We have ‘updated’ time-honoured traditions, from festive cooking right through to the way we send out greetings -
 
82% of Brits say that if it wasn’t for modern technology and trends, Christmas tradition would be a thing of the past.  The research reveals that the internet and modern gadgets and appliances have made it easier to keep tradition alive in the 21st century, by making them relevant for our busy lifestyles
 
While 44% of us only like to use traditional cooking methods when cooking the Christmas meal – preparing everything from scratch and spending hours on peeling, roasting and steaming – 49% of us now employ quicker and easier methods, using modern appliances like  microwaves or electric peelers.

Over 75% of Brits now use the internet as a source for cooking instructions at Christmas, either in the form of a recipe or a web-cast.

It’s not only Christmas cooking tecniques that have been adapted to fit in with modern life. Christmas cards are fast becoming a thing of the past as well. Almost 50% of us now choose to send our seasonal wishes via e-card or post them on blogs, and an increasingly high number of children are sending letters to Santa via email!

To embrace the modernisation of Christmas tradition, Anchor Butter has enlisted the help of cookery writer Marguerite Patten OBE – who celebrates her ninetieth christmas this year – to launch the world’s first Christmas Pud-Cast. The two minute clip features Marguerite demonstrating the modern way to cook a traditional christmas pudding.

“Traditionally, the Christmas pudding is steamed for hours, but we use a microwave in the Anchor Pud-Cast which only takes ten minutes. It tastes just as delicious as a steamed pudding, and is an ideal cooking method for busy mums at Christmas time.”

Marguerite, who was an advisor to the British Ministry of Food during WWII, and celebrated her earlier Christmasses wihout even the luxury of electricity, developed the recipe especially for ANCHOR Butter and spreadables, and the clip will be available to download at podmaster.co.uk now.

Anchor spokesperson, Caroline Baker, commented “Brits are big on tradition, but we also like to move with the times. The Anchor Pud-Cast celebrates this. To have a cookery veteran like Marguerite Patten featured in something so contemporary as a web-cast, creating a modern version of a traditional Christmas dish, is the perfect example of how age-old tradition has been thouroughly brought up to date.”