Amber Pudding
Amber pudding is a good variation of the ordinary baked Indian variety. To make it, cook one-third of a cupful of cornmeal in one quart of milk for a half-hour, then add one-half of a teaspoonful of salt, one-half cupful of molasses, one-quarter of a teaspoonful of cinnamon and one pint of sliced apples. Turn into a buttered dish, pour over one pint of cold milk and bake for four hours in a slow oven. When cold there will be a clear amber jelly all through the pudding.
A baked Indian pudding with apples, thickened slowly and set with a second addition of cold milk. Nothing here is difficult, but the long, low bake is not optional dash it is what produces the "amber jelly" the recipe promises.
- Do not stir in the cold milkThe pint of cold milk is poured over the surface and left alone. It sinks slowly through the meal during the bake; the recipe promises the amber jelly runs "all through the pudding," and stirring the milk in at the start is more likely to give an even, dull mush.
- Indian meal means cornmealThe book's "ordinary baked Indian" pudding is cornmeal pudding. Use stone-ground yellow cornmeal, medium grind, not fine corn flour and not polenta-coarse grits.
- A slow ovenThe book gives no figure; period usage for a slow oven runs roughly 250-300F. At four hours the top will darken considerably, so the lower end of that range is the safer choice.
- Cook the meal without scorchingA quart of milk with cornmeal in it will catch on a thin pan within minutes. Use a heavy saucepan over low heat, or a double boiler for the full half-hour, and whisk often.
- MolassesUse unsulphured light or dark molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and will overwhelm the apples. Sorghum syrup is a reasonable stand-in.
- A pint of sliced applesAbout 2 cups sliced, from roughly two medium firm apples dash a tart baking variety holds its shape through four hours where a soft eating apple dissolves.
- Dish and yieldA buttered 2.5 to 3-quart baking dish, deep rather than wide, leaves room for the poured milk. Serves six to eight.
- Serve it cold, or at least coolThe recipe is explicit that the jelly appears "when cold." Straight from the oven it is loose and sloppy; let it settle for several hours. Cream is a common accompaniment for puddings of this kind.
Baked Indian pudding is among the oldest continuously made American desserts, built on the colonial habit of calling maize "Indian corn" and its meal "Indian meal" -- a name that survived in cookbooks well past 1900, as it does here. The dish belongs to the era of the wood or coal range, where a slackening oven after the day's baking gave the sort of long, gentle, uneven heat this pudding wants; the cold-milk step is usually associated with New England practice. The addition of apples and cinnamon here stretches a little meal and molasses with autumn fruit, and the "amber" of the title presumably refers to the colour molasses takes on through a long low bake.