Millennium Project
A shallow, open pastry case of hard hot-water paste filled with a pudding confection, baked. Once a speciality at the annual Deddington Fair held on November 22nd and known as the "Pudden Pie Fair", and still occasionally made locally.*
The distinctive feature of Deddington Pudden Pie seems to be that the crusts were prepared in advance and thoroughly dried-out before filling. The Deddington Historical Society Newsletter 224 for March 2001 has a good acccount of some its history including that a persistent story that "They say you could tie a label to one and send it through the post a hundred miles - so hard it was."
*The spelling is variously Pudding, Pudden or Pudd'n - the latter two no doubt reflecting the lcoal dialect.
Dutton, Allen & Co's Directory & Gazetteer of Oxon, Berks & Bucks' of 1863 says
"... their peculiarity appears to consist in the preparing of a stiff paste about a fortnight before the festival and allowing the same to become hard by exposure then filled with the same materials as an ordinary plum pudding, and afterwards baked."
The compendium 'Notes and Queries' for 1869 reports:
"Old Customs at Deddington: From
time immemorial on November 22nd a fair has been held annually at
Deddington, formerly a market town in the north of Oxfordshire, for the
sale of horses cows pig &c and a number of stalls and shows are put
up in the old market place. The tradespeople and others had used to have
all but open housekeeping for their friends and customers but this has
much diminished.
One peculiarity connected with it is called
Pudding Pie Fair, and woe betides that farmer when he gets home from the
gathering If he has not brought some pudding pies.
The bakers
and others set to work a week or ten days beforehand preparing these
eatables and although many hundreds are baked most of them disappear by
the evening of the twenty second. These are made by setting up a crust
composed of flour mixed with milk or water and mutton suet melted and
poured into It hot These crusts which are set up like meat pie crusts.
are then placed In the sun for a day or two to stiffen. They vary in
size from about three to four Inches in diameter, and are about one inch
deep. When thoroughly hard they are filled with the same materials as
plum puddings are made of and,when baked, are sold at twopence.
threepence and fourpence each
One more custom which used to be observed here on this day I will mention - November 22nd
is St Cecilia's Day and till within the last half century a band used
to usher in the fair by going round the town about four o'clock in the
morning headed by an old man who carried a large horn lantern. and who,
after a tune had been played at the vicarage and at various other
accustomed halting places, used to call out "Past four o clock and a
cloudy. or starlight morning. I wish 'e a merry fair'. The day after the
fair these
musicians used to go to certain houses to amuse the
visitors who remained with their melodies, for which they were rewarded
with a plentiful supply of the 'Fair tap'."
The November 1976 Deddington News
Pages 2 & 5 (continued) contain an article by Monica Sansome about the history of the Fairs together with the recipe below from from Traditional English Cooking by Angus and Robertson.
Recipe
Short crust pastry:
4oz. mixed lard and butter
4 tablespoons cold water
1/2 lb flour
To make filling, heat 1 1/2 cups milk (3/4 pint), add 2 rounded tablespoons caster sugar. Mix 3 level tablespoons ground rice and 1 teaspoon salt with 3 tablespoons water. Stir this into the warm milk Cook and keep stirring until it thickens. Continue cooking "pudden" mixture for further 5 minutes. Remove from heat Beat two eggs in a bowl and stir into rice mixture Flavour with 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence Roll out pastry and line greased saucers with the pastry. Cover pastry with jam or desiccated coconut then pour gently a little of "pudden" mixture over. Bake 20 mins. in medium oven (325F) until pastry is cooked underneath. Remove from oven and if liked dust very lightly with ground cinnamon. Nowadays these could be made in an 8" flan about 2" deep. Serve hot or cold.