pudding [ME] ‘Black pudding’ preserves the original meaning of pudding, ‘a kind of sausage’. The link between this and the modern meaning is the idea of putting a filling into a casing, as is done when making sausages. The word was subsequently applied to various dishes made by tying ingredients up in a bag and cooking them. Puddings could be savoury, like a steak and kidney pudding, or sweet, like a Christmas pudding, but by the end of the 19th century a sweet pudding was a popular way to end a meal, and had become the word’s dominant meaning. Pudding comes from Old French boudin ‘black pudding’, from Latin botellus ‘sausage, small intestine’. When someone goes too far in doing or embellishing something, they are said to over-egg the pudding. The idea is of using too many eggs in making a pudding, so that it does not set or cook properly or is too rich. See also bowel, proof.