DON'T EAT NONE OF THE PLUM PUDDING.

"DON'T EAT NONE OF THE PLUM PUDDING.
ONE AS WISHES YOU WELL."

Agatha Christie

'The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding' (1960)

(source)

an old box of wedding cake.. with a burning brandy sauce

It was she who suddenly remembered that it was Christmas day. "And this is our Christmas dinner," observed McVay regretfully. "Oh, no," returned the girl, "this is luncheon. I'll cook your dinner. You'll see."

... 

She proved herself infinitely more capable than the two men had been, discovering tins of butter and soup and sardines, a package of hominy, apples and potatoes in the cellar, and an old box of wedding cake, which, with a burning brandy sauce, she declared would serve very well for plum-pudding.

...they presently sat down to their Christmas dinner, of which they all expressed themselves as inordinately proud. There was canned soup, and sardines and toasted biscuits, canned corned beef, potatoes and fried hominy, bacon and a potato salad, a bottle of champagne, and finally the wedding cake.

Alice Duer Miller

The Burglar and the Blizzard (?1914)

I really enjoyed her Come Out of the Kitchen (1916) which I described last year as: "Another lost classic (rediscovered by fleur in her world): a rich young man rents a house from an impoverished family, only to discover a host of servant problems - such as the world's prettiest cook."

buried with a stake of holly through his heart

If I could work my will," said Scrooge indignantly, "every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!"

Charles Dickens

A Christmas Carol (1843)

(source)

fillet de sole à la Jeanette

'You have been to the Riviera before, Georges?' said Poirot to his valet the following morning. George was an intensely English, rather wooden-faced individual.

'Yes, sir. I was here two years ago when I was in the service of Lord Edward Frampton.'

'And today,' murmured his master, 'you are here with Hercule Poirot. How one mounts in the world!'

The valet made no reply to this observation. After a suitable pause he asked:

'The brown lounge suit, sir? The wind is somewhat chilly today.'

'There is a grease spot on the waistcoat,' objected Poirot. 'A morceau of Fillet de sole à la Jeanette alighted there when I was lunching at the Ritz last Tuesday.'

'There is no spot there now, sir,' said George reproachfully. 'I have removed it.'

'Très bien!' said Poirot. 'I am pleased with you, Georges.'

'Thank you, sir.'

Agatha Christie

The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928)

This book offers one of my favourite clichés.

Tommy also eats sole à la Jeanette in The Secret Adversary. 

Was it a Christie invention?

small cress sandwiches

In her brother Henry, who sat eating small cress sandwiches as solemnly as though they had been ordained in some immemorial Book of Observances, fate had been undisguisedly kind to her. He might so easily have married some pretty helpless little woman, and lived at Notting Hill Gate, and been the father of a long string of pale, clever useless children, who would have had birthdays and the sort of illnesses that one is expected to send grapes to, and who would have painted fatuous objects in a South Kensington manner as Christmas offerings to an aunt whose cubic space for lumber was limited. Instead of committing these unbrotherly actions, which are so frequent in family life that they might almost be called brotherly, Henry had married a woman who had both money and a sense of repose, and their one child had the brilliant virtue of never saying anything which even its parents could consider worth repeating. Then he had gone into Parliament, possibly with the idea of making his home life seem less dull; at any rate it redeemed his career from insignificance, for no man whose death can produce the item "another by-election" on the news posters can be wholly a nonentity.

Saki [H. H. Munro]

The Unbearable Bassington (1912)