Often considered to be the quintessential English pudding, STP as it is affectionately known, is the hearty, comforting, stick to your ribs kind of dessert that England is famous for. It has a rarified status in the British Isles and features proudly on menus at greasy spoon cafes, pubs and fine dining restaurants alike. Unlike traditional British puddings, however, this pudding is made with a baked cake batter as opposed to a steamed, lardy mixture.

Unctuous, gooey and decadent, this is the ultimate sweet pudding and the perfect end to a meal, especially on a cold and wintry day. This is a calorie heavy dish and, yet, still is best enjoyed after an already heavy meal, such as a Sunday Roast.

Many British folk will argue that when STP is a menu option, there are no other menu options. A regular feature in school cafeterias and dining halls, the pudding has a familiar and nostalgic quality that immediately transports you back to your childhood, placing it firmly in that hallowed genre of foods: Nursery Puddings.

For a dish of such standing – so well-loved and so ubiquitous – surprisingly, the origins of this pudding are relatively modern, first appearing in cookbooks in the early 1970s and on menus across the country soon thereafter. The recipe’s precise history is unknown with a number of claimants and conflicting origin stories. A number of eateries in Northern England lay claim to having invented the recipe with similar stories suggesting that the pudding had been commonplace in households north of the border in Scotland for some years. Some have suggested that the Gait Inn in Millington, Yorkshire first served a sticky toffee pudding in their dining room in 1907, whilst the Cartmel Village Shop in Cumbria proudly declares itself to be the home of Sticky Toffee Pudding but presents an even more recent history that will raise the eyebrows of those who remember the dish from their childhoods in the 1970s and 1980s. Likewise, the Udny Arms Hotel in Newburgh, Aberdeenshire, lays claim to being the true home of this treat, having been invented by Nancy Scott who worked there in the 1970s.

What is clear, however, is that it first became widely popular after appearing on the bill of fare at the Sharrow Bay Country House Hotel on the shores of Cumbria’s Lake Ullswater in the famous Lake District region of North West England. The hotel’s chef patron, Francis Coulson, introduced the delicious confection having, allegedly, seen it detailed in a cookbook published in the 1970s (The Good Food Guide to Dinner Parties – Hillary Fawcett and Jeanne Strang) and attributing the dish to Patricia Martin, proprietor of The Old Rectory, Claughton in neighbouring Lancashire. The food writer and chef, Simon Hopkinson, explored the story for The Guardian newspaper in 2008 and discovered that, in fact, Patricia Martin herself may not have been the true originator, having learned the recipe from two Canadian airmen who happened to dine at her establishment many years before. Hopkinson argues that this may be why a baked cake batter, akin to a North American style muffin, is used instead of the standard cake or pudding mixtures familiar in the United Kingdom up until that point.

Nonetheless, the dish is relatively unknown in Canada but is universally loved across the United Kingdom and elsewhere, particularly in countries where British cuisine has and continues to have a strong influence (primarily Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, where the dish is also commonly referred to as sticky date pudding).

Many variants have been attempted over the years and most who have had a British education will remember versions made with bananas or prunes. Furthermore, versions made with Yorkshire Parkin or similarly spiced cake mixtures are widely available, particularly in gastropubs.