According to Rachel Hall in the Guardian:
"Selfridges said it expected to sell three times more panettone than Christmas puddings after selling more than ever before last Christmas, with sales up almost 25% on 2021. Waitrose said the Italian classic was out-selling Christmas pudding, with demand up 40% on this time last year. Although there is a traditional recipe to follow, Selfridges offers six different types of panettone, including salted caramel and chocolate orange. The retailer sells a £150 panettone hamper, which it says is “packed with inventive iterations” and has also added the cake’s flavour to many other products including chocolate and tea and even introduced a panettone advent calendar. [yes please - Adam]
"Selfridges suggests serving panettone for breakfast during the festive season, paired with afternoon coffee, or as a lighter alternative to Christmas pudding. Waitrose has expanded its range in response to growing demand for panettone. This year, it launched the “cinnamon bunettone” — a cross between a panettone and a cinnamon bun, which the retailer says is one of its bestselling Christmas cakes."
The cinnamon monstrosottone
But all is not lost for the humble plum pudding. Another article in the Financial Times, taken from Pen Vogler's book "Stuffed: A History of Good Food and Hard Times in Britain" explains how a random mention in "A Christmas Carol" led some years later to a resurgence of the stodgy sweet.
"In 1850, a strange essay called “A Christmas Pudding” appeared in Charles Dickens’s weekly journal, Household Words. This was seven years after the publication of A Christmas Carol, whose wild success had wedded the dish previously known as plum pudding to Christmas Day, making it the iconic centre of the feast for wealthy and impoverished families alike.
"The essay, written by Dickens’s friend Charles Knight though published anonymously, had symbolic designs on a dessert that already flamed with the Dickensian message of personal responsibility for the poor. Knight commandeered it to represent the fashionable doctrine of “free trade”, an anti-protectionist economic position that suited an industrialising country that needed its urban workforce to have access to the cheapest possible imported food.
"After the [First World] war, the country had to navigate falling exports and a growing global recession. Patriotic organisations came up with enterprising solutions to boost the appeal of homegrown and empire-produced goods, such as Empire Day, Empire Shopping Week and the British Empire Exhibition of 1924, which inspired the British Women’s Patriotic League to urge cooks to “Make your Christmas Pudding an Empire Pudding” with a recipe leaflet of ingredients from the empire.
"The idea took off and was supported over the next few years by various trade bodies from the Dominions; the Australian Dried Fruit Board was particularly active, alarmed by the successful marketing strategies of California’s Sun-Maid raisins. The Empire Day Movement was particularly media-savvy. It arranged a ritualised pudding-making session, involving representatives from all over the empire giving the mixture a good stir, just as families did together on Stir-Up Sunday.
"The Empire Marketing Board was set up in 1926 to boost the economies of the countries that were, in turn, Britain’s best customers: an economic and ideological virtuous circle. Its greatest success was its own Empire Christmas Pudding recipe (nobody seemed to mind that the idea was copied from both the British Women’s Patriotic League and the Empire Day Movement). The recipe was advertised in national newspapers in 1926 to much fanfare — and some complaints. Wales, Scotland and Ireland had all been left out; and when the colonial commissioner for Cyprus realised the island had been overlooked, he phoned the Empire Marketing Board on December 23 to demand that the pudding, to be ceremoniously delivered to King George V, should be served with Cypriot brandy sauce. New Zealand was missed out and Canada was represented by five ounces of minced apple, despite the tons of wheat it was pouring into Britain. Eggs could come from the Irish Free State or “United Kingdom”, but Northern Ireland wasn’t mentioned at all."
Read more at: https://on.ft.com/3N9H4Ny
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