Pudding or tart? The fascinating history of Bakewell's famous treat

As culinary mishaps go, unintentionally creating a British dessert classic must go some way to alleviating the immediate panic around what your boss is likely to say when you serve the result to their paying guests.

This is how the Bakewell pudding was created. Exactly when and where it came into being has been argued over, scrutinised and challenged almost as much as a VAR-assigned goal in Premier League football.

Nor should it be mistaken for the more modern Bakewell tart, topped with a thick layer of icing or a shower of flaked almonds. Although the two are related and take their shared name from the same historic market town of pastry-hued sandstone buildings in the Derbyshire portion of England’s Peak District National Park, it’s wrong to consider them one and the same sweet treat.

The Bakewell pudding can be traced back to sometime in the mid-1800s. Although the precise year is another contested element in its history, all retellings of its origins coalesce around the figure of Ann Summers.

Better known by her married name of Greaves, Ann was the landlady of the inn where the Rutland Arms now stands. It was in her kitchens that an unnamed cook misread her recipe for a jam tart and smothered its sieved jam layer with a mix of eggs and almonds intended to form the pastry casing.

Having turned a glistening golden caramel colour in the oven, the mix of almond-flavoured semi-set custard and jam clearly won over both the inn’s guests and Ann. Spotting a gap in the market, it wasn’t long before she was selling Bakewell puddings from her home a few doors down from the inn on Rutland Square, one of Bakewell’s main streets.

Even on a winter’s Friday afternoon there’s a gentle hum beyond the concave street-facing window panes of Ann’s home, now The Old Original Bakewell Pudding Shop. Its bakers are the guardians of the “only verified original” recipe.

That said, I find at least two other bakers a stone’s throw away, Bloomers and The Bakewell Tart Shop, also claiming to produce puddings to the original recipe concocted by Ann Greaves. There’s reason (or at least lore) to suggest each is telling the truth. 

Even those with guidebooks in hand—Bakewell is a popular stop for tourists exploring the Peak District due to its proximity to Chatsworth House and the famous plague village of Eyam—don’t seem to know the history of the Bakewell pudding, a foodstuff which is hard to find even in neighbouring towns and villages within the national park.

“A lot of people don’t know the pudding exists at first,” says Amy Dawkins, general manager of The Old Original Bakewell Pudding Shop. “Everyone seems to think it’s the tart that comes from the village.” The existence of a National Bakewell Tart day on August 11 probably doesn’t help. “They will come in and point at a tart and ask for a pudding.”

The difference between the two is more than simple semantics making visitors to the town nervous of inadvertently making a faux pas by saying the wrong thing. In comparison to the pudding, the Bakewell tart is a 20th century invention.

It was probably created to combine the pudding’s flavours with a recipe more readily mass produced in factory settings and sees the jam layer topped with a light sponge enriched with ground almonds. It’s also usually served cold at afternoon teas, rather than warm with custard for dessert, as is traditional for the still-handmade puddings.

Like its competitors, The Old Original Bakewell Pudding Shop sells both, and it’s the tart which sells best. “I think people stick to what they know, but the pudding isn’t that far behind now,” says Amy. “In high summer we can sell up to a thousand in one day—just in the shop.” 

Despite being shared by three local outlets for generations, and having its flavours borrowed by its better-known descendant, Ann’s original pudding recipe has remained a closely guarded secret which only a handful of people know. 

I’m told recipes available in cookbooks and online deliberately miss out ingredients to ensure only Bakewell has the honour of producing the true pudding bearing its name. “We don’t even know it as staff,” Amy says with a mix of pride and frustration. 

“When we do baking experiences like I did this morning, we get the mix supplied to us by our bakers ready, so there are no raw ingredients on show.” You’ve got to think that sort of business acumen would make the first Ann Summers very happy indeed. 

Cover image via Visit Peak District & Derbyshire