|
[13] The original puddings were sausages – whose present-day survivor is the black pudding. They were encased in the intestines or stomachs of animals, and it was this casing that provided the spring-board for the word’s subsequent development in meaning. It came to be applied to any food cooked in a bag (hence the cannon-ball shape of the traditional Christmas pudding). Such dishes could be savoury (like today’s steak-and-kidney pudding) or sweet, but it was not until the 20th century that pudding came to be used specifically for the ‘sweet course of a meal’. The word comes via Old French boudin from Vulgar Latin *botellīnus, a diminutive form of Latin botellus ‘sausage’ (source of English botulism).
|