Sunday dessert — the Sunday evening treat
Indian Pudding (Cornmeal-Molasses Pudding)
FestiveDocumented🍯 ☕moyen2 h 45
A cream of cornmeal baked for hours with milk, molasses, and mild spices. Creamy, dark, halfway between a flan and gingerbread, served warm with a spoonful of cream.
Sunday dessert — the Sunday evening treat
A cream of cornmeal baked for hours with milk, molasses, and mild spices. Creamy, dark, halfway between a flan and gingerbread, served warm with a spoonful of cream.
Indian pudding demands that you give it time, like all good things in this world. I would mix the cornmeal in hot milk, add the molasses, cinnamon, and ginger, then leave it in the oven for many hours until it took on that beautiful burnt-amber color. It was served warm, topped with a little cold cream that melted on top. It was, I believe, the sweetest reward of a long week of labor.
Ingredients
- •Yellow cornmeal — half a cup (base)
- •Milk — one quart (liquid)
- •Molasses — half a cup (signature sweetener)
- •Ground cinnamon and ginger — a pinch each (spices)
- •Butter and salt — a knob, a pinch (binding)
How it was made : Lacking wheat flour, which was abundant but expensive, settlers used local cornmeal, which they called "Indian meal" — hence the pudding's name. It baked for hours in the residual heat of the bread oven after the weekly baking.
Sources : Fannie Farmer, The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, 1896 · Amelia Simmons, American Cookery, 1796