Discover the symbolic elements hidden within the classic Christmas pudding

After loosening your trousers to find enough room for the dessert course, the traditional Christmas pudding is a firm favourite – whether it’s smothered in custard or slathered with brandy butter.

But how much do you know about the symbolism and meaning behind ‘plum pudding’?

Stir-up Sunday is traditionally the day that Christmas puddings are made, four weeks before December 25, so the dessert can mature.

But the day is also written in religious history.

In Medieval England, around the 1540s, the Roman Catholic Church commanded that a pudding should be made on the 25th Sunday after Trinity Sunday.

This is the weekend before Advent begins and roughly a month before Christmas Day.

Similarly to mince pies, which gradually became sweet over the centuries, Love Food says Christmas pudding has its origins in ‘pottage’ or ‘frumenty’, which are both porridge-like stews made of beef, mutton, grains, prunes, raisins, wines and spices.

Recipes changed over the centuries and started to include eggs, breadcrumbs, nuts, dried fruit, beer and spirits, and were much closer to the dish we enjoy nowadays.

By the 17th Century Christmas pudding was known as plum pudding.

This is even though plums were never an ingredient. In fact, back then plums were used in reference to dried fruit of any variety.

It is widely-believed that King George I requested the pudding was served as one of the many desserts at his first royal Christmas feast.

This is why he has the nickname of The Pudding King.

By the 1830s Christmas pudding was almost exclusively a sweet dish and associated with the festive season.

And Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, which was first published in 1843, mentions the ritual of serving Christmas pudding “blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top”.

The custom on Stir-up Sunday is for the Christmas pudding mixture to be stirred from east to west by every family member, while making a wish.

This is to remember the three wise men in the nativity story.

Other religious symbolism include the pudding’s traditional 13 ingredients representing Jesus and his disciples.

When you set the pudding alight, using brandy or another spirit, you might not know that this was traditionally done to represent Christ’s passion.

And the holly sprig put on top of the pudding isn’t just to make it look pretty on Instagram. As a Christmas pudding it looks ahead to the end of Jesus’s life as a reminder of his crown of thorns.

These days no-one wants a trip to A&E on Christmas Day so the tradition of adding a silver sixpence, wishbone or other trinket to the pudding mix has largely died out.

Supposedly whoever found the item while eating the pudding would get good luck.

How ever you enjoy the traditional dish, now you can wow your family with some facts about its origins before they make you groan when they tell you terrible cracker jokes.