Wealthy people enjoyed these sweet bowls of heaven. Some of the ingredients listed in the recipe are Orange-Flower water, ginger, nutmeg, and cinnamon. The earliest reference to chocolate pudding was in 1730 in the cookbook The Complete Practical Cook by Charles Carter. Cornstarch also made it’s debut and gave cooks another way to thicken dishes. At that time, alternatives to the traditional boiled puddings changed due to the creation of custard powder – invented by Alfred Bird, an English chemist.

Somewhere around the 1840’s, the difference between American pudding and European custard became known. Historians agree that dessert puddings (classified as custards) have been around since the Middle ages according to Food Timeline.

(Doesn’t that sound yummy?) Today haggis, Yorkshire pudding, and Black pudding originated from that tradition. Meat puddings were made out of ingredients mostly in liquid form that were then encased and boiled or steamed to set the contents. The word “pudding” has been used to describe the dessert we’ve come to love, and it also described savory and salty dishes made of meat, according to Wikipedia.

Why not treat yourself to the good stuff? Especially since this is an easy vanilla pudding recipe to make. You can taste the difference between boxed food products and homemade recipes. I think pudding tugs at our heartstrings because making things from scratch reminds us of our grandmothers providing for their families in a cozy kitchen. What’s one way of bringing coziness into your life? Why homemade pudding, of course. The one thing I’ve learned over the last few months is that when the world feels a bit out-of-control, finding ways to bring comfort into our lives becomes a priority.

Cornstarch vanilla pudding recipe