PLUM PUDDING

This palatable dish has been made the theme of many a story and many a song, and since it has been put up in canned form, in 1, 2, 3 and 4-pound sizes, it has become more popular than ever. It is the most convenient dessert dish that the grocer can supply to the puzzled housewife who has to prepare for the coming guest. Large quantities are exported to England, thus supplying John Bull with his national dessert in improved shape!

The very earliest mention of plum pudding, or "plum porridge" as the first type was styled, is by Southey in his "Omniana," and this, curiously enough, is not, in English but in French. The quotation is from the memoirs of the Chevalier d'Arvieux, and its date is about 1665. It is probable, however, that this Frenchman borrowed his receipt from Great Britain, for he took a voyage on a British forty-ton warship in the year 1658. A century and a half after that date, plum "porridge" seems still to have flourished, for a writer named Brand gives an account of a Christmas breakfast served at the royal chaplain's house in the year 1800, where the first dish was "rich and luscious plum porridge!"