article tools
 Correspondent photo by ERIC STANWAY Indian Pudding is now a New England staple. |
latest Food and Drink
Published: Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Cornmeal makes tasty, hasty pudding easy
By ERIC STANWAY, Correspondent
And all my bones were made of Indian corn
Delicious grain! Whatever form it take.
To toast or boil, to smother or to bake,
In every dish ‘tis welcome still to me,
But most, my Hasty Pudding, most in thee.
• – John Barlow,
“The Hasty Pudding” (1796)
Of all the dishes that could be said to belong entirely to American cuisine, the Hasty or Indian Pudding must easily top the list. Concocted by early British settlers, it combines cooking techniques that date to the Middle Ages, using indigenous North American ingredients.
Puddings have long been a favorite staple of Europeans. The Hasty Pudding, in particular, shows up in 16th-century cookbooks, a flour mixture boiled down with water. Of course, when the immigrants got here, there was no flour to be found. Consequently, they substituted the most available ingredient – cornmeal.
There is one thing that should be got out of the way immediately: Indian Pudding is, in no way, a Native American recipe. It seems that the immigrants had a way of attributing the phrase “Indian” to just about any dish that involved corn. Originating in Virginia, the adapted dish was called Corn Mush or Indian Meal, and consisted of little more than a cornmeal mush sweetened with molasses, a product of their trading with the West Indies.
With its ready availability, long shelf life and filling qualities, Indian Pudding soon became a New England staple. In 1662, John Winthrop Jr., son of the first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, wrote about it in a letter to the Royal Society of London:
This is to be boyled or Stued with a gentle fire, till it be tender, of a fitt consistence, as of Rice so boyled, into which Milke, or butter be put either with Sugar or without it, it is a food very pleasant . . . but it must be observed that it be very well boyled, the longer the better, some will let it be stuing the entire day; after it is Cold it growth thicker, and is commonly Eaten by mixing a good Quanity of Milke amongst it.
As with most dishes that hang around for a while, different versions soon popped up. Eggs were sometimes added, as was cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg. Raisins soon began to appear, to the horror of traditionalists.
It isn’t really surprising that Indian or Hasty Pudding eventually found its way into popular culture. In 1795, 21 Harvard College students instituted the Hasty Pudding Club, with the avowed intention of encouraging “friendship and patriotism.” Actually, it had more to do with avoiding the dinners served each evening in the dining commons. Every Saturday, two “providers” were to carry a pot of the pudding to the meeting. Potential members were then expected to eat to excess.
These days, Indian Pudding is generally served up with ice cream, a dish colloquially known as “heaven and hell pudding.” After more than 200 years, it has cemented its reputation as a New England favorite.
Tommy Ryan, chef at the venerable Durgin Park restaurant in Boston’s Faneuil Hall, has a particularly amusing anecdote concerning this dessert. One day, he was dining in a restaurant in New Hampshire, and asked the waitress if he could have Indian Pudding for dessert. “Well, we do,” she said, then leant forward and whispered confidentially, “but if you want really good Indian Pudding, I suggest you go to Durgin Park.”
INDIAN PUDDING
OK, OK. I expect that I’m going to get a lot of flack from purists about this one. What I did here was to combine several recipes until I came up with one that I thought would work. It is not traditional. But it is quite yummy.
1 quart scalded milk
¾ cup yellow cornmeal
1 egg
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground ginger
2 cups cold milk
1 apple, peeled, cored and sliced into rings
½ cup molasses
1 cup raisins
Ice cream, to serve
Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
Heat milk in a large saucepan, stirring constantly so it doesn’t stick. Gradually add cornmeal, stirring until it thickens. Remove from heat. Beat in egg, baking powder and spices. Add 2 cups cold milk, and stir. Pour into a well-greased large casserole dish. Top with apple slices.
Place the dish in the oven, and bake it from anywhere from 3-5 hours. Really. You can’t easily overcook this. Remove from oven, and spoon into dishes, with an apple slice on top.
Top with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, and serve.
Serves 12.
