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Pudding

Posted: Mon Nov 13, 2017 11:44 pm
by Dr. Goodword

• pudding •

Pronunciation: pU-din(g) • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: 1. A stuffed entrail like sausage or just its contents, usually ground meat with spices, as 'blood pudding'. 2. A soft, mushy savory dish made with starchy ingredients such as suet, rice, semolina, etc., as 'Yorkshire pudding'. 3. A soft, sweet dessert, such as 'rice pudding' or 'chocolate pudding'.

Notes: The meaning of pudding is as squishy as the substance it refers to. It runs the gamut between sausage and rice pudding. The only derivational relatives are puddingless and puddingish, which are rarely used. In the South when I was growing up, people would call their spouses, puddin', rather than darlin'. (The G in pudding is seldom pronounced in the US in any context.)

In Play: The most famous phrase this word appears in is, "The proof is in the pudding," meaning you can only prove your case by showing results. This is a shortened form of the original, "The proof of the pudding is in the eating."

Word History: Today's Good Word probably comes from a West Germanic stem pud- "to swell", which gave us Westphalian dialect puddek "lump, pudding," Low German pudde-wurst "black pudding". English dialectal pod "belly" is also a derivative of this word. Since pudding had been often applied to pudgy people, pudgy may be a relative, too. In British slang, being in the pudding club, means "to be pregnant". This goes back to pod in the sense of belly as a place where we keep our 'pudding' in the first sense above. It may be related to Middle English when pod meant anything bulging. In fact, to be in pod is another way of saying "pregnant" in Britain. (Christ Stewart, our South African friend, selected and submitted today's tasty Good Word.)

Re: Pudding

Posted: Wed Nov 15, 2017 1:45 am
by Perry Lassiter
Any relation to puddle?

Re: Pudding

Posted: Wed Nov 15, 2017 4:03 am
by Philip Hudson
In the hinterlands a favorite pudding is banana pudding. It was one of my grandfather's favorite desserts. I'm sort of partial to it also. The colonials were known to like hasty pudding. The name we apply to it is cornmeal mush.

Re: Pudding

Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2017 10:05 pm
by Perry Lassiter
Said banana pudding has become my birthday cake: from scratch and hot out of the oven...

Cornmeal mush? AKA grits?

Re: Pudding

Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2018 8:16 pm
by Slava
I guess it is not related to puddle:
n.
early 14c., "small pool of dirty water," frequentative or diminutive of Old English pudd "ditch," related to German pudeln "to splash in water" (cf. poodle ). Originally used of pools and ponds as well.
v.
"to dabble in water, poke in mud," mid-15c., from puddle (n.); extended sense in iron manufacture is "turn and stir (molten iron) in a furnace."
I will venture to say that it is where the pod for peas comes from.

Re: Pudding

Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2018 4:55 pm
by Philip Hudson
Perry, As a fellow Texas who has strayed into Louisiana and been there amongst the grits eaters extraordinaire for much too long, I urge you to harken back to your youth and remember that cornmeal mush and grits are related but not the same.

It may help you to remember that the full name of grits is hominy grits and hominy it is. Hominy is made from whole grains of corn [of the American Indian variety] soaked in a weak solution of hot water and lye. After the grain has swollen and lost its skin it is washed and then cooked. In making grits, one dries the hominy and then coarsely grinds it. We used to make hominy in a large cast iron pot that was used outside and was heated with a wood fire under it. We never made grits because we are Texans and not Southerners.

Cornmeal mush is made simply by boiling cornmeal. It is great stuff. Put some butter and brown sugar in it and it is, to my mind, ambrosia.

One may also slice cold mush and fry it. It makes a poor man's lunch. People in the north sometimes make and eat scrapple. It is an abomination. It is similar to fired cornmeal mush but it has been adulterated by mixing raw bulk pork sausage with it. I spent a decade one year in New Jersey. Folks there actually eat the stuff. I was finally cajoled into tasting it. Never again.

Re: Pudding

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2018 12:06 am
by Perry Lassiter
Philip, thanks for the food prep lesson. I just go pull the stuff down off the grocery shelf…