Word peeve: The proof is emphatically NOT in the pudding.

A long time ago (relatively speaking), the English language included a useful proverb about pudding. Let's take this proverb into the 21st Century, and go into any gelateria. You go in and look at all the gelato behind the glass panel, and you see one called "mascarpone". The description sounds pretty good, so you ask the clerk "Is it any good?" The clerk pulls out a tiny plastic spoon, scoops up a sample and lets you try it.

Why?

Because if she just tells you it's good, you'll have to take her word for it. The proof of whether mascarpone-flavored gelato is any good comes from actually tasting a sample.

In other words, "the proof of the gelato is in the tasting."

Now go back in time a century or more, into Jolly Olde England, and try the same experiment with a pudding vendor in the streets of London. You don't know whether the pudding is any good until you try it yourself. Hence, "The proof of the pudding is in the eating."

It's another way of saying "try before you buy". We use the concept when buying automobiles, home entertainment systems, tuxedos and fancy dresses.

But sometime in the end of the 20th Century, some ignorant mangler of the English language got it wrong, and said "The proof is in the pudding." And it stuck.

The proof OF WHAT is in the pudding? Did you stick raisins in it? Do you want me to go digging around in it with a spoon, looking for hidden treasure?

The proof of the quality of the pudding lies in the eating of it, not in its ingredients or in its mere existence.