Punch: Punch (11.1846)

AT the present Christmas—in this very season of Misletoe and Holly, 1846,—Punch offers to the whole Reading
Race of Man a most sufficing slice of Plum Pudding. • Yes: touched by the benevolence of the season,
Punch will deny no man the bliss of a slice ; a slice that, well digested, shall impart to the partaker a warmth
of heart, and a certain comforting of the stomach; shall, moreover, incline him to think tenderly upon those
denied the happiness of any sort of mouthful.

For the past six months Punch—the fact is known wherever the sun shines—has been busy compounding
this mighty Pudding. Up early—down late—the marvellous work has been the sole possessing object of his
life. How has he not laboured to obtain the best ingredients ! For, as the immortal Soyer profoundly observes :
" Some eggs are much larger than others; some pepper stronger ; salt salter ; and even some sugar sweeter.1'
Therefore Punch, knowing that he was making a Pudding for the whole Human Race—(a very different thing, mind
you, from the Pudding that your dear Mrs. Caudle, Sir, makes for you and all the little C.'s ; though, may that
steam like a sweet sacrifice to all your nostrils, and sit lightly as butterfly upon rose-leaf on all your stomachs !)
—Punch, knowing that this Pudding would be eaten by Tartars, Greenlanders, Russians, Chinese, Pennsylvanian
Bondsmen ; nay, even by the poor Troglodytes in their cabin caves ; Punch makes his Pudding of the strongest
and of the best, and of that most likely to keep.

There are certain wretches who, having made some wonderful discovery in a stew-pan, die with the secret.
Culinary misanthropes ! it is their pride to go out of the world, carrying the receipt locked up in their brain;
locked up for the worm to pick and feed upon. Now it is the pride—surely the pardonable pride—of Punch to
publish to the ends of the universe (and what can he publish that is not safely delivered there ?) the ingredients of
his Christmas Plum Pudding. Here they are ; and let the reader, if he will, get the same articles, and make a
Pudding for himself. {Punch, by the way, feels quite safe in this little bit of liberality ; for though folks might
obtain some, nay, all the ingredients, can they ever hope to arrive at PuncJCs inimitable way of mixing?)