plum pudding
3
5.5
- noun
- /plʌm ˈpʊdɪŋ/
- UK
:
pudín de ciruelas
- What scrumptious feasts they were: turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce, plum pudding, cake.
- sauce for the plum pudding
- traditional plum pudding
- turkey and plum pudding
Examples
-
At Christmas, we always enjoy a rich plum pudding filled with dried fruits and spices.
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The dessert was a plum pudding topped with whipped cream.
Fiction book (1992) -
I bought you this plum pudding.
-
A plum pudding, all cooked up nice for us.
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I'm going to make a turkey and plum pudding.
Fiction book (1994) -
And will you have plum pudding and lemon sauce?
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Yes, and plum pudding and gooseberry pie--
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Pearl had baked a plum pudding each year for Elaine's family.
Fiction book (1996) -
For breakfast, we'd have grilled sole, green beans, new potatoes, plum pudding for dessert... yum...
-
An untidy package yielded, beneath its waterproof wrappings, a dozen plum puddings that brought him near to tears.
Fiction book (1999)
Synonyms
2
2.5
A rich sweet cooked with dried fruit and spices and served at Christmas in Britain
1
9.9
A steamed or boiled sweet pudding made with dried fruit like raisins and currants
1
7.6
A steamed or boiled pudding made from suet, a hard beef fat, and flour, often sweet
A sweet or savory dish cooked by steaming, often made from flour and eggs
How Rich
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'pudding' signals a dessert and 'plum' names the fruit used, so a learner who knows both words can infer this is a kind of dessert made with plums or dried fruit. Although historically 'plum' in the dish can refer to dried fruit (raisins), that nuance does not prevent a B1 learner from understanding it as a fruit-based pudding; the construction is cross-linguistically transparent.
Etymology
Plum pudding may come from old English cooking where plum once meant any dried fruit, like raisins, and pudding was a boiled or steamed cake. Picture a heavy cloth-wrapped cake full of dark 'plums' being steamed for hours and then served at 'Christmas', so the name now means the rich holiday dessert we eat today.