One good thing about being in college is that you meet a lot of people from foreign parts. If you have a pressing question about others cultures, e.g. “On the UK version of Sesame Street, is our favorite blue glutton called Biscuit Monster?”, you can probably find someone to ask. According to my Londoner classmate, Cookie Monster in England is still Cookie Monster.
Mundane and pointless, but I had been wondering.
P.S. Christmas pudding is actually a type of cake.
No it isn’t. It’s a steamed pudding. Christmas cake, on the other hand, is actually a type of cake.
I’m googling “Christmas pudding,” and image after image confirms that it looks a lot more like what Americans think of as cake than like what Americans think of as pudding.
That’s as maybe. But first, the US definition of pudding isn’t the only one in the world, and, second, cakes aren’t steamed. It is most definitively NOT a cake. It is, on the other hand, one of the most heavenly things on God’s earth.
Nothing like a Christmas pudding and now that persimmons are showing up the market, its time to think of a steamed Persimmon pudding!
Malleus, think of the Pink Floyd lyrics, “If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding!” Pudding in Britain is not the thick, goopy gelatin-based ooze that we eat here in the States. It is a thing of wonder!
Thisisn’t like any cake recipe I’ve ever seen.
Well pudding there refers to dessert generally. Pudding here refers to a steamed suet based dish than can be either sweet (Christmas Pudding) or savory (steak & kidney pudding).
It isn’t like any pudding recipe I’ve ever seen either. Granted it isn’t cake by any stretch but as an American when I think of pudding I don’t think of something that can hold a shape. It looks interesting for sure but it isn’t my first thought when I think of pudding. This is my first thought when I think of pudding!
I know this – I was trying to demonstrate to the OP that pudding is not what he thinks it is. I’m a huge pudding fan and have deals with local (U.S.) butchers to save me suet* so I can make my own.
*Not an easy ingredient to acquire in the United States.
Oddly enough, the United States does not have the sole right to determine the meanings of words. Puddings have been in existence, called puddings, since before this country existed, and before the land here was even colonized by Europeans.
Even if it isn’t what you think of as a pudding, it most freaking definitively isn’t a cake, unless you have a method of making cakes not shared by anyone else in the world.
Considering that the OP started with an “Amero-centric” comparison of terms, I would think that continuing to discuss differing terms for desserts (US vs UK) wouldn’t be jumped on with as great a vigor as is occurring.
Had it been Christmas pudding is not pudding, I probably wouldn’t have said anything. It would have just been another British people use different words than American people thread.
But the claim was it was cake - and it ain’t. There’s not a vast amount I miss about the UK (real bacon, decent cheese, cricket, cruel senses of humor, a real pub) but top of the list is a proper Christmas (proper being, of course, what I grew up with). And I am starting to miss it earlier than usual this year.
Bah Humbug.
I’m sorry to have offended you. I never called it a cake. In fact you quoted me saying, “Granted, it isn’t cake by any stretch…” so I think it is clear I don’t think that Christmas pudding is cake. I was just agreeing with the OP about pudding being different in the UK vs the US, much as if he had said in the UK a boot is the trunk of your car instead of a shoe.
You haven’t. I’m cranky, and didn’t mean to be snappy. It’s raining, I’m tired, the opposing counsel seems to think giving me documents 20 hours before the hearing is tolerable, I wish I was in England, and women should all be executed.
Other than that, life is spiffy.
And please feel free to use the term pudding in your regular conversation for whatever product you feel. But leave my Christmas pudding alone. 
Mundane questions about other cultures? Okay:
In countries that don’t use a standard A-B-C alphabet, what do they call the various bra cup sizes?
Well, only by a very loose definition of “cake” (one loose enough to include fruitcake, cheesecake, crab cakes, …)?
Ok, that recipe calls for:
•4 oz /110 g shredded suet, beef or vegetarian
What the heck is vegetarian suet?
I’ve made steamed puddings, and they are very much like cake; cake cooked by steaming. Of course you can cook a cake by steaming – what a ridiculous assertion. You can cook any dang thing by steaming, if you want to and you’re clever. You know you can cook bread by steaming as well, right?
So we all get that the British, or at least you, villa do not consider a Christmas pudding to be a form of cake. Since the OP is an American, and her post is about learning what other cultures are like for the first time, and in particular experiencing the “two nations separated by a common language” phenomenon for the first time, you should relax, and take things in the tone they’re intended.
If some British Person said “did you know the jelly in Peanut Butter & Jelly is actually jam?” you wouldn’t hear us screaming that no Brit is going to tell us what is jelly and what isn’t.
This is the Straight Dope Message Board. Of course we would. We issue death threats over which way the toilet tissue should roll here.
Except that the OP made it obvious that she was using the American definition. Complaining about tht is like reading one of my hypo threads and being surprised when it’s ridiculous.
