And another thing | 19 January 2008
Charles Lamb, writing to Joseph Hume at Christmas 1807 on the subject of ‘a certain turkey and a contingent plumb-pudding’, added, ‘I always spell plumb-pudding with a b, I think it reads fatter and more suetty’. As it happens, the big OED has found the same suetty spelling in a cookery book published in 1726.