushers from each producing nation. The 'pudding spice' from India was brought to the table by two Indian ushers in turbans.

The family tradition of stirring the pudding was adopted by Meath as an emblem of imperial unity

Meath stirs the 1926 Empire Pudding in the garden of Vernon House

The following year, the campaign took on an added dimension when George V's chef Monsieur Cédard provided a better recipe with a few more nations listed in the ingredients table. The campaign lasted well into the thirties, only fizzling out with the outbreak of World War II. In 1930 a propaganda film called One Family was released to promote the pudding and Empire Trade. In its day it was a complete flop. It was originally filmed as a silent movie in 1929, but to keep up with dramatic new developments in the cinema, a sound track was added to it. The film stars a London schoolboy who notices an Empire Christmas Pudding recipe in his father's newspaper. He lingers on his way to school to admire a display on the pudding in a grocery store and is late for his lessons. During one on the subject of empire geography, he falls asleep and dreams he goes to Buckingham Palace. He meets the king and is sent on a quest to collect the ingredients in the producing countries. It is sixty nine minutes long, but as a period piece is really worth watching. Much of it was actually filmed in Buckingham Palace and there is a tantalising glimpse of the palace kitchen in one scene. I have put a link to the full One Family film at the end of this posting.

Though suitable for a royal palace where puddings were made in vast numbers for distribution to staff as Christmas  presents, the large quantites in this recipe were not practical for modest family households. This is the recipe which the schoolboy sees in his father's newspaper in the 1930 movie One Family. Courtesy of Public Record Office.

A somewhat whittled down recipe, but with more Empire producing countries credited. Courtesy of Public Record Office

Courtesy of Public Record Office

Watch One Family, a 1930 British propaganda film on the King's Christmas Pudding

An Empire Day meeting in Preston in 1909. You will recognise Lord Meath to the left of the mayor

Watch an archive film of Empire Day in Preston, Lancashire in 1909

* Henry Teonge, The Diary of Henry Teonge, chaplain on board His Majesty's ships Assistance, Bristol, and Royal Oak, anno 1675 to 1679. Charles Knight. London 1825, pp. 127-28.

** Plumcake has pointed out to me that in A Voyage to Virginia, by Colonel Norwood, from A Collection of Voyages and Travels by Awnsham Churchill and John Churchill (1745) Vol. 6 p.153, there is the following diary account of an improvised shipboard Christmas dinner - and the pudding is called a Christmas Pudding,

'Many sorrowful days and nights we spun out in this manner, tille the blessed feast of Christmas came upon us, which we began with a very melancholy solemnity; and yet, to make some distinction of times, the scrapings of the meal-tubs were all amassed together to compose a pudding. Malaga sack, sea water, with fruit and spice, all well fryed in oyl, were the ingredients of this regale, which raised some envy in the spectators; but allowing some privilege to the captain's mess, we met no obstruction, but did peaceably enjoy our Christmas pudding.'

Norwood's voyage took place in 1649, so if Churchill's transcription of Norwood's diary is reliable, then this would mean that this is the earliest reference we have so far found to a Christmas pudding.

Food anthopologist Kaori O' Connor has written a marvellous paper on this subject. I would encourage you to read it. Here is the citation -

Kaori O’Connor, The King's Christmas pudding: globalization, recipes, and the commodities of empire,  in Journal of Global History. Volume 4, Issue 01. March 2009,  pp 127 -155.

Ivan was recently interviewed by Michael Mackenzie, the host of the excellent Australian ABC RN First Bite food programme. We chatted about the extraordinary phenomenon of Empire Christmas Pudding, the subject of which Ivan dealt with in a former posting on this blog. Click here to listen to the programme.

Watch a video of Ivan making and discussing the Empire Christmas Pudding.

The Pudding King?

George I (School of Godfrey Kneller). Is that an orb with a sceptre and cross on the table? 

Just dip into the vast amount of material that has been written about the history of Christmas pudding and fairly soon you will come across references to King George I (reign 1714-1727). You will quickly learn that he was served plum pudding as part of his first Christmas dinner as newly crowned monarch in 1714. You will also find recipes that claim to be for the very pudding. Some sources even give us the exact time of the brand new king’s initial experience of this curious English dish – 6 pm on December 25^th 1714.  As a result of these strong connections to the dish you will also learn that George was given the nickname the ‘Pudding King.’

