Christmas Pudding

(3nd January 2021)

OPENING MUSIC

LIZ

Hello and welcome to bread and thread, a podcast about food and domestic history. I’m Liz.

HAZEL

And I’m Hazel, we’re two friends who studied archaeology together and love history almost as much as we love making various things and food. So what have you been up to?

LIZ

Well we’re recording this in mid December so naturally I’ve made a large amount of gingerbread.

HAZEL

Of course I'd be disappointed if you hadn’t.

LIZ

Using my gingerbread recipe adapted from my mum’s where I use more ginger and syrup. There are people who don’t like my gingerbread recipe because there’s so much ginger, but they’re wrong.

HAZEL

Is it tingly gingerbread?

LIZ

It is you can feel it afterwards.

HAZEL

Are you in the crunchy gingerbread or soft gingerbread club?

LIZ

I like both. I’ve had Grasmere gingerbread and that’s the crunchiest gingeriest gingerbread I've ever had, but I like making soft gingerbread I like the feel of it more. It’s a weird thing to say I like the way it feels on my teeth.

HAZEL

Yeah it’s really satisfying it’s firm but soft and warm and fluffy.

LIZ

It rasps against your teeth but in a good way.

HAZEL

I like both because I get one or the other depending on how long I forget my gingerbread’s in the oven.

LIZ

That makes sense this fits with what I know of you.

HAZEL

But yeah December baking season is upon us and it’s wonderful.

LIZ

It is I'm also planning a baking experiment next week but I will let you know after I've done that how it went.

HAZEL

I’m intrigued, can you tell us what it is or...

LIZ

Mead cake.

HAZEL

Ooh i’ve never heard of that.

LIZ

I mean when I went online I found 3 recipes and one of them didn’t have mead in it, so i’m making my own. Yeah one didn’t have mead in it, one was just a cake with mead in it as you would expect, and the other one was made with box cake mix and that’s not really helpful because you don’t say what brand. Firstly I wouldn’t use a box cake mix anyway because i’m like that, but secondly if you don’t say what brand you just say two boxes, they come in different sizes.

HAZEL

So is this something you heard about and decided to make and then you just like I want to put mead in a cake.

LIZ

Nick was like you should put mead in a cake, because they found out I was getting them mead, and also like when I put things in cakes.

HAZEL

That is the best reason to invent a food.

LIZ

I’ll let you know how that goes.

HAZEL

Excellent.

LIZ

What have you been up to have you been continuing your trying to finish things?

HAZEL

I am I made a Christmas cake which I will talk about later because this episode is going to be about Christmas... Christmas pudding we had a Christmas pudding but I'll talk about that later because this episode is about Christmas pudding.

LIZ

Christmas cake is a different things we will probably cover next year let’s be honest.

HAZEL

Yes, very much. I also finished a hat, I don’t know if I mentioned this last time.

LIZ

The accidental ombre?

HAZEL

Yeah the accidental ombre. It’s done it’s a little bit big but I kinda like that because it fits my hair in I have a lot of hair.

LIZ

I know the feeling.

HAZEL

It feels good to have something that’s done and I can actually wear it because I needed a hat.

LIZ

It is the hat times.

HAZEL

So yeah finishing things going pretty well at the moment, but now I have to move onto garments, that was my last small thing to finish, now I've got a shrug it’s a rainbow shrug I was knitting which was next to get finished, I've done about half of it, so we’ll see.

LIZ

So you said you’re going to be talking about Christmas pudding.

HAZEL

Yeah I thought that would be an appropriate topic in a mid December episode, or it might be a late December episode by the time it comes out.

LIZ

I think this goes out in January, but also Christmas pudding is delicious despite what nick will tell you.

HAZEL

Yeah I have mixed feelings about Xmas pudding, I know it’s not something everyone likes in fact I would say the majority of people don’t like it anymore really but it has its die hard fans.

LIZ

Hello! I used to hate it, I used to absolutely loathe it, but now I love it.

