First of all, I want to apologise to the forum for the banal nature of this topic which isn't intellectually enriching, political, technology-focused or arts-based. Yes, it's about Christmas pudding.

I have come to the realisation that I probably don't like Christmas pudding. I've eaten the damn thing for years dutifully but have been given an Xmas dessert menu which has other nice options: I feel bound to choose it because of the time of year, but the other options look good too.

Has anyone actually had a really good one, or it is a tradition that doesn't live up to expectations?

I think a large part of the problem is that many are mass-produced and/or shop-bought. Even the ones from Waitrose/Fortnums aren't that good, to my memory. I think that if one were home-made, there would be a much better chance of it being decent, so there is scope for potential - but few people make their own nowadays, I would imagine.

The shop bought stuff and powdered or packet brandy sauce on offer are terrible.

My mother used to make a very good one, which had plenty of booze added (Guinness and Brandy). She would soak the fruit and spices in it for days before, then make it, then store it for a month or more to mature. The brandy sauce was potent and not too sweet, compared to what you buy ready made.

Yes the overpriced pretentious crap from Fortnum or Waitrose is no better. You really have to make it yourself or just forget it - in that regard I wouldn't have a clue where to start, so I choose not to partake.

//edit: Or you could get one of the overpriced Fortnum ones and soak it in some booze for a few weeks and hope for the best...? It might work...

My wife makes ours no shop bought rubbish soaked in booze for months Mmmmmm ...

"Depends how/where it's made" - I like mine (usually shop bought) cold with ice cream (having midsummer Chrissie).

It's second best to (home made) fruitcake and ice cream.

I hate all "standard" Christmas food. Hate the pudding, the sticky cake and the turkey with trimmings. Maybe in America they know how to cook turkey; here in England it always comes out horribly dry and tasteless. If you want a family roast, a goose is much nicer.

I often buy a pair of quails for Christmas and the New Year but I don't want anything unusual for afters.

Shoo-fly pie for me.

Won't touch it. Not that it's common in these parts, in fact it's incredibly rare. But I had it a couple times as a kid, and have nothing but bad memories of it.

You wouldn't touch Christmas pudding or shoo-fly pie? (evil grin)

Christmas pudding. I've actually never had shoo-fly pie. Which is odd since I grew up not OVERLY far from the PA dutch area, but I don't ever remember a single gathering as a child that had it. Where I live now very unlikely to see it.

I used to spend a lot of time conducting residential training classes (that means everyone stayed in the same hotel for a week) in Lancaster, Pa. On one of those trips, I snagged a cookbook from a fundraiser by the Neffsville Mennonite Church women's group.

It had three shoo-fly pie recipes in it. I tried one; it was so good I never tried the other two. It's basically a sugar pie: Molasses, white sugar, brown sugar, maple syrup, and just enough flour to hold them all together. Yummers.

I still have the cookbook.

You can find the recipe on my website.

I must say (to get back on topic) that Christmas pudding was not a thing in my family--pecan pie was--but The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding is a great Hercule Poirot mystery.

If this thread isn't "intellectually enriching" enough for some, then that's their problem - so no need to apologise Lysander

In regards to your question; Christmas means nothing to me and is just another day of the year to me. So I don't buy any "special" food for it, the only exception I make is when the supermarket wants to flog off left-over stock after Christmas, Easter, etc - particularly if I can get it for half price (even better if it's less than half price )

But I don't have any preference of turkey verses pudding, etc either...

Homemade it has to be, lasts years if made properly.

Though I must say at my age you tend to avoid such things.

Dennis

I didn't expect quite so many responses in a thread about Christmas pudding but there have been some interesting thoughts.

Yes this is an excellent idea - Guinness Christmas pudding. The problem is that they're either too dry or too bland, or the combination of the cognac and fruit tastes off. I think that a good Xmas pudding should have a lot of booze in it, and of the right sort, sometimes brandy alone isn't good enough - it's too sharp with the taste of the fruit, so I imagine it would be tempered and softened, to some extent, by the Guinness.

I am definitely not a fan of turkey at Christmas, it's not too dry and insipid - soaking it in gravy just makes a stodgy gravy/poultry mess, which I'll probably have to do at some point over Xmas though. I've mostly been having beef for the last couple of years - way more traditional and a good topside with mustard/horseradish is better than turkey any time of the year, especially Xmas though. Can't remember having goose ever.

Never heard of this, I doubt whether I'd be able to get one around here, would have to attempt to make it, the 'wet' version sounds more up my street.

Not being a Christian [though I do appreciate some aspects of the religion], it doesn't mean much to me in that sense. Yule, on the other hand, does, and that's really how I look at it. Yule typically fell a few days earlier, and is basically a harvest/solstice-centered celebration which is far easier to get behind than the commercialised modern Christian version. All the Christians did was give their own spin on pagan festivals anyway to drum up more support, essentially all Western religion [I can't comment on Middle Eastern/Eastern religion] comes from the harvest anyway.

Yeah, I don't think it's all bad either, there are some things in the Bible worth considering (I'm not a Christian either myself obviously). I can't say I'd ever heard of "Yule" before myself, but from a quick overview I just read about it, it does seem interesting and I see what you're saying. I always thought that it was business that hijacked Christmas from the Christians, but it seems I may have been misguided in that belief. Interesting history from the quick read about "Yule" I just read - I do find reading history interesting, be that regarding religion, IT, Linux, etc. But I can't say I'm an expert though

Christmas and Yule ambled along in a comfortable double harness for centuries. We don't actually know when Jesus was born but it certainly wasn't in midwinter! That's the rainy season in Palestine, so there wouldn't have been "shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night". More likely that happened in spring or autumn. But midwinter seemed the appropriate time for the birth of the Light of the World to be celebrated.

Our modern Xmas is really a perversion of Yule, not of Christmas. They've stripped away all the old pagan holiness and replaced it by the Almighty Dollar. I often wonder why it's only Christians who are protesting and not witches and people like that. If I was a witch, I wouldn't like it any more than I do as a Christian.