Or is it something else?

However, the eighteenth century archival record is curiously silent on this matter. There does not seem to be anything on the story in any of the nineteenth century records either. It is not until the twentieth century that the story surfaces. And it surfaces with a clamour, with many leading food writers telling the story of the Pudding King, some claiming that it was George himself who was actually responsible for making it our national Christmas dish. So if there are no eighteenth century primary sources for the story, where on earth does it come from? Many food authors cite the recipe and the legends attached to it, including worthies like May Byron (1929) Florence White (1932), Dorothy Hartley (1954), and Elisabeth Ayrton (1974). However, all are unanimously silent on one important matter – none of them give their sources.

Plum pudding is liberally steeped in myth as well as brandy

Plumcake, Food History Jottings research assistant has made a special project of this problem and has been delving through the historical evidence to find out how the story emerged. She has made some interesting discoveries and what follows is based on her research. The very earliest record she has found so far linking George I to plum pudding is an article about a royal family Christmas at Sandringham during the reign of George V (1910-1936), who came to the throne 196 years after the death of his namesake. This was published in the Strand Magazine in 1911. It is highly likely that this is the original source of our story - it is certainly the earliest so far discovered.  

The article is entitled THE HOME LIFE OF THE ROYAL FAMILY. The author is unnamed, but is described in bold uppercase type by the Strand Magazine as  ‘AN OFFICIAL OF THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD.’ It goes on to say that the article ‘IS PUBLISHED WITH GRACIOUS PERMISSION AND APPROVAL OF THEIR MAJESTIES THE KING AND QUEEN. THE ACCOMPANIED PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE ROYAL CHILDREN HAVE BEEN EXPRESSLY SELECTED FOR THE ARTICLE BY THE QUEEN HERSELF.’  It is definitely an article with impressive royal approbation.

This Christmas gathering was the first one for the royal family after George V’s coronation in June 1911. The article describes how after breakfast the royal children paid their compliments to the recently widowed Queen Mother and then the whole family attended morning service,

 ‘After service a return has been made in the past to Sandringham in order that the children may enjoy their Christmas dinner, which is composed of the traditional roast turkey, sausages and plum-pudding. The latter, by the way, is made from a recipe that has been in the possession of the Royal Family since the days of George I, and is compounded in the huge kitchens at Windsor Castle.’

The recipe is given in a footnote. Here it is –

We are glad to be able to give, by permission, this recipe, which is composed as 
follows: 1½ lb. suet (finely shredded), 1lb. Demerara sugar, 1lb. small raisins, 1lb. plums
 (stoned and cut in half), 4oz. citron (cut into thin slices), 4oz. candied peel (cut into thin 
slices), teaspoonful of mixed spice, half a grated nutmeg, two teaspoonfuls of salt, 1lb. 
bread crumbs, ½ lb. sifted flour, 1lb. of eggs (weighed in their shells), wineglass of brandy. Beat the eggs to a froth and then add to them half a pint of new milk and mix the
 various ingredients. Let the mixture stand for twelve hours in a cool place. Then place in
 moulds and boil for eight hours. The above would make three ordinary-sized puddings.
 The Strand Magazine, Vol. 42, [1911] p.634 (No.252, December 1911).

What this article actually says is that this recipe had been in the possession of the Royal Family since the days of George I. What it does not say is that it is for making a pudding that was actually served to him. Anyone who has experience of early Georgian recipes will realise that this cannot be an exact transcription of the original. Its structure and language are entirely modern. If it is based on an eighteenth century original it is very much an adaption for an early twentieth century reader. We know of no other eighteenth century pudding recipes that instruct the cook to weigh the eggs. Nor is Demerera sugar an ingredient that is usually named in eighteenth century recipes.  It might be common ingredient now, but surprisingly candied peel is not an ingredient that occurred in eighteenth century plum puddings. The earliest recipe that Plumcake has found for one which includes it is in John Mollard, The Art of Cookery (London: 1801). Moulds for boiling puddings are described in nineteenth and early twentieth century recipes, but not in those from the early Georgian period.