HAZEL

Yeah I never liked it either and that meant I would always get chocolate pudding for Christmas which was great. I don’t know if my tastes have matured or because I made it myself but I'm really looking forward to making Christmas pudding so we’ll see. In the process of gathering information for this I watched a few videos and things as well as reading stuff, and Max Miller of tasting history who we had on the podcast a while ago put up a video on Christmas pudding which is really good so you should go watch it. He makes a pudding and talks about it quite a bit i’m not going to go into the deep history stuff too much because that’s kind of been done in a few places but I will talk a bit about the folklore social tradition side.

LIZ

That’s what we’re here for.

HAZEL

Indeed. The concept of puddings is pretty old, they are one of the older dishes so the traditional way you make pudding is you boil it in a cloth or you steam it. Or in the case of the oldest puddings they were boiled in animal casings like sausages basically.

LIZ

Like a haggis.

HAZEL

Yeah haggis is a pudding.

LIZ

It’s a meat pudding.

HAZEL

Yeah so they might use the stomach linings or the intestines of animals like black pudding is another one, for anyone who doesn’t know that it’s a blood sausage but it’s also a pudding because it’s got like oats in hasn’t it?

LIZ

Yeah I think the standard is blood, oats, plenty of pepper and big chunks of fat, which makes it sound disgusting but I love it.

HAZEL

It’s another one that divides people, I also like it, I find it quite rich though I have it in moderation.

LIZ

It is blood.

HAZEL

But yeah a pudding is a mixture of things that you boil up these days in a cloth or steam it. They’re not so popular anymore because they are quite heavy and it’s pa- it’s often because they contain suet content which is beef fat though you can get vegetable suet, which gives it that spongy...

LIZ

It’s kidney fat isn’t it?

HAZEL

I think so which gives it that spongy stodgy texture which again people don’t really like sometimes but I love it so it’s great in winter.

LIZ

Yeah it’s like a heavy wet cake but in a good way.

HAZEL

Yeah I guess and it makes it quite firm as well classic Christmas pudding firmness.

LIZ

It’s closer to the texture of a kitchen sponge than a sponge cake I think.

HAZEL

Which again isn’t making it sound great.

LIZ

There are some things where it’s hard to describe accurately while making them sound good despite the fact they’re great.

HAZEL

Yeah, so we don’t really eat them that much anymore at least in Britain they’ve gone out of fashion they’re quite heavy and we don’t really need that to get us through the winter anymore we can go to the supermarket and get fresh fruit from other countries and we have central heating so we don’t need hot stodgy pudding inside us to warm us up. I still quite like puddings. So the earlier puddings as well weren’t necessarily sweet, and I think a lot of more traditional perhaps traditional British foods can still be like that so steak and kidney pudding for example or black pudding like we mentioned. To make it even more confusing the word pudding now means it’s a generic term for dessert, so...

LIZ

Apart from Yorkshire puddings which are neither of the above.

HAZEL

No those are the exception cause they’re baked so not really a pudding...

LIZ

They’re sort of baked and fried at the same time you get the fat hot, then you put the batter in it and you put it in the oven.

HAZEL

I have to say although we’re talking about this and being all intellectual oh it’s not a Yorkshire pudding I wouldn’t go to Yorkshire and say Yorkshire pudding isn’t a pudding. I wouldn’t do that. I’m not brave enough.

LIZ

I would but I'm Lancastrian.

HAZEL

It’s practically required to throw shade at Yorkshire. I think as a southerner I would get no quarter from either county. I think it might be one of those, oh my friends can insult me but no-one else. So puddings as I'll be talking about here are the type of pudding where it’s a mixed bunch of things that’s been steamed or boiled so the earlier ones weren’t necessarily sweet in fact there was a lot of mixing of sweeter and more savory flavours in the past so things like you get meat with dried fruit and spices and things so in the forme of cury which is the medieval late 14th century cookbook which we also did an earlier episode on there is a recipe for a figgy porridge type thing so we’ve got the concept of putting dried fruit in a sweet porridge dish but we haven’t got pudding time yet. Then as the  pudding comes into being in the next couple of centuries we get the probably more savory type puddings so for example pease pudding from the famous rhyme pease pudding hot pease pudding cold pease pudding in a pot four days old.

