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Mush or Hasty Pudding

A thick pudding made from Indian meal cooked in salted water, sliced and fried or baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Mush or Hasty Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the pudding

  1. Mix the Indian meal with cold water until smooth.

  2. Gradually stir the mixture into boiling salted water.

  3. Cook slowly, stirring often, for 2 to 3 hours until thick.

  4. Pour into a broad deep dish and let it cool.

Cut and cook

  1. Cut into ½ inch thick slices, dust with flour.

  2. Fry on a griddle with a little lard or bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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 swells and sets in hot water.
Lard
Adds fat for frying the slices, helping them brown and crisp on the griddle.
Flour
Dusted on the slices so they brown more evenly and develop a light crust when cooked.

The step that matters

Cook slowly, stirring often. Cornmeal can scorch on the bottom or form lumps if it is not stirred. Slow cooking lets the starch fully swell, giving a smooth, thick set once cooled.

“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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