If George I ate plum pudding at Christmas, it would have been boiled like this, in a cloth

Plum puddings were boiled in fancy moulds in the 19th and early 20th century. However, in 1911 the word mould could also mean a plain basin like those used by most cooks today

The instruction to use ‘plums’ in the recipe is also interesting. Well it is a plum pudding is n’t it, so what is strange about that? However, when plums are called for in recipes for this dish, it usually means something else. After an initial definition of the word ‘plum’ as the fruit of the plum tree, Dr. Samuel Johnson in A Dictionary of the English Language (London: 1755), gives us an alternative meaning,

Dr Johnson's alternative definition of 'plum'

The Victorian economic historian Stephen Dowell in A History of Taxation and Taxes in England (London: 1884, IV. i. vii. 37) tells us more, ‘The dried grapes‥we term simply raisins when used for eating uncooked, and plums when they form an ingredient in the famous English plum pudding.’

But we are getting distracted into a different issue. Why plum pudding is called what it is and the additional meanings of the word ‘plum’ will be dealt with in greater detail in another posting. Let us return to the Pudding King. We do not doubt that there is a recipe in the Royal household somewhere for plum pudding that dates from the time of George I, but its wording would be completely different from the one published in the Strand Magazine. Compare the above to the language of this recipe from 1723, which incidentally, is also a recipe ‘from the days of George I’.

A Plum-pudding

Shred a Pound and a half of Suet very fine, and sift it; add a Pound and a half of Raisins of the Sun ston’d, six spoonful of Flour, and as many of Sugar, the Yolks of eight Eggs, and the Whites of five, beat the Eggs with a little Salt, tye it up close in a Cloth and boil it for four or five Hours.

George I had four more years to reign when John Nott published the above recipe in 1723 in The Cook’s and Confectioner’s Dictionary. It is likely that the royal recipe published in the 1911 article was adapted to suit contemporary kitchen practice, or its language would have been closer to Nott’s instructions.

It is not until 1929 that we hear of George I’s Royal Christmas Plum Pudding again, this time in May Byron’s Puddings, Pastries and Sweet Dishes. Mrs Byron offers a slightly different version of the recipe, substituting the plums for Valencia raisins and the small raisins for sultanas. It is likely that she was trying to clarify the word plum for a readership that no longer understood its alternative meaning. She also doubles the quantity of flour, but it is pretty obvious that her source for the recipe is the 1911 article.

And so it goes on. In her lovely Good Things in England, Florence White, founder of the English Folk Cookery Association offers the same recipe, giving a version, which apart from a little more flour is pretty faithful to the 1911 original. The journalist Hayden Church cites the recipe in a rather interesting article written for the New York Times in December 1931 and syndicated two years later to The World Almanac and Book of Facts. But Church tells us that the pudding was made from ‘a recipe used in the royal household since the seventeenth century and preserved in an old cookery book at Windsor Castle.’  So we are now being told that the royal recipe predates the reign of George I. In her 1974 version, Elisabeth Ayrton includes self-raising flour, glacé cherries and dates, telling us more about 1970s taste than an authentic attempt to replicate an eighteenth century dish! Elisabeth! We thought that this was supposed to be the very pud that George ate in 1714 - shame on you! 

Many other journalists and cookery authors right up to recent years have given versions of the recipe first described in the 1911 article, some of them elaborating on the story. We think that those who actually give us the exact time and date of George I’s first Christmas dinner were probably making a well educated guess! But whoever made up the story about him being called the Pudding King? He certainly was not called that in his lifetime, or even in the two centuries after his death. This particular variation on the theme seems to have emerged in the decades after World War II.

So it seems to us that the tales of the Pudding King are myths that have gradually grown on top of a recipe cited in a journalistic account of a Royal Christmas in 1911. However, to get to the real truth we need to see the royal cookery book with its recipe, hopefully still on a shelf somewhere in Windsor Castle. Is there anyone out there with some good royal connections who could organize that for us?  If there is just the slightest chance that Your Majesty reads this blog, could Plumcake and I come to Windsor to look through your cookery books please?

To demonstrate how the recipes claiming to be for George I’s Plum Pudding are derived from the 1911 Strand Magazine article, Plumcake has constructed this detailed analytical chart - click on the link below.

