figgy pudding

Figgy Pudding (occasionally Piggy-Pudding) is a vague term used for a class of traditional Christmas dishes usually forming sweet and savory cakes, containing a sour-sweet creamy layer of honey, fruits and nuts. In later times, rum or other distilled alcohol became often added to enrich the fruitiness of the flavor.

Etymology

Medieval cooking commonly employed figs, in both sweet and savoury dishes.
One such dish is fygey, in the 14th century cookbook ''The Forme of Cury'', which in Modern English is "figgy", this dish being known as ''figgy pudding'' or fig pudding:

The Middle English name had several spellings, including , , , , and . The latter is a 15th-century conflation with a different dish. Figee was in fact a dish of fish and curds, which was named in Old French, meaning "curdled" (the past participle of the Old French ). But it too came to mean a "figgy" dish, involving cooked figs, boiled in wine or otherwise. A turn of the 15th century herbal has a recipe for figee:

has the recipe under the name "fignade" on page 42. Richard Warner's has it under the name "fyge to potage". ''Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management'' contains two different recipes for fig pudding that use suet, numbers 1275 and 1276.

In popular culture

Often associated with the original traditions of Christmas, it is most notably referred to in the Christmas carol "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" in the line "Now bring us some figgy pudding!". Figgy pudding is not plum pudding, although it can be considered a precursor to it. It is not as rich, nor as complex in its recipe.
A number of Christmas markets will offer figgy pudding-flavored desserts as part of their range, though the relation of these to the original taste-wise is rather doubtful.

See also

* Figgy duff (pudding)
* Christmas pudding

References

Cross-reference

Reference bibliography

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{{cookbook, Figgy Pudding

British puddings
Fig dishes