RobtE insisted:

>>> summer pudding goes back only to the 1930s.
>>
>> WHAT?? You have to be kidding. You are, right?
>
> Nope.

from http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodpuddings.html#summer:

"Summer pudding. A favourite English dessert which combines a mixture of
summer fruits with bread. Redcurrants...and raspberries are the best fruits
to use, but some varieties of gooseberry are suitable, and a small quantity
of blackcurrants and very few strawberries may be included. In autumn,
blackberries can be substituted. In other countries, corresponding kinds of
berry will do very well...In the 19th century this pudding seems to have
been known as 'hydropathic pudding' because it was served at health resorts
where pastry was forbidden. This name must have begun to seem unattractive
or inappropriate early in the 20th century, when the new name summer
pudding, which is now universally used, began to appear in print. Until
recently it was thought that the earliest recorded use was by Florence Perry
(1917) who, on the title page of her attractive book, styled herself The
Pudding Lady'...However, it has now been established that a missionary in
India, Miss E.S. Poynter (1904), had used the term much earlier, in her
book; and that soon afterwards Miss L. Sykes (c. 1912) used it as the title
of a recipe which was even closer than Miss Poynter's to those now in use."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford]
1999 (p. 770)


You just make stuff up as you go along, don't you?

Bob