Over-egg the pudding

‘Over-egg the pudding’ is an English phrase and first appeared in the mid-19th century. It originated as a simple literal phrase alluding to the way that baked foods may be spoiled by using too many eggs.

The earliest examples of the phrase in print that I know of are from 1845 Robert Smith Surtees’ novel Hillingdon Hall, 1845:

‘We mustn’t over-egg the pudding,’ as the Yorkshire farmers say.

Francis Kildale Robinson’s A glossary of words used in the neighbourhood of Whitby, 1876:

He ower-egg’d his market.

As the first of these refers to ‘over-egg the pudding’ as a Yorkshire expression and the second relates to the Yorkshire coastal town of Whitby, it’s reasonable to surmise that the pudding in question is a Yorkshire Pudding.

My mother taught me (and so, this must be right) that Yorkshires are made from equal volumes of eggs, flour and milk. Too much of any ingredient and the pudding won’t rise.

We have no smoking gun that points to ‘over-egging the pudding’ deriving from the cooking of Yorkshire Pudding but, as circumstantial evidence goes, the above looks quite convincing.