Few desserts look so completely unappetizing yet taste so incredibly good! One bite of this lumpy, brown mush, with a dab of vanilla ice cream, and I was sold. Scraped every last bit from the bowl. Why indian pudding isn’t more widely known I have no idea; it’s one of my favorite desserts of all time, and a traditional New England Thanksgiving classic. Indian pudding is a baked custard with milk, butter, molasses, eggs, spices, and cornmeal. The name is likely derived from the cornmeal, which was known as indian meal way back when. Here is a tried-and-true recipe for indian pudding adapted from An Olde Concord Christmas, a long out-of-print book from the Concord Museum. Native Americans introduced early New England colonists to corn, and it became a valuable part of the colonist’s diet, in no small part because the wheat flour they were accustomed to was hard to come by in New England in those days. Colonists adapted British hasty pudding — a quick dish featuring wheat flour, molasses, and spices — to utilize corn meal, or “indian meal”, instead. A recipe appeared in Amelia Simmon’s American Cookery in 1796, but indian pudding had been around for many decades by then. Serve with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. It’s National Indian Pudding Day! Here’s Why You Should Celebrate - fun article on NPR including another recipe for indian pudding