LIZ

I was wondering what that actually is.

HAZEL

Yeah so it’s like beans and peas were a big part of the diet for a lot of the poorer people or people living in rural areas in Britain so basically everyone who wasn’t a lord you would be eating a lot of beans and peas the point being you could dry them so you could eat them later or they sustain you through the winter so during the winter you’d be eating a LOT of pease pudding.

LIZ

What actually is pease pudding cause I've always imagined it as slices of mushy peas?

HAZEL

It’s more on the porridgey side it’s like a thick porridge. I don’t have an exact recipe for this but I will just get a look up... yeah it’s kinda like a thick pudding a thick porridge type thing so still not really a traditional pudding but it is it is a mixture that you boil, yeah.

LIZ

It is a [crosstalk]

HAZEL

Yeah, and you can use rehydrated peas for it so a winter staple there’s a lot of references to it.

LIZ

It makes sense it’s hot and there’s going to be a lot of protein.

HAZEL

But probably will get boring if you eat it four days in a row.

LIZ

Probably.

HAZEL

So puddings became quite popular in the 18th century particularly plum pudding which is kind of anything with dried fruit in it really, it doesn’t have to be plums.

LIZ

I saw that because there’s an English heritage video wasn’t there figgy pudding basically explaining this...

HAZEL

Awesome I haven’t seen that I've seen the Christmas pudding one but yeah it doesn’t have to be plums doesn’t have to be figs it can be any - whatever fruit you have really.

LIZ

Yeah it basically just meant dried fruit at that point didn’t it?

HAZEL

Mmhm and in the winter it would have to be dried fruit because if you’re in Britain you don’t really have any other kind of fruit in the winter. Plus-

LIZ

Apples if you’ve stored them right.

HAZEL

Yeah apples will keep quite a long time and apple is an ingredient in the traditional Christmas pudding recipe.

LIZ

Aah that makes sense. We’re getting a hint.

HAZEL

Yeah, again they’re one of the only things you’ve got around that’s a fruit or vegetable. Dried fruit could also be kind of expensive depending on what you were getting. When you get into the 19th century when Christmas pudding becomes a thing-

LIZ

It’s thoroughly Victorian is it?

HAZEL

Yeah so Christmas pudding as a thing existed before it just wasn’t necessarily Christmas pudding, it was more of a the pudding came before the Christmas I guess.

LIZ

It was sort of stuck on the Christmas.

HAZEL

So eating a sweet pudding with dried fruit in it and spices and things was a popular winter dish beforehand but it was more it became associated with Christmas because at Christmas you would put all the fancy stuff you could get in it so your fancier dried fruits your candied peels your more expensive spices and your brandy or your alcohol would go into it at Christmas.

LIZ

Just dump all the good stuff in there.

HAZEL

Yep. So that becomes the Christmas pudding and as far as I understand one of the first times it’s given the title Christmas pudding is in Eliza Acton's cookery book which is that from the 1840s? I’ve forgotten.

LIZ

I should know this.

HAZEL

You would know.

LIZ

Yep 1845.

HAZEL

Awesome, so yeah that’s when it becomes Christmas pudding although puddings like that are still being eaten all year around but just probably not so fancy, in fact and I'll talk about this in a little bit my great grandma whose Christmas pudding recipe I'll talk about later would make all her puddings at once in November and eat them year round. So it’s now so distinctive this Christmas pudding thing and the recipe hasn’t really changed since the Victorian era, like it’s still that kind of stodgy suet raisins dried fruit mixed peel brandy sugar all that stuff it’s basically the same thing. Because I guess that just became traditional at that point I think the Victorians were all about tradition and there were a lot of new traditions coming in around that time, especially around Christmas like Christmas trees and Christmas crackers. Then I read my great grandma’s pudding recipe, which you had to steam for 8 hours.

LIZ

Bigger families back then I suppose isn’t it.

HAZEL

I guess yeah.

LIZ

Everyone gets some.

HAZEL

These puddings are literally like cannonballs. Which I'm sure was pretty impressive on a Christmas table especially if it’s covered in flaming brandy.

