Forty Caliber is partly correct. custards are normaly sweet deserts with dairy, egg, and flavorings added. Puddings, however, is a fairly complicated term, depending on how much you really want to know.
Puddings can be savory, or sweet, can be used as a desert, a side dish, or even as the main course. Bread pudding is made from bread, milk, egg, vanilla, Cinnamon, sometimes nuts, and raisins. It is a baked or steamed dish and is not creamy at all.
Yorkshire pudding is much like a popover in texture. The recipe is basically the same as for making a popover, but is cooked in beef fat and drippings. The batter is sometimes spooned into muffin tins that have had beef fat used to grease and flavor the pudding, while at other times, it is poured around a roast to cook with the meat.
Suet pudding is made by filling a pie crust, where suet is the fat used in the crust, with a mixture of meats and vegetables, much like the Canadian Tortiere. But this pie is steamed rather than baked. Steak and kidney puddings are of this type.
The word pudding is thought to come from the French word Boudin, which is the filling stuffed into casings to make sausage.
The famous Irish Haggis is a type of savory pudding, as is black pudding, and a host of others.
In the U.S., puddings primarily refer to a sweetened dairy mixture of milk, flavoring, sugar, and a thickener such as cornstarch, tapioca, or flour. We are most familiar with the pre-made pudding mixtures that come in the little Jello brand boxes.
Custards include such things as the filling of a pumpkin pie, cheesecake, Sabayon (also know as zabaglinoe), Mexican Flan, Creme Brule, and other deserts of that nature.
Interestingly, trifles and fools are also considered creamy puddings.
So, again, how much do you want to know about puddings?
A couple of recipes for vanilla pudidng:
Old-Fashioned Vanilla Pudding Recipe - Allrecipes.com
Honey Vanilla Pudding Recipe - Allrecipes.com
Vanilla Pudding From Scratch Recipe - Food.com - 141267
Now for contrast, here's a recipe for a pretty standard Yorkshire Pudding:
Sky High Yorkshire Pudding Recipe - Allrecipes.com Though the recipe calls for cooking oil, I prefer to use the fat drippings from a good roast. It gives a richer flavor.
Seeeeeya; Goodweed of the North