STICKY Toffee Pudding is synonymous with the Lake District. But who made it famous?

Cartmel Village Shop’s Sticky Toffee Pudding has done much to promote this scrumptious confection in recent years. Darling Delia has also done her bit for the cause.

The general consensus, however, has always been that the late Francis Coulson and Brian Sack, of Ullswater’s Sharrow Bay country house hotel, were the first to introduce sweet-toothed foodies to the delights of dates and bi-carb (two of the key ingredients).

Not so, says Miles Martin from Lancaster.

Over the years he has listened to all the claims – and dismissed them. For he has letters to prove that it was, in fact, his mum Peggy who introduced ‘the boys’ to sticky toffee pudding.

In the late 1960s, Miles, his brother Piers, and Peggy, used to run The Old Rectory, at Claughton, near Kirkby Lonsdale.

One of the first dishes Peggy put on the dessert menu was sticky toffee pudding – made to a recipe given to her by the wife of a Canadian trade delegate in 1948.

“The woman and her husband moved in across the way from us when we lived in Birkenhead,” explained Miles. His mum and the new Canadian neighbour swapped recipes as keen cooks often do.

The pudding went down a storm at The Old Rectory and other hoteliers – of whom there weren’t many back in the Sixties - got wind of it.

Miles believes Sharrow Bay’s famous founders visited his family restaurant and then wrote to Peggy for a copy of the recipe. Piers has the letters.

“Mother wouldn’t give it to them at first but eventually she agreed. The pudding has since become a local icon”.

Although the ingredients for sticky toffee pudding are widely known, Miles says it is the way it is made which makes the difference. Peggy shared her secret method by word-of-mouth only – and not with Miles but with his daughter Rachel.

Much to Miles’s dismay, Rachel refuses to share the secret with him. He remains convinced, therefore, that it is the method, rather than the ingredients, which made his mother’s pudding so special.

“I’ve tasted other sticky toffee puddings but none are as good as mother used to make”.