George I Plum Pudding Recipe Chart

George V. The real Pudding King?

There is an ironic coda to this story of kings and Christmas pudding. George V, whose first Sandringham Christmas is described in the 1911 Strand magazine, probably has more legitimate claims to the title ‘Pudding King’ than his Hanoverian ancestor George I, whose links to the dish seem to be tenuous. On Christmas Day 1927 George V gave his whole-hearted support to a propaganda campaign organized by the Empire Marketing Board to encourage trade within the British Empire. He sat down that year at Sandringham with his family and instead of eating the usual pudding ‘from the days of George I’, he sampled the delights of Empire Christmas Pudding, supposedly invented by his chef André Cédard. This pudding was made with ingredients grown all over the British Empire. That Christmas the king’s loyal subjects throughout the Empire were encouraged to follow suite. Perhaps they should have toasted their monarch with,
‘The Pudding King is dead. Long live the Pudding King!’

$1000 REWARD FOR LOST PUDDING DECREE

One thing that really, really annoys me is a tendency in the world of food journalism, broadcasting and food writing to continuously repeat stories about the history of our food which have very little basis in fact. Many food writers, celebrity chefs and yes, even people who actually describe themselves as food historians are guilty of this. This is a plea to all of you out there to stop accepting secondhand, often suspect statements without questioning the sources upon which they are based. I have already given some examples on this blog of this uncritical approach and in the future, I will offer you many more. And I will spare no blushes.

Perhaps no other food in the English culinary canon has been subjected to this process of popular mythologising more than Christmas pudding. In her book Food and Cooking in Victorian England - A History (Greenwood. Westport CT: 2007, pp.149-50), Andrea Broomfield, Associate Professor of English at Johnston Community College, tells us,


‘The plum pudding’s association with Christmas takes us back to medieval England and the Roman Catholic Church’s decree that the “pudding should be made on the twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity, that it be prepared with thirteen ingredients to represent Christ and the twelve apostles, and that
 every family member stir it in turn from east to west to honor the Magi and the supposed journey in that direction.” 


Now being a professor, Dr. Broomfield naturally provides us with a reference for her source. I was hoping that she had consulted the original medieval decree, because I would love to see it myself. But no, she refers us to a book written by the celebrated English actor Simon Callow called Dicken's Christmas (Francis Lincoln. London: 2003), which she quotes. Mr Callow is a brilliant thespian, in fact he is one of my favourite actors, but he is not noted for his research into English pre-Reformation Ecclesiastical decrees, or Christmas pudding for that matter. His book is an attractive one and is full of interesting information, but it is unreferenced and he repeats a number of the usual annoying cliches about Christmas foods, such as mince pies being representations of Christ's manger etc. Unfortunately Mr Callow does not give us a reference for the source of his information, so where it comes from is anyone's guess. If by any slim chance, you read this posting Mr Callow, I would be grateful if you could let me know your source. By the way, I loved your Dr Marigold and Mr Chops at the Riverside Studios!


Broomfield/Callow are nowadays quoted by Wikipedia in their article on Christmas Pudding and as a result the medieval decree theory can be seen all over that most efficient myth spreader in the history of mankind, the world wide web. 


But is there anyone out there who can tell me where I can find a copy of the original decree? Did it really exist? I am genuinely offering a $1000 reward to the first person who can find me the original medieval text of this so-called decree and point me to the library in which it is housed. If the decree came from the very highest authority - the pope, I suggest you start by looking in the Vatican archives for a papal bull, motu proprio or papal brief.  Perhaps it was a decree created by one of the Ecumenical Councils, or since it was specifically aimed at the English congregation, it may have been issued in our own ecclesiastical province at a synod under the authority of the Archbiship of Canterbury. Anyway, brush up your Church Latin and I wish you all good hunting in the archives. The reward will be valid until midnight on 24th December 2012, when the offer will close. Good luck! There will be much more on Christmas Pudding in a future posting.

An original papal bull. Papal bulls got their name from the bulla, the small ball shaped seal made of lead which was attached to them. If there was ever a papal bull on the subject of Christmas pudding, perhaps the bulla would have looked like this. Or perhaps the whole thing is just a load of old papal bull----.