Americans have fruitcake — or, mostly, they don't.

English have Christmas pudding — and mostly, they do.

Christmas pudding is not what Americans think of as pudding. It's a steamed cake made with bread crumbs rather than flour. Dense, packed with fruit and spices and often steeped in brandy or other spirits, these cakes are descended from one of the oldest dishes in the Western cooking tradition. The puddings began life hundreds of years ago as a sort of warm soup of hulled wheat and milk and have morphed into one of the most storied recipes in English history, perhaps best known today from Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," when the Cratchit family eagerly awaits the completion of the Christmas centerpiece.

The puddings still are deeply beloved, even if the English have largely ceased to make them from scratch, preferring to leave the work to commercial kitchens, such as Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury's or Fortnum & Mason.

"It's my favorite thing in the whole world," says Pel Kaiser of Kaimuki, who recalls, "I was the only one who would have two lots of pudding when I was a child." The cakes are so rich, she said, that the only thing you could manage afterward was to sit on the sofa and digest while watching "silly TV." Until it was time to eat again.

Kaiser grew up in Zambia and recalls how the annual making of the Christmas pudding was a much-anticipated production. She admits she usually buys prepared puddings now; they're all over the Internet and also available at R. Field at Foodland. "People have gotten lazy," said Kaiser.

Not long ago, though, the batter of bread crumbs, candied and dried fruit, nuts and spices would be stirred up in a huge bowl, then steamed in a "basin" (an earthenware dish), wrapped in muslin or cheesecloth, bathed in spirits and aged for months in the larder to be presented on Christmas night in a dramatic tableau.

Kaiser recalls first having experienced the lighting of the pudding at her mother-in-law's home. With everyone gathered at table, the lights would be dimmed as offstage the cake was doused yet again with brandy and set alight (usually by the paterfamilias), then carried in and presented to each, with much exclaiming (adults) and shrieking (children).

In some households, there is more to come, as each tries to find a coin or token that has been baked into the cake, conferring king- or queen-for-a-day privileges on the finder.

Kaiser recalls cookery school in England, where she attended boarding school. "Everyone had to learn how to make a Christmas pudding, and it was a real ordeal. It took weeks!"

In the medieval era, wheat gave way to oatmeal, and fruit was added to the dish then called frumenty. Eventually, the fruit invariably included prunes, which of course are dried plums, thus the name plum pudding. By the Victorian era, breadcrumbs were used in place of oatmeal, the dish had been enriched with fat (beef suet or butter), sugar and such standard holiday spices as ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon and allspice.

Christmas puddings were massive undertakings, requiring not only much work — chopping, stirring and shaping — but also much time. It was traditional to start the pudding months ahead of Christmas — on the last Sunday before Advent, known as Stirring Up day. Everyone in the family would be allowed a turn at stirring up the pudding.

In England's chilly climate, the Christmas pudding, well-moistened with spirits, would be tied up in linen sacks and allowed to age for months. The puddings were the shape and size of bowling balls, and most households made multiples because the long-lasting cake would be served throughout the winter at tea time or when company dropped by.

But in the era of food processors and prepared ingredients, making a Christmas pudding is a much less demanding process. I've now made a half dozen steamed puddings and have gotten so that I can whip one up on a weeknight between dinner and the dishes. And, as old as this recipe is, it's surprisingly amenable to contemporary eating styles. You can make it ahead. You can take it to a potluck. You can dress it up in infinite ways.

The pudding is served with custard or hard sauce, rum butter, jam sauce or thick country cream And though they taste fine at room temperature, puddings are spectacular served hot, with a sauce or ice cream.