LIZ

Oh yeah I forgot about the setting it on fire part.

HAZEL

Oh yeah the setting it on fire part. During this era the custom of pouring brandy over your Christmas pudding and setting it on fire also becomes quite popular and we still do that and it’s really fun.

LIZ

Is there a specific reason we do that or do we just do it because it’s fun and everyone else just started doing it?

HAZEL

I think it’s just aesthetic yeah cause like why not. I mean flambeeing things is a thing right?

LIZ

Yeah but more of a way of cooking them than going look there’s fire on the table.

HAZEL

Yeah to be fair there is no reason for it other than that. However there is a long tradition of the symbol of fire and light at Christmas time or at winter solstice adjacent time, so I'm not surprised it kinda became a thing. Right, um, I'm now going to go onto a couple recipes so when I made it I used a pudding basin and that became more popular because it’s just easier it’s less messy if you make it in a pudding cloth you then have to deal with, well, first of all it if goes wrong, and you haven’t tied your cloth up tight enough, that can be a disaster, if water gets into your pudding that can go wrong. Secondly you’ve got to deal with the whole mess of getting it out of the cloth and then I guess washing the cloth somehow so you can use it again.

LIZ

Yeah that does sound gross.

HAZEL

Yeah so particularly if it’s all gone cold and you’ve got to get this congealed pudding crumb stuff off your cloth. I don’t want to have to do that so doing it in a pudding basin so moving away from that cannonball shape and moving more to that flat top half dome shape kinda comes in.

LIZ

Hemisphere.

HAZEL

Yeah that’s the word. Or if you’re super fancy you can use a mold, like a jelly mold, if you’ve seen Victorian jelly molds they are fantastic.

LIZ

I bet Victorians loved making little castle shaped Christmas puddings.

HAZEL

Oh yeah who wouldn’t love a pudding castle, especially one that’s on fire.

LIZ

For the king of kings.

HAZEL

Yeah that’s kind of the way I elected to do it as well, so I guess the Christmas pudding is a victim of its own success, it became so traditional and so iconic of being associated with Christmas it just didn’t really change for about 100 years and now because it’s now changed because it’s still that traditional very rich very heavy thing it’s not really to our taste anymore and although a lot of people especially in Britain a lot of people still have one at Christmas it’s not something everyone’s going to like, that would be maybe one or two people who would eat it and the younger people in the family would just go for cake or something. It’s not that popular anymore.

LIZ

Yeah I think that’s where the yule log comes in isn’t it you can have this swiss roll.

HAZEL

Yeah this chocolate covered swiss roll. Although I guess there is kind of an effort to reinvent it nowadays you get you know the Heston Blumenthal one with the whole orange in the middle that sold out everywhere a few years ago?

LIZ

I didn’t hear about that, but pain for Heston.

HAZEL

It is peak Heston.

LIZ

Putting a whole orange in the middle is just combining it with a pond pudding, just got two suet puddings not a lot of people like just mashed together.

HAZEL

This is pond pudding erasure as a Sussex person I am outraged.

LIZ

How is this helping Heston?

HAZEL

We do like bashing Heston on this podcast.

LIZ

[inaudible]

HAZEL

With no further ado I'm going to talk about what goes into this pudding now. I was unaware that we had any family recipes at all really, but when I when I went to make Christmas pudding I mentioned it to my mum she said oh we have family Christmas pudding recipes which is from my grandma, which is my great grandma. She managed to find this recipe which is written on a little bit of card, from my great grandmother so my grandmother on my mother’s side, whose name and I kid you not was Ida Fish.

LIZ

That’s amazing.

HAZEL

There was also a member of the fish family who married someone whose surname was bird, so that’s a family joke how do you turn a bird into a fish you get them married.

LIZ

So your family’s amazing.

HAZEL

Yeah, country names huh. and she told me a nice little story apparently my mum would go with her brother to my great grandma’s house on stir-up sunday which is the fifth sunday before Christmas which was traditionally the day you would make Christmas pudding.

LIZ

I know this one! If you make the Christmas pudding on the sunday before advent it won’t go off.

