Indian Pudding

New England baked pudding of cornmeal, milk, and molasses spiced with ginger and cinnamon, served warm with vanilla ice cream

Origin: Boston & New England, USA

From the journey of Corn.

Indian pudding is cornmeal cooked into milk, sweetened with molasses, spiced with ginger and cinnamon, and baked slowly for hours until it sets into a soft, dark, grainy custard with a skin on top. It is eaten warm, traditionally with cream and now almost always with vanilla ice cream melting into it, and it is one of the oldest desserts in New England, served at Thanksgiving and through the cold months. The name is about the grain, not about who made it. In colonial English, maize was Indian corn and cornmeal was Indian meal, and Indian pudding is simply meal pudding. The colonists had learned to grow and grind maize from Indigenous farmers, but the pudding is an English dish: the settlers made the boiled and baked puddings of home, above all hasty pudding, with the grain they had instead of wheat or oats, and sweetened them with the molasses that the Caribbean trade was landing in Boston in quantity. The first printed recipes appear in American Cookery by Amelia Simmons, published at Hartford in 1796 as the first cookbook written by an American. She gives three: two baked and one boiled. By the nineteenth century the baked version had become the standard, and Boston's Faneuil Hall market dining room Durgin-Park served it to generations of customers until the restaurant closed in 2019. The texture comes from time and from one odd step. A cup of cold milk is poured over the pudding just before it goes into the oven and is not stirred in; during the long bake it forms the soft, slightly wobbly layer that separates a proper Indian pudding from a dry cornmeal cake.

Ingredients

Pudding

  • 750 ml whole milk
  • 70 g stone-ground yellow cornmeal
  • 120 ml molasses
  • 50 g dark brown sugar
  • 60 g butter, plus extra for the dish
  • 1 tsp ground ginger
  • 1 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 0.25 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
  • 0.5 tsp salt
  • 2 whole eggs, beaten
  • 250 ml cold whole milk, for pouring over

To Serve

  • 8 scoops vanilla ice cream, or whipped cream, to serve

Method

  1. Heat the oven to 150 °C and butter a 2 litre baking dish.
  2. Bring the 750 ml of milk just to the boil in a heavy pan. Lower the heat and whisk in the cornmeal in a thin, steady stream, then cook, stirring constantly, for 10 to 15 minutes, until it thickens to the consistency of a loose porridge.
  3. Take the pan off the heat and stir in the molasses, brown sugar, butter, spices, and salt until the butter has melted.
  4. Whisk a ladleful of the hot mixture into the beaten eggs, then stir the eggs back into the pan.
  5. Pour the mixture into the buttered dish. Gently pour the cold milk over the top and do not stir it in.
  6. Bake for two and a half to three hours, until the pudding is set at the edges, still slightly wobbly in the centre, and a dark skin has formed on top.
  7. Leave to stand for 30 minutes, then spoon into bowls while still warm and top with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

Notes

Use stone-ground cornmeal if you can; very fine, degerminated cornmeal gives a smoother but blander pudding. Indian pudding keeps for three days in the refrigerator and reheats well, covered, in a low oven or a microwave with a splash of milk. A handful of raisins stirred in before baking is an old and common addition.

The Gastrographer

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