I love a good digression, and my colleagues and I had one today. A colleague informed us that it was Plum Pudding Day. The linked page doesn’t explain why a foodstuff associated with Christmas is celebrated in February. Another colleague wondered why they were called that when they don’t have any plums in them. I had always assumed that they originally did but now don’t, but found this in Wikipedia’s article on Christmas pudding:

The word “plum” was used then for what has been called a “raisin” since the 18th century, and the pudding does not in fact contain plums in the modern sense of the word.

(It is unlikely that a lot of fresh fruit was available in England in the middle of winter.) (On the other hand, figgy pudding contained figs (or contains, if people still make it.)

She then wondered what sugar plums, enjoyed by so many children in English books, are. Similarly:

A sugar plum originated as a piece of dragée or hard candy made of hardened sugar in a small round or oval shape.

“Plum” in the name of this confection does not always mean plum in the sense of the fruit of the same name, but commonly refers to small size and spherical or oval shape. Traditional sugar plums often contained no fruit, but were instead hardened sugar balls.

A third colleague then informed us that her local fruit shop sells a variety of fruit called sugar plums. Wikipedia’s list of three species which go by that name (actually sugarplum) includes two native to the USA and one to central Europe, so I don’t know which one she is referring to.

(I interspersed that my grandmother used to make ‘cherry plum and raspberry jam’, being cherry plum + raspberry, and not cherry + plum + raspberry.)