HAZEL

It will not! in fact, in one of the recipe books I have it says the pudding is good for up to two years.

LIZ

Presumably feeding it the whole time as well.

HAZEL

I guess? There’s no instructions to feed it. but if you did so it would probably be better.

LIZ

For those who don’t know feeding it means adding some alcohol every now and then.

HAZEL

Although this is making me imagine a little shop of horrors pudding monster that eats people.

LIZ

We’ve established blood pudding is different.

HAZEL

Because of the sugar and the alcohol your Christmas pudding is good for a long time it will be fine, but you do need to resteam it or reboil it or it’ll be quite dense.

LIZ

Also cold.

HAZEL

Mmm, yeah cold and stodgy, not great. Warm and stodgy, winner.

LIZ

Yeah, warm stodge is what built Britain.

HAZEL

That is entirely true. They would go to their grandma’s house on stir up sunday and help her make the pudding and everyone on the family has to stir the pudding for good luck, obviously. So as mentioned, great granny Ida would make all her - a large quantity of pudding. This recipe contains uh a pound of suet - a POUND of suet -

LIZ

OK...

HAZEL

A pound and a half of raisins, the same of sultanas...

LIZ

Three pounds of fruit?

HAZEL

Yeah, some mixed peel, a pound of sugar, six eggs.

LIZ

Compared to the other stuff six eggs feels kind of tame.

HAZEL

Yeah, also flour, a large cooking apple and it has to be a cooking apple I have lots of feelings about this - if you use an eating apple it will be too sweet.

LIZ

That makes sense.

HAZEL

It has mixed peel a few almonds, some bicarbonate of soda, carrot, grated carrot, the rind and juice of an orange and lemon...

LIZ

So not just the zest the whole peel?

HAZEL

so you can kind of grate it in, or you can put the peel in. Or you can use candied peel I guess. And alcohol. so apparently my great grandma used to use a bottle of brown ale.

LIZ

Unexpected!

HAZEL

So it doesn’t have to be brandy. In fact in her recipe it says six to eight tablespoons, though I'm assuming she used a fairly liberal measure on this because reportedly it was a whole bottle of brown ale but I don’t know i’ll have to ask again. Stipulates brown ale, brandy or dark barley wine.

LIZ

They’re all going to be very different flavours.

HAZEL

I guess. Brandy is more of that phew alcoholic thing, whereas ale is a very distinctive taste, and i’m not sure what barley wine would taste like but I assume that’s just you use whatever you’ve got or whatever you can afford at the time, because brandy can get expensive. so I really like that because it kinda shows that it’s not just one homogenous thing, it makes it a bit more real because people are using what they have or what they want to put it or what they can get.

LIZ

That is the fun of family recipes and old recipes isn’t it?

HAZEL

So obviously I didn’t make this recipe to the letter because it says there’s no method given except for the sentence steam for at least eight hours and I do not have that kind of patience nor do I need that much pudding. So I very much reduced the quantities to make only one pudding which needed to be steamed for an hour and a half in a pressure cooker.

LIZ

That does seem a lot more sensible, although I do want to know how big this pudding would be.

HAZEL

Apparently she made several puddings, a large one and a couple medium sized ones, and a few smaller ones as well. There were multiple puddings involved.

LIZ

OK...

HAZEL

Although if you made this one big one I assume it would just be steaming away there all day.

LIZ

Christmas pudding the size of a small dog.

HAZEL

I did also have the aid of a recipe from I don’t know what the title of this book is because the cover’s partly torn off, but it’s a 1970s cookbook by margaret patton, which has some fantastic recipes in and I'll certainly go into more of them at some point... let me just find it...

LIZ

One for a future book episode.

HAZEL

Yeah. Let me just find it here... Christmas pudding... I have found it, for some reason it’s next to oxtail soup.

LIZ

Is it because they’re both delicious?

HAZEL

I don’t know I've never eaten oxtail soup.

LIZ

It’s the best soup!

HAZEL

This recipe is slightly more reasonable than the one that includes a bottle of brown ale, so this is the one that says six tablespoons and this one also includes golden syrup to which the other recipe which is probably about 100 years old includes black treacle and brown sugar...

