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Sponge-Cake Pudding
4 eggs Equal weight in sugar 1/2 weight in flour Grated rind of 1/2 lemon Beat the eggs separately until very light; stir the sugar into the yolks; add the flour and whites of the eggs alternately, then the lemon. Bake in a Turk's head, and serve with lemon sauce. BAKED INDIAN PUDDING No. 1 1 pint hot milk 1/2 cup Indian meal 3 eggs 1 tablespoon flour 1 pint cold milk 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 teaspoon ginger 12 1 teaspoon cinnamon Pinch of salt Bring one pint of milk to the boiling point; pour it gradually on the meal, stirring all the while to prevent lumps. When cool, add the beaten eggs and the other ingredients. Pour into a buttered pudding dish and bake an hour and a half. Serve with hot maple sugar or cream.
BAKED INDIAN PUDDING No. 2 5 cups milk 1/3 cup Indian meal 1/2 cup molasses 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon ginger Scald the milk; pour it slowly on the meal; cook in a double boiler for twenty minutes; add molasses, salt and ginger. Pour into a buttered pudding dish and bake in a slow oven for about two hours. Serve with cream.
Three recipes run together here, and the first one is missing its opening line. What survives is a weight-proportion sponge batter of the old school, followed by two versions of baked Indian pudding.
- The missing first ingredient"Equal weight in sugar, 1/2 weight in flour" is presumably measured against eggs, a common proportion in period sponge recipes. The printed text does not state how many eggs, nor what the weights are reckoned against, so any figure in ounces or cups is a guess rather than a reading of the recipe.
- Turk's headA fluted, turban-shaped tube mould, a forerunner of the modern Bundt-type pan. Butter and flour it well; a 9- or 10-inch tube pan is a reasonable substitute. The recipe gives neither temperature nor time; a moderate oven, around 350F for 35-45 minutes, until the cake springs back, is a modern estimate.
- Folding, not stirringThe instruction to add flour and beaten whites alternately is the hinge of the sponge. Fold with a spatula in as few strokes as will incorporate — there is no chemical leavening here, and deflated whites give a flat, rubbery cake.
- Indian mealCornmeal; "Indian" here refers to Indian corn, that is maize, as opposed to wheat. Use fine or medium yellow cornmeal, not the coarse polenta grind and not the degerminated instant sort.
- Pouring hot milk on the mealNo. 1 brings the milk to the boiling point and pours it gradually onto the meal, stirring throughout to prevent lumps. No. 2 scalds the milk and then cooks the mush in a double boiler for twenty minutes.
- Oven temperaturesThe recipe gives no temperature for No. 1; a moderate oven, roughly 325-350F, is a reasonable modern reading. "Slow oven" in period usage is generally taken as somewhere in the 275-325F range. The long low bake is what softens the meal and darkens the top.
- No. 2 has no eggs and no sugarIt sets on starch and long baking alone, sweetened only by the half-cup of molasses. It will be looser and more porridge-like than No. 1 — that is correct, not a failure. Serve it warm in a bowl with cold cream.
- YieldEach pudding will roughly fill a 1 1/2- to 2-quart buttered dish; six servings is a fair estimate. The sponge's yield cannot be judged, as the egg quantity is missing from the printed text.
Baked Indian pudding is one of the oldest continuously made desserts in New England, generally traced to an adaptation of English hasty pudding to maize after wheat proved hard to grow in colonial soil. The two versions printed here mark the two branches the dish took: an enriched, eggy, spiced custard that eats like a baked pudding, and the plainer molasses-and-ginger sort that cooks for hours at low heat until the cornmeal softens and the top darkens. Printing the variants side by side let the cook pick according to what the pantry held. The lemon sauce for the sponge pudding would have been the standard cornstarch-thickened sweet sauce.