Over-egg the pudding
Eggs are common but versatile ingredients in our daily cooking. From housewives to restaurant chefs, they can use eggs to make numerous dishes. By changing the noun " egg " to a verb, what is the meaning of the idiom " over-egg the pudding " ?
In British culture, a pudding refers to a sweet dessert, a Yorkshire pudding or a black pudding. Some scholars suggest that the word " pudding " in the idiom refers to a Yorkshire pudding because its first and second written examples appeared in the middle of the 19th century were related to Yorkshire, a historic county in northern England.
The traditional Yorkshire pudding is a British savoury dish, which is normally served with or before the main course. Literally speaking, if you add too many eggs just to improve the pudding, unfortunately you may end up spoiling the pudding. Precise measurement of ingredients is a must in baking. Thus, figuratively speaking, the idiom means that someone has gone too far in exaggerating or over-embellishing something.
雞蛋是我們日常烹飪中常用卻變化多端的食材。從家庭主婦到餐廳廚師，他們都能夠用雞蛋做出無數的菜餚。如果我們把名詞egg換成動詞，over-egg the pudding這個習語的意思是甚麼呢？
在英國文化中，pudding指的是甜品、約克郡布丁或血腸。一些學者提出，這個習語中的pudding一字指的是約克郡布丁，因為它在19世紀中期所出現的第一和第二個書面語例子，都是與英格蘭北部歷史上有名的約克郡有關。
傳統的約克郡布丁是英國一個帶鹹味的菜餚，通常搭配主菜或在上主菜之前吃。從字面上來說，如果你加太多雞蛋只是為了改良布丁，可惜的是，你可能最後糟蹋了布丁。準確量度材料是烘烤過程中必須做的事情。因此，從比喻意義來說，這個習語的意思是某人畫蛇添足，誇張或過度修飾一些東西。
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