A Bit About Us

The Buxton Pudding Company is located in Derbyshire, England. Derbyshire, more than any other county in England, has lots of ancient recipes to offer. Each town and village in the county used to produce a cake, biscuit or dessert for special occasions throughout the year such as Christmas, Easter or the Summer Holidays.

In 2013, a very good friend of ours found an old cookery book in the attic dating back to the reign of Queen Victoria. In it was a recipe for Buxton Pudding. Being a rather formidable lady she demanded that I tried to make the pudding, as she said that she would like to try a bit, so I made it.

Nevertheless, we were disappointed to find that the pudding was not as interesting or tasty as we thought it might be. However, there was the basis of a great dish, so with a few tiny adaptations using almost all of the same ingredients as the Victorian recipe, we made our own variation and the Original Buxton Pudding was born.

The Original Buxton Pudding was very well received by customers all over the UK, especially those who liked the idea of a heritage recipe re-birth. Also, they liked the fact that the pudding was hand-made and of course it tasted great too.

So, with such a wealth of old recipes and ideas in the country, we began to acquire old cookery books from specialist booksellers including Scriveners in Buxton. All of the books that we have are fascinating and give an intriguing glimpse into not only the dishes from the past but also the way that people lived. Many contain cures for ailments such as cholera or even how to make your own shampoo.

Presently, the oldest book that we have dates back to 1849 and when bought it was just a stack of loose pages. However, it has been rebound and repaired and is now able to be read and enjoyed.

The hand-scripted recipe book, in which we found the Buxton Pudding recipe, is written by the household cook to Lady Rouse, who we believe lived in a large house in Mayfair, London. The house must have been large with the capacity to entertain a lot of guests as the cook wrote a recipe for 16 gallons (70 litres) of champagne punch; too much to be drunk by a small household.

The book lists some of the cook’s favourite recipes by others such as Lady Polls Camphor Cream, Sir Watkins Pudding and a sea captain, whose name we can’t read in hand-script, but it could be Captain Shapries.

The sea captain was captain of 'The Africa' which must have travelled far and wide as there are several recipes including guava; which must have been hard to buy in England in 1849. Along with a couple of authentic recipes for curries.

Most of the recipes are for savoury dishes in these books so we are always thrilled when we stumble on a dessert or cake recipe that we think we could reproduce for our customers.

It's not always easy to read these recipes, the text is often difficult to decipher and even when we can, we then have to interpret the recipe into a modern kitchen operation. For instance how do we interpret a cooking instruction that says 'boil on the fire for 8 hours'.

Perseverance is the answer. We will work tirelessly to get the recipe right and deliver a delicious, unique product to our customers. The 'proof is in the pudding' as the English would say.

ALAN HIBBERT, Head Baker and Co-Founder