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Do you end your feast with a traditional Christmas cake or a Christmas pudding? The history of these holiday desserts is intertwined. Christmas pudding was actually first a kind of thick soup or stew known as plum pottage and later as plum pudding. In its original form, the spiced recipe included dried fruits and – you guessed it– more meat.

The word pudding, in fact, derives from the French boudin, meaning animal innards, while ‘plum’ referred to any type of dried fruit. From the 17th century, the mixture thickened and took on its modern spherical shape; until the end of the 19th century it was served as an accompaniment to the main meat.

In the medieval era, a bean was hidden inside the cake, and the lucky partygoer who found it in their slice was crowned king of the festivities

Meanwhile, Christmas cake evolved from a spiced currant cake known as a Twelfth cake that was traditionally consumed on Twelfth Night. In the medieval era, a bean was hidden inside the cake, and the lucky partygoer who found it in their slice was crowned king of the festivities. A hidden pea might also designate a Twelfth Night queen.

Over time, the legume was replaced with a coin, and in the Victorian period it migrated into the Christmas pudding. Along with the paper crowns that we hide in Christmas crackers, Christmas cake is a remnant of Twelfth Night revelry. The Georgian chef John Mollard published the first printed recipe for a Twelfth cake in1803.Giveitago–and why not hide a dried bean or pea in it for some added festive cheer?

  • 400ml Milk
  • 800g Flour
  • 14g Dried active baking yeast
  • 110g Butter
  • 140g Caster sugar
  • 500g Currants
  • 1tsp Cinnamon
  • tsp Cloves, mace, nutmeg
  • 40g Candied orange and/or lemon peel
  • tbsp Salt
  • 1 Dried bean or pea
    Optional
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    Method

    • step 1

      Mix 100ml warm milk with the yeast.

    • step 2

      Put flour into a bowl and make a small hole in the flour into which to pour the milk/yeast mixture. Cover lightly with some more flour, and lay a tea towel over a bowl for at least 30 minutes until the yeast mixture bubbles. Mix lightly and leave for a minimum of 30 minutes more.

    • step 3

      Cut the butter into squares and dot around the flour.

    • step 4

      Add currants, sugar, spice, peel and salt.

    • step 5

      Add in the rest of the warm milk.

    • step 6

      Mix into a dough, then knead well for at least 10 minutes or longer if by hand.

    • step 7

      Cover and leave to prove for 2–3 hours until the dough springs up when poked.

    • step 8

      Grease and line a 20cm cake tin, add the dough, and leave for another half an hour.

    • step 9

      Hide your pea/bean in the dough (optional).

    • step 10

      Bake at 150°C/gas mark 3 for 11 and a half hours.

    • step 11

      Decorate with icing sugar or leave.

    Eleanor Barnett is a food historian at Cardiff University and @historyeats on Instagram. Her book, Leftovers: A History of Food Waste and Preservation (Head of Zeus), is out in 2024

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