From it, we’ve gleaned a lasting picture of Santa Claus (nose like a cherry, white beard, round belly), developed maddening memory glitches over the names of those eight tiny reindeer, and puzzled over the children tucked in their beds, having visions of sugar plums. Most of us, it turns out, are pretty vague about those sugar plums.

What they’re not, annoyingly enough, is sugar-coated plums.

According to candy historians and the Oxford English Dictionary, a sugar plum is a comfit—that is, a seed, nut, or scrap of spice coated with a layer of hard sugar, like the crunchy outer case of an M&M. In the 17th century, popular innards for comfits included caraway, fennel, coriander, and cardamom seeds, almonds, walnuts, ginger,