Meaning & Analysis
Eating cold pudding (a plain, unexciting food) is said to calm or diminish romantic passion or emotional excitement.
Insights
Dampening of Passion
The proverb metaphorically suggests that plain, mundane experiences (like eating cold pudding) can cool ardor or romantic enthusiasm, returning one to a more sober or practical state.
Reality Versus Idealism
It hints at how reality—represented by something unromantic or commonplace—often tempers or extinguishes lofty passions or ideals.
Physical and Emotional Association
The proverb relies on the folk belief that heavy, starchy, or cold foods have a physically dulling effect, paralleling the way everyday routines or disappointments can 'settle' (calm or subdue) the heart’s more fiery impulses.
Humorous Social Commentary
Often delivered with humor, the saying gently mocks excessive romance or emotional excess, prescribing a homely, literal 'cooling down' as the remedy.
Cultural Attitudes to Appetite and Emotion
The connection between food and love, appetite and passion, is a recurring theme in English proverbs, reflecting both caution about overindulgence and the realities of domestic life.
Rhetorical Devices
Metaphor
Uses 'cold pudding' as a metaphor for the ordinary or unexciting, representing reality’s power to moderate emotional extremes.
Irony
The advice is lightly ironic—offering an everyday, even comic, solution to a dramatic emotional problem.
Personification
Attributes agency to 'cold pudding,' humorously suggesting it has the power to 'settle' something as abstract as love.
Transcription
Quotations
Settle the Wit as Pudding settles Love.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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