‘The Great British Baking Show’ Pulls Its Pud for “Dessert Week”
Clang-clang-clang goes the dessert trolley.
The Great British Baking Show opens Dessert Week with the age-old Great British Debate the tent has somehow avoided until now: Dessert or Pudding?
Americans may find this argument odd, as “pudding” in our version of English refers specifically to the sweet, milk-based custard most households buy in boxes labeled Jell-O. However, in the U.K., “pudding” is a catch-all for any kind of dessert, sweet or savory, creamy or firm. Perhaps, for Americans, it’s most useful to think of it as the British version of calling all cotton swabs “Q-tips” or all newsletter-based websites “Substacks.”
It is also a word that’s been falling out of fashion in the U.K. since the turn of the 21st century. The internet has been homogenizing Western culture for a quarter century, and “pudding” is too specific outside the U.K. for the term to flourish. (The shortened version, “pud,” is worse because in North America, it’s sex slang.) Unsurprisingly, these changes have hit southern England first, where multicultural exchange is far greater because of its proximity to London. That’s turned “pudding” and “pud” into a distinctly northern, old-fashioned throwback word associated with the uneducated, a little like Americans view the word “y’all,” but for dessert.
