Join Britain's Pudding Club!
England's food doesn't always have the greatest of reputations, but we do make great puddings! People wait for months to attend a meeting of the Pudding Club in the heart of Shakespeare Country.
‘You have been eating puddings for an hour and 35 minutes,’ says Simon Coombe, ‘and now it’s time to put down your spoons and vote for the pudding of the night.’ Eating puddings for 95 minutes? If you’re the kind of person who, like me, looks at the dessert menu and thinks that what you’d really like is one of everything, then you definitely need to be in the Pudding Club.
Simon Coombe is the organiser at the Pudding Club’s regular meetings at their headquarters, the Three Ways House Hotel in the English Cotswold village of Mickleton in the heart of Shakespeare Country. The club was founded in 1985 and today has over 1000 members all around the world, from Italy to Indonesia.
Of course, not all of them turn up on the same night. Numbers are limited to about sixty, and there’s a long waiting list, so book ahead. I jumped the queue by booking one of their walking weekends, which includes a place at the Friday night Pudding Club meeting. We meet in the courtyard before dinner, where a blackboard lists the puddings of the night. When I attend these range from old favourites like syrup sponge and summer pudding, mysteries to me like an Eton mess, and intriguing options such as passionfruit charlotte.
I had worried that the Club would just be a mass of overweight people, chomping at a trough. Far from it. Everyone was agreeably normal, and excellent company. The Parade of Puddings introduces the dishes, one at a time, and you can eat as much or as little of each as you like. Many people were content with just a mouthful, to enable them to sample all seven before the highlight of the evening – voting for the Pudding of the Night.
After an argument with my wife about whether you can compare a chocolate bombe to a summer pudding, and forcing down second helpings just to be sure, the votes are counted and the syrup sponge is crowned the winner, as apparently it often is. Simon then rounds off the evening with a few funny stories from the Pudding Club archives, and sends us off groaning to bed. ‘All that remains for me to say is that breakfast in the morning is served from 7.30 onwards. And yes, we do have black pudding!’
For more details visit www.puddingclub.com.
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