Bid to give our Sunday favourite pud champagne-style protection

YORKSHIRE pudding could rank alongside champagne and Parma ham if a campaigners succeed in giving its name special protection.

The Sunday roast favourite could win European rights to ensure puddings with the name are made within Yorkshire.

Three manufacturers are in talks about applying for the special status last month given to Yorkshire forced rhubarb. The application is being backed by the Regional Food Group for Yorkshire and Humber.

Sarah Knapper, its research and development director, said Yorkshire puddings were first named in an 18th-century recipe by food writer Hannah Glasse, and that her puddings differed from other similar dishes.

Winning special protection would benefit Yorkshire producers and boost sales, she said.

She added: “It would prevent people anywhere else in the world from making it and calling it Yorkshire pudding.”

She said restaurants from elsewhere in the country offering a Sunday roast might have to refer to Yorkshire-style puddings on their menus. But she admitted: “The recipe is made by so many people, that this could be a hurdle to the bid.”

In the past, bids to win special protection have failed if a food’s geographical name has become generic, rather than a description of where it was made.

More British manufacturers are being encouraged to win protected status for food products.

Items so far on the British list include Cornish clotted cream and Swaledale cheese. The Yorkshire Post is backing a campaign to give the status to Real Yorkshire Wensleydale cheese.

Ms Knapper said cooks from outside Yorkshire would never be stopped from calling their own creations Yorkshire puddings, but commercial producers would be.

“If people make them for themselves they can call them whatever they like,” she said.

Andrew Pern, of the award-winning Star Inn at Harome, North Yorkshire, backs the bid.

“Obviously Yorkshire pudding tastes better when it’s made by a Yorkshireman. It’s all in the wrists I think,” he said.

He sometimes serves Yorkshire pudding with foie gras in a rich onion gravy and occasionally with syrup or jam.

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