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Injun Puddin' for the Bean Hole
I QUART MILK 1/2 CUP YELLOW CORN MEAL 3/4 CUP MOLASSES 1/4 CUP SUGAR 1/4 TEASPOON NUTMEG 1/2 TEASPOON CINNAMON I TEASPOON SALT 1/4 CUP BUTTER I CUP COLD MILK Scald milk, stir in meal, molasses, spices, and salt. Cook and stir until mixture thickens-15-20 minutes-stirring in butter while cooking. Pour into small bean pot or other baking utensil, add cold milk and do not stir. Cover tightly, put into bean hole which must not be too hot, or pudding will not Indian for you. Leave there at least 3 hours without disturbing.
If you are afraid the hole is too hot, put pan of water in it and set pudding pot in that.
A bean-hole Indian pudding: cornmeal mush enriched with molasses and spices, then left to set for hours in slow, steady heat. The whole point is gentle temperature over a long stretch, so the pit or oven must be cooler than you would expect.
- The hinge: cold milk, undisturbedThe cup of cold milk poured over the top must not be stirred in. It sinks slowly during the long bake and tends to form the soft, whey-like layer often associated with a well-made Indian pudding.
- Bean hole temperatureA bean hole that "must not be too hot" implies gentle, slow heat; the book gives no temperature, but a slow oven in the region of 275-300F is the nearest modern equivalent. Hotter than that risks scorching the molasses and curdling rather than setting the custard. Covered, roughly three hours in a slow oven is the closest home approximation.
- The water bathThe final line is the safety net: setting the pot inside a pan of water buffers it from direct pit heat. In an oven the same trick works and is worth doing by default rather than only when nervous.
- CornmealYellow corn meal here means stone-ground or standard fine-to-medium grind, not coarse polenta and not degerminated instant meal. Whisk it into the scalded milk in a thin stream to avoid lumps.
- MolassesUse unsulphured cooking molasses. Blackstrap is markedly more bitter and will dominate the nutmeg and cinnamon.
- Scalding and thickeningScald means heating the quart of milk to just below a boil, around 180F, when it steams and foams at the edges. The 15-20 minutes of stirring afterwards is real cooking time: the mixture should coat the spoon thickly before it goes into the pot.
- VesselA "small bean pot" is a narrow-mouthed glazed stoneware crock of about two quarts. A covered casserole or Dutch oven of the same capacity behaves the same way; keep the lid tight so the surface does not dry into a skin.
- Yield and servingRoughly six servings. Serve warm in bowls with cold heavy cream poured over, or with vanilla ice cream, which is the New England habit.
Indian pudding takes its name from "Indian meal," the colonial term for cornmeal as distinct from wheat or rye flour, and the dish is one of the oldest sweet puddings in New England cookery: English hasty pudding rebuilt around the grain that was actually available, sweetened with molasses from the West Indies trade rather than scarce sugar. Its long, slow bake made it a natural for the bean hole, the pit of coals and covered pot that lumber camps and hunting parties used to cook overnight while nobody tended the fire. Outdoor cookbooks of the mid-twentieth century leaned on that tradition heavily, and often on a jokey frontier voice that has aged far worse than the pudding.