Indian Pudding
Corn ensured the Pilgrims’ survival and pudding brightened it up
Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald, authors of America’s Founding Food: The story of New England Cooking (2004), start their first chapter with the following words:
“When the small band of separatists from the Church of England whom we call the Pilgrims arrived at Cape Cod in November 1620, they entered an abundant land. But they faced some major obstacles to enjoying the foods around them”.
This first chapter is dedicated to corn, the one ingredient that helped them survive despite their suspicions. During the first winter in the Plymouth settlement, an abandoned Algonquian village, half of the population died of scurvy and other diseases. The first colonists arrived from English towns and most of them didn’t know how to cultivate and harvest. But even the ones that did could not manage to make wheat grow, their preferred grain.
From Wheat to Corn
The ones that survived that long winter could witness how in March 1621 their leaders made contact with a group of Wampanoag, who became crucial for their wellbeing. It was specially thanks to a member of the Wampanoag, who had been captured by European traders years earlier, sold as a slave in Spain, and returned to New England after escaping to England where he had learned the language. His name was Tisquantum, and he is most commonly known as Squanto. He taught the settlers how to turn the sandy soil of the area productive by planting corn instead of wheat; and how to make the harvested fruit more digestible by adding ash to the corn flour. This is a process Mexicans call nixtamalización, and that native Americans also knew well.
The Pilgrims started cultivating corn straight away beholding how rapidly and abundantly it grew. The grain that had been a staple for the local populations would also become one for the English settlers. However, they still considered it of inferior value than wheat, precisely because it was the main grain of the natives.
“If the advent of the English was designed to move the New World from barbarism to civilization, then the fact that the civilisers were subsisting on the savages’ food was, at minimum, highly embarrassing. […] Instead of the natives becoming civilised, the civilizers were going <<native>>”
Fitzgerald, Stavely, American Founding Food (2004), p.12.
What is an Indian Pudding
The Indian Pudding was the Pilgrim’s way to make corn more English. Not having succeed with growing wheat, the only flour they could get hold of was corn, which is great for making flat breads (like tortillas) but not for the leavened bread they were used to back at home.
Corn lacks gluten, the component that makes possible to produce an elastic dough. The early New Englanders didn’t throw in the towel on making the native ingredient more palatable, though. They realised there was an English dish that would be just perfect for it: pudding.
In England pudding has two meanings. One takes us back to the Roman times and is quite bloody. Black pudding was a mix of different parts of the slaughtered pig, including the blood, that was stuffed creating a sausage. It is still eaten nowadays and many love it. The second kind of pudding is probably more popular, though, as it includes sugar and spices.
In the Middle Ages white pudding substituted the dark one, adding breadcrumbs, milk and eggs to the offals. But during Lent, the mix would be meatless and more similar to the desert we know. In the early 17th century people started cooking these sweet puddings in cloths that would be positioned inside a boiling pot. The resulting food was called “boiled bag pudding”.
The New English settlers substituted wheat flour for cornmeal, also known as “Indian meal” at the time, and mixed it with water and local berries to sweeten the batter. Housewives would cook it inside of a boiling stew or pottage so they had 2 meals at once. They could leave the hearth unattended as the low-burning fire didn’t represent a high risk, and then they could dedicate their time doing some other chore.
Some puddings were also baked. Amelia Simmons, writer of the first American cookbook, American Cookery, (1796), explored several distinctively American recipes as well as some European adaptations. She also shared the first written recipe(s) of an Indian Pudding. Two of them are of a baked pudding, and one of a boiled one.
“A Nice Indian Pudding
No. 1. 3 pints scalded milk, 7 spoons fine Indian meal, stir well together while hot, let stand till cooled; add 7 eggs, half pound raisins, 4 ounces butter, spice and sugar, bake one and half hour.
No. 2. 3 pints scalded milk to one pint meal salted; cool, add 2 eggs, 4 ounces butter, sugar or molasses and spice… it will require two and half hours baking.
No. 3. Salt a pint meal, wet with one quart milk, sweeten and put into a strong cloth, brass or bell metal vessel, stone or earthen pot, secure from wet and boil 12 hours.”
Amelia Simons, American Cookery (1796), p. 27.
On 1833 there was a new recipe on paper by Lydia Maria Child in her book The American Frugal Housewife. She suggests molasses as the only sweetener and foregoes the eggs and milk, which substitutes for water, making it more frugal.
During the 18th and 19th century Indian pudding was normally baked alongside baked beans and brown bread on Saturday night, in preparation for the Sabbath. And knowing how to prepare a good and dense Indian pudding was a desirable quality of young ladies that had matrimonial prospects. One that could be thrown up chimney and come down on the ground without breaking!
“I’ve been practising on my pudding now these six years, and I shouldn’t be afraid to throw one up chimney with any girl”.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Minister’s Wooing (1859). p. 263.
