On the spread and evolution of pudding

A better author could probably write a detective story about the word pudding. The cultural and linguistic complex associated with this word spans in its full extent a thousand years and six continents. This paper concerns itself only with its semantic evolution in English, and its spread to several of the geographically closest languages: German, French, and Italian, each of which has a different relationship with both the word and the dish. The intention is not to explain everything, it is too early for that, but rather to sketch the overall picture and thus to highlight those areas which require further investigation.