You said you'd feed me brandy and Christmas cake

[venta]

Of course, the other day's question about my leftover red wine missed the most important detail. So did I until now. There was me worrying about red wine when there was also leftover prosecco in the fridge (slack bastards, my dinner guests, never finish anything).

Anyway, I'm now addressing the issue. It's not as fizzy as it might be, but is otherwise surprisingly decent.

However: settle an important conundrum for us, will you?

I want to know what you think is usual to put on Christmas pudding. Not necessarily what you want on your pud, or that weird thing that your family's done for years, but the list of things you might consider it customary to offer, or put, on Christmas pud. (Why yes, the use of the pejorative word "normal" in the poll does indicate that I have an axe to grind ;)

[Poll #1948620]

If, like me, your answer is different based on whether the pud is hot or cold, this one is being served hot.

Comments

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Ice cream is my Other, because I never ever have liked custard so as a child I always got ice cream with mine (when I was too young to like the taste of any sauce with alcohol in, anyway).

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes, ice cream is one I didn't think of, but I'm not surprised at the idea people put ice cream on it.

[ceb.livejournal.com]

Also other types of heavily alcoholic butter things. Creme anglais is acceptable, but not British custard (ah, terminology :-). Really nice vanilla ice-cream might do in a pinch.

[damerell.livejournal.com]

Also rum butter is nice. I had to ask Clare what rum sauce was and it is clearly an abomination.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Which facet of rum sauce causes you to declare it abomination?

[damerell.livejournal.com]

Well, I like rum butter, so it's not the rum. I'm sure sauce doesn't go on Christmas puddings, though!

[venta.livejournal.com]

It definitely does.

There remains the question of whether it should.

[ailbhe]

I'm always confused when all the options are alcoholic.

[venta.livejournal.com]

This was partly the starting point of the conversation - t'other half doesn't want an alcoholic option, but loves Christmas pud.

[venta.livejournal.com]

... although I'm confused that you only ticked custard and cream as "things it's normal to have offered" :)

[ailbhe]

I've only met the alcoholic options when not in people's homes, which is why. In people's homes it's been non-alcoholic consistently.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Ah, right :)

It was always rum sauce in our house. Though of the people who've filled in the poll, only my mother has said she wants it on her pudding so maybe we're outliers.

[sammason.livejournal.com]

I'll have all of those sauces, please. But misquoting Pooh Bear, 'Don't bother with the pudding.' Instead I'd like apple pie under the sauces.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I've come rather late to liking Christmas pudding; I still prefer it cold.

What I still haven't made my peace with is mince pies. Fortunately my mother is lovely, and always makes me some pies with apricot filling which look almost exactly like mince pies from the outside (you have to learn the code - round hole in the top means apricots, two little slits means its mincemeat).

[sammason.livejournal.com]

Those apricot pies sound good! I'd eat one of those (just one, because of the wheat) with any of the fillings you suggest. Please put it in this box [__] and teleport immediately.

Do you like Xmas cake? If so, you can have mine after I've nicked the marzipan.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I do like Christmas cake, but for preference I like it complete with its marzipan. We have a nice fruity stollen this year, with marzipan up the middle, too - I'll put it in the box with the pie :)

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

I'm sure it's possible to make rum sauce in a way that's extremely delicious, but my usual experience of it is as "rum-flavoured sauce" in institutional canteens and non-gastro pubs where it's ... not.

More puddings should be served ablaze in my opinion. British puddings are world class, but they'd be even more obviously so if, say, we routinely served apple crumble laced with burning Calvados and spotted dick flambéed with rum.

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

*nods* re puddings set afire - v good plan!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Oddly, I think I've only ever had rum sauce in the family 'ome, where it is definitely made with real rum. Mind you, I rarely order Christmas pudding when out and I've never worked somewhere with a proper canteen.

I've set a pudding ablaze in my life just once; at a Christmas dinner cooked in a shared house in Oxford the first year after I graduated. None of us really knew exactly how to do it, and we, er, got a bit over enthusiastic and there was Some Conflagration.

The pudding survived, but I learned not to dip a very hot spoon into very hot brandy. Pretty, mind.

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

Any of those are fine to offer, and things that would be customary to have to hand at this time of year.

They wouldn't necessarily be customary to have with Xmas pud though. But when entertaining, I would want guests to pick what they like most, not what was traditional. Plus there would be other puddings on offer, so it wouldn't be strange to have the other sauces to hand.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I'm confused. I asked "which ones of these are customary", and you ticked them all... but you're now commenting that they're not all customary?

