Careful Words

pudding (n.)

Poetic Justice, with her lifted scale,

Where in nice balance truth with gold she weighs,

And solid pudding against empty praise.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): The Dunciad. Book i. Line 52.

  Returning to town in the stage-coach, which was filled with Mr. Gilman's guests, we stopped for a minute or two at Kentish Town. A woman asked the coachman, "Are you full inside?" Upon which Lamb put his head through the window and said, "I am quite full inside; that last piece of pudding at Mr. Gilman's did the business for me."

Charles Lamb (1775-1834): Autobiographical Recollections. (Leslie.)

  The proof of the pudding is the eating.

Miguel De Cervantes (1547-1616): Don Quixote. Part ii. Chap. xxiv.