LIZ

Quite different those two aren’t they?

HAZEL

Yes, although they’re essentially the same thing right? All sugar.

LIZ

They’re all sugar but they’ve got quite different flavours. My parkin recipe uses black treacle and golden syrup as they have different flavour profiles.

HAZEL

OK... I think that’s why the traditional Christmas pduding has that very dark rich taste.

LIZ

For our americans, black treacle is molasses.

HAZEL

So this 1970s one also has instructions on how oto make it in a pressure cooker, which dramatically reduces the time needed, so it says here about an hour and a half to two hours depending on the size of the pudding. So there we go, that is a potted history of Christmas pudding, i’ll report back on how it tastes next time. That went on a little bit longer than I expected, there’s just a lot to talk about. I didn’t expect Christmas pudding to be so... rich. Ha ha. Ha.

LIZ

Puns. would you perhaps like to wash down that Christmas pudding-

HAZEL

Oh yes. With what?

LIZ

With some irn bru.

HAZEL

Oh no. I literally Can’t think of anyone else - anything worse.

35 minutes: Plug for the probably bad podcast.

LIZ

Before I talk about irn bru I do just want to remind our listeners that we do have a patreon with access to a discord server and recipes and potential for us to make your very own mini episode on whatever you want at   patreon.com/breadandthread

HAZEL

We also have an email address, bread and thread podcast at gmail.com, For any ideas you throw our way or if you want to do any episodes with us.

LIZ

So I ask this question a lot but the answer is always unexpected, how old do you think irn bru is?

HAZEL

Just from experience from things that we’ve looked up for this podcast I think older than expected, so i’m going to take a guess.. 100 years old?

LIZ

You’re not far off. But where do you think it’s from?

HAZEL

It’s not going to be scottish is it?

LIZ

Give me a country.

HAZEL

I have no idea... germany?

LIZ

So the first drink that I can find called iron brew, actually spelt iron brew, as opposed to irn bru, is actually from new york in 1889.

HAZEL

Oh wow! I did not see that coming.

LIZ

Yeah, the concept of irn bru is american even though you can’t get it in definitely canada, I think there’s a different formulation in  north america, because there’s a colorant in it that isn’t allowed in canada.

HAZEL

Wow! So why is it called irn bru?

LIZ

That is something I've really struggled to find. It does have ferric citrate in it, ammonium ferric citrate.

HAZEL

Is that actual iron?

LIZ

It’s a molecule that has iron in it.

HAZEL

So it’s supposed to make you strong.

LIZ

That’s the idea, I think. It was produced by the Maas and Waldstein Chemicals Comapny just cause that was the sort of people making soft drinks in the 1800s, but it got copied there and eventually here there was a london company that made flavourings that made an iron brew drink in 1898 and then in 1899 barr, which still makes irn bru as well as a lot of other soft drinks, not trademarked, um, have records saying they were selling it then, even though officially they started selling it in 1901 so what is the truth? This is my new conspiracy theory that something happened with irn bru in those two years.

HAZEL

Are you an irn bru truther?

LIZ

I am.

HAZEL

An irn bruther?

LIZ

Let’s go with that.

HAZEL

OK.

LIZ

So yeah that’s just a weird thing, and then in the 40s they changed how they spelt it from iron brew, the normal words, to irn-bru, which I thought would be a more recent branding thing.

HAZEL

Oh yeah, that sounds like the trendy replacing letters thing, though thinking about it that’s always been a thing.

LIZ

Yeah the trademark application of that spelling is july 1946.

HAZEL

Wow.

LIZ

In 1967 a barr tartan, based on the irn bru colours, of orange blue and white was created and was registered as the irn bru tartan with the scottish tartan society on the 12th september 1997. if you want an irn bru kilt it is entirely doable.

HAZEL

I kind of need this in my life.

LIZ

They now sell 20 cans a second.

HAZEL

That is a lot of irn bru.

LIZ

Like I said this was made by barr, so coca cola is the number one selling soft drink almost everywhere in the world except for iceland, peru and various places in the middle east where it’s pepsi and scotland where it’s irn bru. scotland’s second national drink after whiskey.

