Even Agatha Christie’s most diehard fans would not claim that the title tale of the short story collection she published in 1960 is her finest mystery. The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding does, however, contain her most delightful description of a dessert. Sitting down to Christmas dinner at a country house called Kings Lacey, Hercule Poirot is confronted with “a large football of a pudding, a piece of holly stuck in it like a triumphant flag and glorious flames of blue and red rising around it”. It isn’t just the note he’s found in his bedroom warning him off the dish that bemuses the Belgian detective – it’s the quintessential, very nearly untranslatable Englishness of the whole scene, complete with the flames blazing in the colours of the Union Flag.
Poirot may have been circumspect, but puddings are definitely having a moment. After years in thrall to sorbets, soufflés and deconstructed desserts, the capital’s most fashionable dining spots are suddenly awash with steamed sponges and pouring cream: the dessert menus at St
