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Indian Pudding, Baked
One cup of Indian meal; onehalf cup of raisins; one quart of milk; one-half teaspoon of cinnamon; one cup of molasses; one-half teaspoon of salt; one egg; one-half teaspoon of ginger. Place the milk in a double boiler, and when it is scalding hot, add the meal, and stir constantly until there are no lumps. Cook for twenty minutes, turn into a pudding dish, and add the other ingredients except the egg. Stir well, and when the mass has cooled, add the beaten egg. Bake for one hour in a rather slow oven, and serve hot.
A standard baked Indian pudding, thin and molasses-dark. The recipe assumes you know what a slow oven is and gives no dish size or yield, so a few numbers help.
- Indian mealThis is cornmeal — yellow, stone-ground if you can get it. Fine or medium grind gives the smooth, custard-like set the method is after; coarse polenta grind stays gritty.
- A rather slow ovenAround 300F, perhaps 325F at the top end. The low heat matters: this is essentially a starch-thickened custard, and a hot oven will curdle the egg and weep whey before the centre sets.
- Double boiler firstThe twenty minutes over scalding milk is not optional. It gelatinises the cornmeal so the grains do not sink and settle into a gritty layer during baking.
- Why the egg goes in lastThe recipe cools the mass before adding the beaten egg, and that is the hinge. Egg stirred into near-boiling mush scrambles instantly. Let the pot drop to lukewarm, then beat it in.
- MolassesUse unsulphured dark molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and will overwhelm a cup's worth. A light or "mild" molasses gives a paler, sweeter pudding.
- Dish and depthA quart of milk plus the other additions comes to roughly a quart and a half of loose batter. Use a 2-quart baking dish, and if your oven runs hot or uneven you can set it in a water bath to protect the edges.
- Doneness and timingOne hour at 300F often leaves the centre very loose. Bake until the pudding is set at the edges and still trembles slightly at the middle; it firms considerably as it stands. Expect 60 to 90 minutes.
- YieldSix to eight servings. Serve hot with cold heavy cream poured over, or with vanilla ice cream, a common New England pairing.
Indian pudding takes its name from "Indian meal," the colonial English term for maize meal, distinguishing it from the wheat flour that was scarce and expensive in early New England. The dish is generally traced to English hasty pudding — boiled milk thickened with grain — remade with the one grain the colonies had in abundance and sweetened with molasses, which arrived cheaply from the West Indies trade. It sits here among the puddings: a homely dish preserved in a general household manual aimed at women furnishing a modern kitchen. The long, slow bake is often said to be a holdover from the brick oven, where puddings went in after the bread came out and cooked in falling heat.