needing to be cooked in an oven, something "most lower class households did not have". Pudding predecessors often contained meat, as well as sweet ingredients, and prior to being steamed in a cloth the ingredients may have been stuffed into the gut or stomach of an animal, like haggis or sausages.

As techniques for meat preserving improved in the 18th century, the savoury element of both the mince pie and the plum pottage diminished as the sweet content increased. People began adding dried fruit and sugar.