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The colloquial British-English phrase not worth a pudding means: of little or no worth.

In this phrase, the noun pudding refers to a sausage-like mass of seasoned minced meat, oatmeal, etc., stuffed into a prepared skin and boiled.

A variant of this phrase occurs, for example, in the column Candid Cameron gives it to you straight on Saturday, by the sportswriter Alex Cameron, published in the Daily Record (Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Scotland) of Saturday 10^th August 1996 [page 53, column 5]:

Bungling is Par for the course

Scottish football’s PR isn’t worth a black pudding.
Its spin doctors are already shooting the game in the foot—and the Glorious Twelfth isn’t until Monday.

These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the phrase not worth a pudding that I have found:

1-: From The refutation of the byshop of Winchesters derke declaratiō of his false articles, once before confuted by George Ioye. Be not deceiued by this bysshops false bokes. Heare novve the tother parte, and iudge truely of the trueth. For the veritie vvyll haue the victorye. ([London]: [Printed by J. Herford], 1546), by the evangelical author George Joye (1495?-1553) [page unnumbered]:

As for your vayne replicacion of no graunt, that heithen good dedes iustifye before faith whiche commeth of hearinge, it is not worth a podyng.

2-: From The boke of Nurture, or Schoole of good maners: For men, Seruants, and children, with Stans puer ad mensam. Newly corrected, very necessary for all youth and children (London: Printed by H. Jackson, 1577), by Hugh Rhodes, writer on education [For the Wayting Seruaunt, page unnumbered]:

Put not yong men in authority
that are to prowde and lyght:
A man tryed well in youth,
his experience is of might.
Many take much pryde in their owne skill,
and carpe as they were cunning;
But in the ende his peeuish pryde
makes all not worth a pudding.

3-: From Wonders worth the hearing. Which being read or heard in a winters euening, by a good fire, or a summers morning, in the greene fields: may serue both to purge melancholy from the minde, & grosse humours from the body. Pleasant for youth, recreatiue for age, profitable for all, and not hurtfull to any (London: Printed for Iohn Tappe, 1602), by the English author Nicholas Breton (1545?-1626?) [page unnumbered]:

Daughter quoth I, we cannot kéep house with faire lookes, wee must haue money, and the Churle at home will be liberall abroad, and the Chuffe wil bring better prouander thē Chaffe, where he meanes to baite: be content, a purse of golde is worth ten pipes of Tobacco, please an olde mans humour, and haue his hart: these youths of the parish, that are so spruse in their apparell, haue little money in their purses, and their verses and their tales, are not worth a pudding for our trade: the basket with cakes, the peeres of stuffes, the Iewels, and the gold, this is it that maintaines the matter: talke is but winde, there is nothing to be borrowed on it, leaue your idle humor, or you will liue but ill fauouredly.

4-: From A Pleasant Comedie, called Wily Beguilde. The Chiefe Actors be these: A poore Scholler, a rich Foole, and a Knaue at a shifte (London: Printed by H. L. for Clement Knight, 1606) [page 71]:

Gripe. I: here Ile rest an houre or twaine,
Till Fortunatus doe returne againe.
Will. Faith Sir, this same Churms is a very scuruy Lawer:
For once I put a case to him: and me thought his law was not worth a pudding.

5-: From Thomas of Reading. Or, The sixe worthy yeomen of the West. Now the fourth time corrected and enlarged by T. D. (London: Printed for T. P., 1612), by the English author Thomas Deloney (1543?-1600) [How Hodgekins of Halifax came to the Court, & complained to the King, that his priuiledge was nothing worth, because when they found any offendor they could not get a hangman to execute him: And how by a Fryer a gin was deuised to chop off mens heads of it selfe. Chap. 8., page unnumbered]:

Hodgekins in the meane time posted vp to the Court, and told his Maiesty that the priuiledge of Halifax was not worth a pudding. Why so, sayd our King? Because, quoth Hodgekins, we can get neuer a hangman to trusse our theeues, but if it shall like your good Grace, (quoth he) there is a feat Frier, that will make vs a deuice, which shall without the hand of man cut off the cragges of all such Carles, if your Maiesty will please to alow thereof.