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).

[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.

[ailbhe]

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

[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.

[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]

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.

[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.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

-Ice cream, especially rum and raisin
-Wensleydale cheese

[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.

[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