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Cerealine Pudding (Cups scalded milk cups)
4 cups scalded milk 2 cups cerealine ½ cup molasses 1½ teaspoons salt 1½ tablespoons butter Pour milk on cerealine, add remaining ingredients, pour into buttered pudding-dish, and bake one hour in slow oven. Serve with cream.
A cousin of Indian pudding built on a ready-milled corn flake rather than raw cornmeal, which is why it bakes in an hour instead of the usual three or four. The transcription carries some fraction trouble worth sorting out before you start.
- The butter measureThe molasses reads half a cup, as the printed page gives it. The 1½ tablespoons butter may have begun life as ½ tablespoon, the leading 1 being the kind of artifact old fraction glyphs leave behind; a scant tablespoon is enough to enrich four cups of milk. The 1½ teaspoons salt is plausible as printed and needs no adjustment.
- CerealineA branded flaked corn product of the late nineteenth century, made from maize and sold as a breakfast cereal and cooking grain; it is no longer made. Plain rolled corn flakes without sugar or malt coating, or coarse hominy grits softened first, come closest; ordinary sweetened cornflakes will throw the sugar balance off.
- Slow ovenThe book gives no temperature; "slow" in period usage corresponds roughly to 275-325F. The pudding wants to set gently and take on colour slowly; hotter and the milk curdles at the edges before the centre thickens.
- Scalded milkHeated to just below boiling, until it steams and shows bubbles at the rim, around 180F. Pouring it hot over the flakes starts them swelling immediately, which is what makes the short bake possible.
- Molasses, not blackstrapPeriod molasses for baking was light or dark table molasses. Blackstrap is a different, far more bitter product and will dominate the dish.
- Pudding-dishA baking dish of about 2 quarts, buttered. The mixture is loose going in and firms as it bakes.
- Doneness and yieldThe centre should be set but still slightly wobbly; it firms further as it cools. Serves six to eight, warm, with cold cream poured over.
Cerealine was one of a wave of milled corn products that appeared in American kitchens after the Civil War, when roller milling and the separation of the corn germ made shelf-stable flaked corn cheap and widely distributed. Recipes like this one show how quickly such branded goods were absorbed into existing dishes: the pudding reads as a descendant of New England Indian pudding, the cornmeal-and-molasses baked custard, but the long slow bake that Indian pudding requires has been cut to an hour because the corn arrives already milled and flaked. The appearance of a trade name in the ingredient list, unexplained and assumed familiar, is a good measure of how ordinary such products had become by the end of the century.