It was an old custom in New England to begin dinner with pudding instead
of soup. Many persons of the last generation may remember, as the writer
distinctly does, seeing old people who still adhered to this practice as
late certainly as from 1850 to 1860. The writer was once at a dinner
where all the family began with soup except the father, a gentleman of
the old school, who had a piece cut from a fresh-baked plum-pudding. He
remarked to the company that such had always been his practice; and so
he excused himself for keeping to his own fashion of dining. The custom
of eating pudding before meat is still very common in Yorkshire,
England. The following extract from a Boston paper of 1819 shows that
John Adams, in 1817, kept up the old style of dinner, which, as might
perhaps be imagined, was not confined to the common people, so called.
In "old times" it was customary to say to children, "Those who eat the
most pudding shall have the most meat."
_Extract from the "Narrative of a Journey of 5000 miles
through the Eastern and Western States of America," in
1817.--By Henry B. Fearon, an Englishman._