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Fig and Indian Pudding
1 cup corn meal 1 cup molasses 6 cups of milk and cream mixed 1 cup finely chopped figs 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon melted butter Cook the corn meal with 4 cups of the milk, add the figs and salt, molasses and butter. Pour into a buttered pudding dish and bake in a moderate oven four hours. When partly cooked add the remainder of the milk without stirring the pudding.
A standard baked Indian pudding with figs worked in. Nothing here is dangerous, but the four-hour bake and the late addition of cold milk are both deliberate and easy to get wrong.
- The hinge: add the last milk cold and do not stirThe hinge: add the last milk without stirring -- Pouring the reserved 2 cups over the pudding partway through baking, without stirring, is what produces the layer of soft custard on top that distinguishes a good Indian pudding from cornmeal mush. The recipe says only "when partly cooked"; let it sit on the surface rather than mixing it in.
- "Indian meal"Corn meal -- the "Indian" of the title refers to Indian meal, the colonial-era term for maize meal in English and American use. Use a stone-ground yellow meal, medium grind; instant or degerminated fine meal will set up gluey.
- Moderate ovenConventionally about 325-350F. For a bake of four hours the lower end of that range is the safer choice, or the edges may set and darken well before the centre.
- Cooking the meal firstWhisk the cup of cornmeal into the 4 cups of milk and cook over low heat or a double boiler, stirring, until it thickens to a loose porridge — about 15–20 minutes. Adding dry meal to hot milk without whisking gives lumps that never disperse.
- MolassesUse unsulphured light or full-flavour molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter in this quantity. A cup is the entire sweetening, so a harsh molasses dominates the finished pudding.
- Milk and cream mixedAny ratio the period cook had to hand; whole milk with about a cup of the six replaced by heavy cream gives the expected richness.
- FigsDried figs, stemmed and chopped small. Fresh figs will collapse into water and thin the custard.
- Yield and servingThe ingredients come to some 9 cups, so a 2 1/2 to 3 quart baking dish is needed; serves about 8. Traditionally eaten warm with cold cream poured over.
Indian pudding takes its name from "Indian meal," the colonial English term for maize meal as opposed to the wheat and oat flours of home — the pudding itself is an English hasty pudding rebuilt around the grain that was actually available in New England. Molasses, cheap and abundant through the West Indies trade, became its standard sweetener and gave the dish its dark colour and slightly mineral edge. The very long, slow bake is often explained as a survival from the era of the cooling brick oven, where a pudding could be pushed to the back after the bread came out and left for the afternoon.