HAZEL

I love that.

LIZ

Although sometimes it’s made in Russia.

HAZEL

Why is it just...

LIZ

It’s just easier for distribution. So despite them saying in the 80s that it was made in scotland from girders it’s actually made in scotland and russia from secret ingredients. They claim that only three people know the recipe. The founder his daughter and one guy who is in charge of actually making the stuff.

HAZEL

Oh wow. So does it still have the iron chemical in it?

LIZ

It does still contain ammonium ferric sulphate. Sorry, ammonium ferric citrate. It also contains caffeine and quinine.

HAZEL

I guess thatll cure what ails you.

LIZ

Which I find interesting are listed as flavourings. I think there’s a lot of debate about what irn bru actually tastes like. A lot of people say bubble gum I strongly disagree it tastes like nothing bubblegum flavoured I've ever had. Though I do think it tastes pink.

HAZEL

OK... I don’t think I've ever had irn bru so I can’t really weigh in on this one.

LIZ

The closest comparison I can make is rosehip. I had some rosehip tea and my immediate thought was if I put sugar in this it’ll taste like irn bru.

HAZEL

OK...

LIZ

#so I'm going with rosehip. If you want rosehip pop, that’s what you want.

HAZEL

Wow, I've had rosehip cause rosehip cordial, but I don’t know, I don’t like fizzy drinks in the first place. Probably a miss for me, but I get why it’s so popular now.

LIZ

Yeah, I love it, scotland clearly loves it, so I mentioned the made in scotland from girders was their big ad campaign in the 80s. In 1998 they had the advertising standards authority’s most coplained about advert, which featured a picture of a cow and the words “when I'm a burger I want to be washed down with irn bru” and I'm sending oyu a picture of that now hazel.

HAZEL

That’s bizarre.

LIZ

That’s an actual advert they put out in the 90s that received 700 complaints.

HAZEL

Wow!

LIZ

I can’t imagine why. So I have two more irn bru facts for you.

HAZEL

OK

LIZ

Last year they brought out irn bru energy.

HAZEL

Because it wasn’t energetic enough already?

LIZ

I can’t find how exactly it’s an energy drink but apparently it’s an energy drink. Also irn bru chrimbo juice. A limited edition festive version.

HAZEL

I’m sorry?

LIZ

Irn bru chrimbo juice. Which was apparently spiced ginger flavour.

HAZEL

I’m speechless. That sounds like the street name for a drug.

LIZ

Chrimbo juice? Thing is, the word chrimbo sounds so middle aged middle class that I can only imagine it as some sort of cocaine coffee, which I think counts as an energy drink.

HAZEL

Technically, yeah.

LIZ

It’ll do something. So my final irn bru fact.

HAZEL

(dying of laughter)

Wait.

LIZ

Anyway, not politics... in 2015 when Jeremy Corbin had his first official visit to Scotland as leader of the labour party and on the train home was photographed drinking an irn bru because he refused a can earlier and people were worried it was going to affect his image in Scotland if he didn’t drink it.

HAZEL

I also did not see that one coming.

LIZ

It’s a drink that’s full of surprises and also the colour orange.

HAZEL

So irn bru could make or break the next election.

LIZ

I mean I don’t wanna get into that there’s... there’s just a lot going on. So thank you for listening to our strange and confusing podcast.

HAZEL

The only place where you can hear Christmas pudding and irn bru discussed in the same space.

LIZ

When this episode goes up I'll try to remember to post that irn bru advert because honestly what on earth were they thinking?

HAZEL

Yeah... I mean it’s eye catching...

LIZ

How much of that eye catching is because half the advert is bright orange?

HAZEL

Yeah, it’s certainly memorable... I wouldn’t say positively.

LIZ

Yeah thank you for listening. If you want to talk to us about this, we do have a twitter - breadandthread.

HAZEL

If you need to decompress after seeing this irn bru advert.

LIZ

Or if you want to send us pictures of Christmas puddings.

HAZEL

That’s much jollier.

LIZ

Thank you for listening and we will talk to you next time.

Closing music