Meaning
The real quality or effectiveness of something can only be judged by putting it to use or testing it in practice, not by its appearance, description, or promise. Here 'proof' means test, the older sense still heard in 'proofread', 'proving ground', and bakers proving dough, so the saying is not about evidence but about trying. Conversational and widely used, though editors object to the clipped 'the proof is in the pudding'. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The original form is the full sentence, and the pudding was the savoury stuffed-intestine dish rather than a dessert, which is why a cautious eater literally tested it by tasting. A precursor appears around 1400 in the Middle English romance Kyng Alisaunder ('Every thyng himseolf schewith in tastyng'). The earliest known record of the proverb itself is William Camden's Remaines Concerning Britaine in the form 'All the proofe of a pudding, is in the eating'; it is conventionally dated to the 1605 first edition, but a detailed re-examination found it in the 1623 third edition and could not confirm 1605, so 1605-1623 is the honest range. The common attribution to Cervantes rests only on Peter Motteux's loose early eighteenth-century translation of Don Quixote; the Spanish original does not contain the pudding image. The elliptical clipping 'the proof of the pudding' is on record by 1941, and the further shortened 'the proof is in the pudding', which William Safire attacked as meaningless in 1986, is now widespread in ordinary usage.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- The proof is in the pudding
- The proof of the pudding
- The proof of the pudding is in the tasting
Usage Examples
- The new routing algorithm looks elegant on paper, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
- Critics adored the trailer, yet the proof of the pudding was in the eating once audiences saw the full film.
- You can pitch the curriculum for an hour, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so teach a class with it.