Abstract
As Atholl Anderson has showed throughout his career, cross-cultural comparisons can improve our understanding of the origins and subsequent history of Pacific cultures. Comparative material can be sourced from within the Pacific basin, or from as far afield as Scandinavia and northern Europe. In this exercise in historical anthropology, offered in celebration of Atholl’s valued contributions to cross-cultural studies, the comparison throws light on a feature of Polynesian and British culinary cultures in the 18th century: the pudding. I will argue that Captain Cook and his scientists’ translation of dishes like the Tahitian mahi popoi as ‘puddings’ was not a trivial categorisation, but one based on a deep understanding of the roles that puddings played both in England and Tahiti.