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Indian Plum Pudding, Steamed
3 quarts of milk. 1 1/4 pounds of corn meal. 8 ounces of butter, or minced suet. 12 ounces of re-boiled, black molasses. 10 whole eggs. 10 yolks. 2 lemons. 1 pound of seedless raisins. 1 pound of good, clean currants. Pinch of salt.
Make mush with the meal and milk and let it cook at back of the range, with tight lid on, for 2 hours or more. Then add the other ingredients in order as written--the rinds of the lemons grated and juice squeezed in, and eggs all beaten light together. Dust the fruit with a small cup of flour. Steam in pudding moulds an hour and a half or longer, according to size. This makes 4 1/2 quarts.
Butter the moulds and shake flour inside before filling. Serve with any sauce suitable for English plum pudding.
A hotel-scale Indian pudding crossed with an English plum pudding, written for a pastry cook feeding a dining room. The quantities are enormous and the method assumes a coal range with a warm back shelf.
- Cool the mush before the eggs go inTwenty eggs stirred into near-boiling cornmeal mush will scramble into threads. Let the mush drop to about 120F, stirring, then add the beaten eggs in a slow stream. This is the step that decides whether the finished pudding is smooth or granular.
- Scale it downAs written it yields 4 1/2 quarts, enough to fill several moulds. A quarter batch is manageable in a home kitchen: 3 cups milk, 5 oz cornmeal, 2 oz butter or suet, 3 oz molasses, 2 whole eggs plus 2 yolks (rounded down from 2 1/2 of each), half a lemon, 4 oz each raisins and currants.
- Cornmeal, not "Indian meal" as it wasCornmeal -- The recipe itself says corn meal; 'Indian' survives only in the title. Period corn meal was generally stone-ground and coarser than most supermarket meal today. Medium-grind yellow cornmeal is the nearest match; fine degerminated meal will thicken faster and give a slicker texture.
- Re-boiled black molassesThe term most likely points to a dark molasses from a further boiling, strong and concentrated; it is probably not blackstrap, though the usage is not precise. Ordinary dark (not light, not blackstrap) molasses works straight from the jar; blackstrap will make the pudding bitter.
- The two-hour mush'Back of the range' means a low, steady heat with no bubbling. A heavy pot in a very low oven, lid on, does the same job with no scorching. Stir occasionally if you are worried about scorching, though the recipe wants the lid kept tight.
- SuetBeef suet is the traditional fat and gives a firmer, more English-pudding crumb; butter gives a softer, cakier one. Fresh suet must be ordered from a butcher and grated cold. Packaged shredded suet is an acceptable substitute.
- SteamingFill buttered and floured moulds no more than two-thirds full, cover with foil or a pleated cloth tied down, and set on a rack in a pot with water halfway up the sides. The recipe's hour and a half suits a small mould; 'or longer, according to size' means a larger one will need considerably more. The pudding is done when a skewer comes out clean and the top springs back.
- Flouring the fruitThe "small cup of flour" is there to keep the raisins and currants suspended rather than sinking to the bottom of the mould. Toss the fruit in it dry and add any loose flour along with it.
- Sauce and keepingHard sauce, a brandy or lemon sauce, or plain heavy cream all suit it. Steamed puddings keep several days refrigerated and reheat well by steaming for 20-30 minutes.
"Indian pudding" takes its name from Indian meal, the colonial English term for maize meal as distinct from wheat flour, and the baked version of milk, cornmeal and molasses is long established in New England. What is going on here is a deliberate hybrid: an American pudding grafted onto the English Christmas plum pudding, with the raisins, currants, suet, lemon and steamed mould all borrowed from the older British form while the cornmeal-and-molasses base stays native. That pairing made sense in a professional pastry kitchen, where hotel and club menus wanted a holiday pudding that read as American. The scale is the tell that this came from a working shop rather than a home cook: 4 1/2 quarts of batter, twenty eggs, and an instruction to leave the mush at the back of the range for two hours while other work went on.