Nowadays Indian pudding is mostly baked and the majority of recipes omit the raisins. The New York Times Cooking defines it as: “A mass of cornmeal, milk and molasses, baked for hours”. Though neither the recipe they share nor the one I mostly followed take that long. They both use a cooking method that combines boiling and baking: cooking the pudding al bain-marie, or double boiler inside the oven. The water bath allows the batter to cook gently and fast, cutting the time from “hours” to just 45 minutes and giving the pudding a jiggly center and a brown top.
The most, but almost forgotten, New-England Thanksgiving dessert
It may not be present in many tables these days, but for years Indian Pudding has been a Thanksgiving classic in New England.
“While Indian pudding never went out of style in New England, it wasn't until the second half of the 19th century, when all things Early American were in fashion, that Indian pudding started to show up on Thanksgiving tables in the rest of the country as a celebration of those newly cherished customs.”
Kathleen Wall, Plymouth Plantation's colonial foodways expert, for Saveur.
Wall explains that during the 1920s and 1930s, with the rise of packaged puddings, the Indian pudding, which took hours to bake, was relegated to the background in favor of other desserts.
“An early formative experience with Indian pudding has had me praying for its revival. I fell in love with the dessert when I was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and first tried it at Durgin Park, a restaurant that specializes in traditional New England foods. Though the coarse, lumpy custard—tinted brown with molasses, cinnamon, and ginger—wasn't much to look at, served warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, it was comfort in a bowl.”
Laura B. Weiss, Saveur.
Unfortunately I could not try the famous Durgin Park pudding as the Boston’s Faneuil Hall market restaurant is no longer open. But during the 20th century and until quite recently, they served thousands of comforting Indian puddings with vanilla ice cream keeping the tradition alive.
Now, the dessert has returned to the heart of households, from where it was born. Only those still in touch with tradition will take the time to cook it, instead of more popular apple and pumpkin pies, but the smooth flavor of corn, the pungency of molasses and the warming spices will remind them of where they are. A place, New England, where corn saved lives and pudding made them better.
Recipe based on The view from great island by Sue Moran:
Ingredients
4 large eggs
3 cups milk (I used lactose-free)
1 cup cream
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup molasses
1 cup yellow cornmeal
1/2 tsp powdered ginger
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla extract
Instructions (by Sue Moran mostly)
Preheat the oven to 350F and butter a 2 quart casserole. Have a larger pan ready that can fit the casserole to make a water bath for even baking. I use my turkey roasting pan.
Crack the eggs into a medium bowl and whisk together. Set aside.
Put the milk, cream, sugar, molasses, ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon into a medium heavy bottomed saucepan and bring just up to the scalding point (not quite to a simmer) stirring almost constantly to dissolve and blend everything together.
When the mixture is nice and hot, but not boiling, sprinkle in the cornmeal, while whisking. When all the cornmeal is incorporated, cook for 2 minutes, whisking constantly.
Pour about 1/2 cup or so of the hot cornmeal into the beaten eggs, whisking while you do this. Now pour that back into the saucepan, while whisking. Turn the heat down and cook the cornmeal for another 3 minutes (set a timer.) It will thicken and bubble like a polenta. I like to switch to a silicone spatula for this part, it helps to scrape the sides and bottom of the pan cleanly so nothing scorches. Stir constantly, don't leave your stove.
Stir in the vanilla, and then turn the mixture into your prepared casserole dish. Set the dish into the larger pan and add very hot water to at least an inch depth, or about halfway up the sides of your casserole.
Bake for 45 minutes.
Scoop the pudding into serving bowls and serve hot, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Recipe for (egg-less) vanilla ice cream
Ingredients
1 cup whole milk (I used lactose-free), cold
¾ cup granulated sugar
2 cups heavy cream, cold
1 tbs pure vanilla paste
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
Instructions
Add milk and sugar in a medium bowl. Whisk well until sugar is dissolved. Add heavy cream and vanilla paste and extract, stirring to combine. Place bowl in the fridge for at least 30 minutes so the mixture is very cold.
Add the mixture into the ice cream maker and set it to your desired consistency. On mine, to make American ice cream it takes 25 minutes, while to make Italian style ice cream the machine asks for 40 minutes.
Use rubber spatula to fully transfer ice cream into a freezer-safe container. Cover and freeze at least 2 hours, or until ice cream is set.
Serve on top of warm Indian pudding!
I enjoyed your piece about Indian pudding, and was struck with a bit of nostalgia. This was ain infrequent but still regular winter dessert at our home in Massachusetts (which also maintained the beans, frankfurters and brown bread tradition on Saturdays). Made by my grandmother or my father, it was always done the slow, overnight way. Later, working at Harvard University, I regularly enjoyed it at the faculty club with a nice scoop of vanilla ice cream. But a new chef did away with it, along with the horse steak. Can you imagine ?
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