I'm A Chef – The Best Booze For Christmas Pudding Isn't Brandy

We’ve written before at HuffPost UK about how bacon isn’t always the best addition to your Brussels sprouts. 

Now, another blow to your regular Crimbo dinner scheduling ― it turns out some experts think we can do better than brandy when dressing our figgy pudding. 

Sarah Baldry, co-owner and pastry chef at Edinburgh restaurant Nàdair, revealed over email that she’s long been over brandy butter. 

Instead, she opts for a spicier, seasonal alternative that highlights the fruity flavours of the classic dessert.

What’s the best alcohol to pair with Christmas pudding?

“Instead of brandy butter with our Christmas pudding, we use mulled wine,” the chef shared. 

If you go by Mary Berry’s advice, that’ll mean you’ll have a bit of the classic tipple in there too ― she mixes a dash of brandy into her gluhwein anyway.

But rather than pouring the drink over the pudding before theatrically setting it alight, Sarah turns it into a more flexible topping.

She advises we make our own mulled wine by “Reduc[ing] your mulled wine down to a syrup with a glug of honey and beat[ing it] into some softened butter.”

The resulting spiked spread works for other foods too, like on your Christmas cake, slathered on mince pies, or even with some cheese.

The butter/mulled wine exchange goes both ways too 

According to food writer Nigel Slater, there’s no reason to make the dairy-drink connection a one-way street.

He previously shared a hot buttered rum recipe with The Guardian ― ” there are references to hot buttered rum in this country from the days when barrels of the fermented sugar cane were first landed in our ports,” he writes. 

So just as you can add mulled wine to your butter, it seems adding a knob of the dairy to your mulled(ish) rum is equally legit. 

I guess nothing I thought I knew about Christmas means anything anymore...