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Dessert

Approved Receipt for Making a Plain Indian Pudding

A simple pudding made from Indian meal, molasses, salt, and water, boiled for six hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Approved Receipt for Making a Plain Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix

  1. In a large bowl, combine 3 pounds of Indian meal with 5 pints of boiling water and stir well.

  2. Add ¾ pound of molasses and 1 ounce of salt to the mixture and stir until well combined.

Boil and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a suitable bag, leaving space for the pudding to swell.

  2. Tie the bag securely and place it in a kettle of boiling water.

  3. Boil the pudding for 6 hours, replacing evaporated water with boiling water from another kettle.

  4. Remove the pudding from the bag and serve.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Indian meal
Forms the thick body of the pudding as its starch and fiber set during long cooking.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a rich, caramel-like flavor.

The step that matters

Leaving room in the bag. The pudding swells as the cornmeal absorbs water and expands during the long boil. A tightly filled bag can burst or squeeze the pudding, so space must be left before tying it.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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