Tapioca can be found in the chain restaurant Sweet Tomatoes; it’s one of the big reasons my dad likes to eat there. There was a Chinese restaurant here that served an excellent coconut tapioca.
Flan is the most common pudding here in Tucson.
A hotel on Kauai served bread pudding at its excellent breakfast buffet. This is the main reason my dad has voted this place the best hotel ever.
I love the texture of tapioca.
Redeye gravy is made with coffee and ham fat, with no flour or thickener. I suspect it was invented during the depression, or reconstruction. Perhaps reconstruction since it is a Southern phenomenon. I vaguely recall eating hot banana pudding. I have thought of custards as being warm pudding in a bowl shaped pastry shell.
For some reason, a line from an old UK TV show about WWII called Danger UXB sticks in my mind where one character said to the other “Bloody Lancashire,” and that other said “Bloody Yorkshire.” Fall out from the War of the Roses???
O.k. You are dead to me. 
My mom loved tapioca pudding and would try to force it on us kids. One of the most disgusting experiences of my childhood…next to the maraschino cherry juice in the milk.
Well, yeah, actually. Although, that would mean the Wars of the Roses were over, and I’ll leave it to you to break that to Yorkshire and Lancashire County Cricket Clubs.
Yorkshire and Lancashire are sort of friendly rivals nowadays. I mean, that’s probably how it looks from the outside, anyway, but it’s more complicated than that.
But…well, it is a friendly rivalry, and we fucking hate each other. Sort of somehow at the same time. But when it comes to Southerners, well, bollocks, we’re Northerners together! I mean, OK, Lancastrians are from the wrong side of the hills, but still, the Watford Gap is more of a border than the Pennines…
Heh, I had DNA analysis done because I knew very little detail about my father’s ancestry other than it was nearly all from the UK, and probably largely Scottish. It turns out that was mostly true. In a graphic representation of the British Isles, the darker colors were the north of England and Scotland, and, news to me, Cornwall. Also, Northern Ireland. Faint color in southeastern England and the Republic of Ireland. But no color at all – completely white – in the middle (the Midlands?) of England. It appears I have Lancasterian (sp?) *and *Yorkshire ancestry.
I find this interesting now, because I just finished reading a biography of Thomas Malory, and it contained more detail about the War of Roses than I’d ever known before.
Let’s beat him up and steal his lunch money!
I’ve frequently seen bread pudding in cafeterias or diners in the New York area, although it’s usually a square piece served on a small plate rather than a cup. It’s so simple to make (stale bread, butter, eggs, milk, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla) I don’t think I’ve ever seen a mix for it.
There probably are still mixes for it. I mean, I once saw a mix for strawberry smoothies, just add strawberries, yogurt, and crushed ice.
Yeah, I was going to say much the same. In a world where instant mashed potato and instant white sauce exist, I don’t think ease of manufacture can be assumed to preclude the sale of packet mixes.
To extend aruvqan’s history a bit, it’s helpful to know that the English word “pudding” probably comes the French “boudin,” meaning “sausage.” So, ground stuff held together in a casing and boiled or otherwise cooked (or smoked, or…) to extend its life. The other uses extend from there.
(Sorry I used the word “extend” three times).
Ease of manufacture wouldn’t preclude it- but difficulty might, and it would be difficult to manufacturer a mix where you only had to add water/milk. There are actually bread pudding mixes available but I’m guessing they are not big sellers for the at-home crowd because both mixes require you to add bread and one requires you to also add the milk, butter and eggs. I’m guessing the first one might be commonly used in institutional kitchens.
Sorry, cross purposes there, I think I was being unclear in my needlessly twiddly language. I meant that despite a dish being very simple to make at home (that was the “ease of manufacture”), packet mix versions nevertheless exist.
No, you weren’t unclear- I was. I was trying to say the reason is probably not that making it at home is easy, but the fact that it’s difficult (or more likely impossible) to include the bread in the mix. When I buy chocolate pudding mix, I’m basically buying the cocoa- if I kept cocoa in my pantry, the mix wouldn’t be much easier. If I buy bread pudding mix and have to add milk, eggs, butter and bread, I’m not sure what’s in the mix. Cinnamon, vanilla and nutmeg, maybe? Not everyone keeps those things in their pantry - but I bet they’re more common as staple items than cocoa.
Those are certainly not very popular, since neither is actually available. I guess my point was that making it from mix wouldn’t be much simpler than making it from scratch, since you generally would have to add most of the same fresh ingredients. I have seen several recipes that simplify it by adding instant pudding mix, but you still have to have the bread. IIRC, instant vanilla and chocolate pudding mixes just require you to mix it with milk and refrigerate it and you’re ready to go.
Mashed potatoes from scratch may be simple but they’re labor intensive. You have to peel the potatoes, cut them up, boil them for some time, then mash them. They’ll take you a half hour to an hour depending on how much you make, versus a few minutes with instant.
White sauce is simple, but again is not that easy. You have to be careful to add the flour slowly to not get lumps, and regulate the temperature so you don’t burn it. It’s easy for a novice to screw it up. And it takes more time than a mix.
Bread pudding, on the other hand, just requires you to mix up most of the ingredients and then just pour the mixture over the bread and bake it. While you have to assemble the ingredients, mixing them isn’t much more effort than it would be to stir up a mix and pour it on the bread. Making it from scratch doesn’t require that much more time than from a mix.
I was thinking the same as Colibri. A “bread pudding mix” would mostly save me… measuring the sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla?
I guess if it came with ready-to-use pieces of stale bread it would add value to just making the stuff from scratch.
Tastier if you don’t.
Ah, but you can have mince pies containing mince, perhaps as an example of Scotland being awkward. 
I definitely recall asking for a mince pie supper in chip shops.