but my question to UK dopers is, have you ever had real pudding? It’s one of the finest desserts.
I’ll bite.
They call dessert pudding, as in, “What’s for pudding?”
And they do have sweet dishes that are like what Americans call pudding.
I have a feeling this may go nowhere.
They must first finish their meat.
Is American style pudding like Angel Delight?
I didn’t like Angel Delight as a kid, and I have never tried it as an adult.
If you steam it, it’s a pudding (Christmas pudding, spotted dick etc.)
If you bake it, it’s a cake (Christmas cake)
Puddings in the US and Canada are closer to custards.
Since Leaffan took the obvious reply, I’ll just leave this here: Recipe for Steak and Kidney Pudding.
I want puddin’
(:))
I can’t believe I didn’t think of this instantly but reading it made me laugh!
It’s a kind of instant pudding. The most common puddings in the US are vanilla pudding, chocolate pudding, bread pudding, andrice pudding, all of which are standard home or restaurant (especially diners and cafeterias) desserts.
There are plenty of dairy puddings available, but they tend not to be called puddings. Probably because, as others have noted, pudding can be used as a descriptor for dessert in general, or for a steamed stodgy dish which may not be dessert-like at all. I truly do not know if there is a difference between a dairy pudding and a mousse, and presume there isn’t, but it’s quite easy to buy prepared mousse dessert or mousse mix.
I’ve had some very nice American style dessert puddings, but only a few of them would for me achieve the distinct of being “one of the finest desserts”. Do you have a particular example you would like to laud?
Tapioca pudding is far more common than bread pudding, in my experience.
Which raises another question – does “meat” in the UK (and specifically in that verse) just mean “animal flesh” like it does in the US, or does it have a broader meaning? In context it sounds like “pudding” means “dessert” and “meat” means “main dish” although that’s not how either of those words are used in US English.
Not in my experience. I can’t say I’ve seen tapioca pudding in a long time. It may depend on your region.
Oh, and banana pudding too.
Can’t say I see that very often, either.
Well, when I was a child it was my vegetables (“greens”) that I had to finish first. But what’s the reference to a verse? I have the feeling I’m missing something.
And so far as I know, meat means meat means animal flesh.
BTW rice pudding and bread pudding do exist here (per **Colibri’**s examples), but they are very old fashioned. There’s a type of coastal town round these parts which goes by the name of God’s Waiting Room, and there are small family run restaurants in these towns which offer meals for the elderly which don’t require much chewing, and that’s where you would go if you wanted bread pudding or rice pudding.
j
I think it might refer to the outro of Another Brick in the Wall Part 2, where you hear a man’s voice saying “If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?”
Struth. Haven’t had tapioca since I was at primary school! And bread pudding appears to be a name I’ve heard more on American food shows - we have bread & butter pudding, classically.
Pudding is a context-dependent word, as has been mentioned. It means dessert, or it means a dense cakey dessert. Or a sort of steamed savoury pie (steak and kidney pudding).
There are other contexts when it would be used - black pudding, white pudding, various other regional variants of sausagey thing. The haggis, according to Burns, is the great chieftain o’ the puddin’ race…but you wouldn’t call it “a type of pudding” in modern parlance, really, unless you went on to explain the history of the word.
For some puddings it would be necessary to use the whole phrase: the sausage things are almost never “a pudding” or “some pudding” - you wouldn’t say “I fancy pudding” and expect someone to think you might be in the mood for black pudding. If you were going to a chippy though, you might (depending on locale) ask for a pudding and expect to get a sort of meat pie in the shape of a truncated dome. Milk puddings (rice pudding, etc.) are desserts of course, but not types of “pudding”, as such - they’re not variants of a food-type which would be called “pudding”, other than the fact that they’re served after the main course.
American pudding would be unlikely to get away with being called pudding. You could have it “for pudding” at the end of a meal, but it isn’t a type *of[/] pudding. If you ordered “vanilla pudding” or “chocolate pudding” off a menu and a smooth, creamy thing arrived in place of a dense hybrid of sponge and gunge, it would be unexpected (and probably disappointing).
The Authority has spoken! 
Ah - thanks. Not familiar with it. But as I never pass up on a chance to say it: they were never the same after Syd left. 
j