In 1985 a group of friends, fed up at being offered Black Forest Gateau and defrosted cheesecake at the end of meals in restaurants, founded a society to bring back the great British pudding.
The Pudding Club is based at the Three Ways House Hotel in Mickleton, Gloucestershire and opens its doors to members and non-members alike. Diners will be treated to a very light main course, perhaps a small pasta dish or salmon with new potatoes, but then the real proceedings will commence. Seven gigantic puddings are paraded in front of the assembled guests, followed by vats of custard. The puds will vary from session to session but you can expect the traditional Sticky Toffee, Spotted Dick and Syrup Sponge alongside less well-known dishes such as Sussex Pond.
Diners are allowed as many helpings as they want, but they must finish what is in their bowl before embarking upon a new course. It can be quite a struggle, but it is bloody well worth it.
Every nation is rightly proud of its national dish but, for some reason, the English can never seem to decide what it is. Fish & chips was long held to be the meal in question but then someone would pipe up and argue the toss for steak & kidney pie. In more recent years it has been claimed that curry is now the national dish which is clearly nonsense. I mean, curry is lovely and a very welcome addition to the national menu, but we really should make an effort to have one stand out meal that isn’t imported.
I would like to put forward the case for cream teas. A nice scone (fruit or plain) with a pot of jam and lashings of clotted cream. It is quintessentially English in the same was as haggis (or the deep fried Mars bar) is Scottish and, I don’t know, leeks I suppose are Welsh.
Historians in Tavistock, West Devon, believe that they have discovered the origins of the cream tea. Apparently, after the Vikings had plundered the Benedictine Abbey there in 997AD the monks relied on local workers to help them rebuild it. To thank the men the monks fed them with bread, clotted cream and strawberry jam. The meal proved so popular that they continued to serve it to passing travellers and the cream tea was born.
