The exception proves the rule?

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

While reading Cecil’s column What’s the meaning of the expression, “That’s the exception that proves the rule?” I noticed an off-hand remark regarding another famous quote, “the proof is in the pudding.” Is not the original quote “the proof of the pudding is in the eating”?

(as an aside, should the quote include the question mark, or am I correct in occluding it?)

If so, how did the quote come to morph into the now common, shortened (and somewhat misleading) version? Was there ever a proof embedded within a pudding, long searched for but never found until the third course? Is there a prejudice against non-pudding proofs, the apparent lack of pudding association somehow rendering them inferior to their pudding prone counterparts?

May I have some pudding please?

Regards,

Cogito

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The Word Detective talks about this (again here) , but doesn’t explain too much really. Basically he says that the original is as you have said, but can’t explain how or why it changed.