How am I ever supposed to build a database of what you earthlings do if you keep changing your minds?

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

You said "customary to offer or put"

If I were offering a range of puddings (inc pies, cakes etc) suited to the time of year and a range of sauces that are customary for at least one of the offered puddings, I don't police what combination my guests would have.

Or if a guest said "I don't like sauce X", I might enumerate the set of sauces I had in that I think might to be more to their taste. It's customary to make guests feel welcome with food they might like, even when their likes are clearly strange and wrong :-)

[lnr]

You don't list brandy sauce - which is what we usually end up with these days, and which is an adequate substitute for rum sauce, which we always had as kids. Oddly I think mostly because we had rum in the house but not brandy :) Don't forget to set fire to the pud first of course too.

Cream if cold? I don't think I tend to eat it cold myself.

[lnr]

Oh and though I think it's pretty weird myself brandy butter seems to be more paired with mince pies.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I actually like pud better cold. Along with all the other leftovers from last Sunday, I have a tub of Mr Tesco's extra-thick cream with brandy which I have to say goes excellently with cold pudding.

I've never heard of brandy sauce as a Thing, but accept that armed with the concept of rum sauce I can just about conceive of it :)

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

-Ice cream, especially rum and raisin
-Wensleydale cheese

[venta.livejournal.com]

You know, it's never occurred to me to eat cheese with Christmas pudding. Which is weird, because I'm a rabid cheese-with-Christmas-cake person, and when it comes down to it the two really aren't very different.

[lnr]

Yay, cheese with cake. I so have to try it with pud now if we have any left over.

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

They are very different: Xmas pud* is nice, Xmas cake is vile.

*Dried fruit is generally** vile, but Xmas pud is honorary not dried fruit
**Dried mango is nice, as is dried pineapple. But candied dried fruit or dried grapes/berries are pretty much exclusively vile. Unless rehydrated with lots of boozahol. Or tea.

[fractalgeek.livejournal.com]

I've seen cheese done, but it's not in my pantheon of "right".

[rapperaddict.livejournal.com]

If my Grandma was serving, she'd quite often forgo the whole sauce thing and just pour whatever alcohol she had to hand neat over the thing (this is after alcohol had been added and the thing set alight and only if the pudding had survived being set alight, which it often didn't). My Mam felt this actually helped numb the pain once she'd discovered that Gran'd put five pence pieces in the pudding without telling anyone again and was waiting for the dentist.

I've never heard of non-alcholic stuff to put on Christmas pudding. It doesn't sound right...

[bondagewoodelf.livejournal.com]

The Dutch don't 'do' Christmas Pudding (not really, not this way)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Other: ice cream.

What I would want on it is a tricky question to answer, because dessert is an exact science. I would inspect the options on offer most carefully and most likely pick a combination of more than one.

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've heard of rum sauce, so I didn't tick the box, but it sounds yummy.

[beckyl.livejournal.com]

Christmas Pud should also be sprinkled with caster sugar and turn up at the table flaming.

[ringbark.livejournal.com]

Ice cream? Surely they jest!
There's a thing like custard but not quite so thick or vanillaish (vanilline?) and also completely white. I think it's called white sauce, but that might be something that goes on the turkey - or is that bread sauce?
Anyhow, this white nearly-custard is acceptable as a normal thing to put on Christmas pudding. However, I don't like it! It sometimes has an unintended metallic aftertaste for some reason.

For me, you can't beat really thick custard or sensible single cream.

beckyc loses a kudo for spelling it with an X.

[venta.livejournal.com]

White sauce could be almost anything! Rum sauce, for example, is basically white sauce. But with rum in.

[lnr]

I think my mum adds a tiny bit of lemon juice too, which makes it a bit whiter than plain white sauce,

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

Also: do not confuse sweet and savoury white sauces.

Rice milk turns a savoury white sauce into a sweet white sauce. This is less than ideal if you are using it as a base for mushroom sauce and are feeding it to guests.

[shermarama]

I don't think I have much sense any more of what's traditional or expected, but in the household where I've spent the last few Christmases, I'd expect Christmas pudding to be served up with all of these over the course of a coulple of days.

[glittertigger]

In recent years we have had large family Christmases where everyone had different ideas on this, so the options have been custard, brandy butter, cream and something called 'hard sauce' as described here:
http://www.epicurus.com/food/recipes/christmas-pudding-with-non-alcoholic-hard-sauce/1921