Indian pudding

“ Wheaten bread, which is by no means so palatable, and certainly not half so nutritive, now costs something more than three pence the pound: and to this may be added, that dry bread can hardly be eaten alone; but of suet pudding a very comfortable meal may be made without any thing else.
A pudding in great repute in all parts of North America, is what is called an apple pudding. This is an Indian pudding, sometimes with, and sometimes without suet, with dried cuttings of sweet apples mixed with it; and when eaten with butter, it is most delicious Food. ”

“ Baked bread pudding, carrot pudding, exceedingly delicate, chocolate pudding, cold cabinet-pudding, boiled rice-pudding with custard sauce, poor man's rice-pudding, green-apple pudding, Indian pudding, minute pudding, tapioca pudding, and all the custards boiled and baked with infinite variety of flavour,—these are the every-day 136 luxuries, and they are very great ones, of the American table.
One charming thing about dessert and American dishes is that ladies can make them. They do not flush the face or derange the white apron. ”

“ HOW TO MAKE BAKED INDIAN PUDDING.
To 2 quarts of milk, add 1 quart of meal, a little salt, and a cupful of sugar. Prepare by heating the milk over the fire, stirring it occasionally to prevent its burning; when it nearly boils, remove it, put in the salt and sugar, and scatter in the meal, stirring rapidly to prevent its collecting into lumps; put in nutmeg and turn into a deep pan. Bake immediately, or otherwise, as may be convenient, in a hot oven, three hours. When it has baked an hour or more, pour over the pudding from a gill to a half pint of milk ”

“ An excellent Indian Pudding without Eggs.—Take seven heaping spoonfuls of scalded Indian meal, half a tea-spoonful of salt, two spoonfuls of butter or sweet lard, a tea-cup of molasses, and two tea-spoonfuls of ginger or cinnamon, to the taste. Pour into these a quart of milk while boiling hot. Mix well and put in a buttered dish. Just as you set in the oven, stir in a tea-cup of cold water, which will produce the same effect as eggs. Bake three-quarters of an hour in a dish that will not spread it out thin. ”

“ Baked Indian Pudding.—Two quarts sweet milk; 1 pint New Orleans molasses; 1 pint Indian meal: 1 tablespoonful butter; nutmeg or cinnamon. Boil the milk; pour it over the meal and molasses; add salt and spice; bake three hours. This is a large family pudding.
Batter, to be used with all Sorts of Roasting Meat.—Melt good butter; put to it three eggs, with the whites well beaten up, and warm them together, stirring them continually. With this you may baste any roasting meat, and then sprinkle bread crumbs thereon; and so continue to make a crust as thick as you please. ”

“ Rice Pudding Wash rice, mix ingredients, and pour into buttered pudding-dish; bake three hours in very slow oven, stirring three times during first hour of baking to prevent rice from settling.
Poor Man’s Pudding Wash rice, mix and bake same as Rice Pudding. At last stirring, add butter.
Indian Pudding Pour milk slowly on meal, cook in double boiler twenty minutes, add molasses, salt, and ginger; pour into buttered pudding-dish and bake two hours in slow oven; serve with cream. If baked too rapidly it will not whey. ”

“ Add the spice and lemon-peel and stir all very hard together. Take care not to put too much indian meal, or the pudding will be heavy and solid.
Dip the cloth in boiling water. Shake it out, and flour it slightly. Pour the mixture into it, and tie it up, leaving room for the pudding to swell.
Boil it three hours. Serve it up hot, and eat it with sauce made of drawn butter, wine and nutmeg.
When cold, it is good cut in slices and fried.
BATTER PUDDING. Six eggs.
Eight table-spoonfuls of sifted flour.
One quart of milk. ”

“ Wet Indian meal with cold water sufficient to make a thin batter, turn part of it into a pot of boiling water; when it has boiled fifteen or twenty minutes stir in the remainder, salt it to your taste, and stir in Indian meal by the handful as long as you can stir the pudding stick round in it easily. When the stick can be made to stand upright in it for a minute, it is thick enough. ”

“ CORNMEAL PUDDING Bring one pint of milk to the boiling point; pour it gradually on one-half cup of Indian meal, stirring all the while to prevent lumps. When cool add three eggs well beaten, and one tablespoon of flour, one-half cup of sugar, one-half teaspoon of ginger, one teaspoon of cinnamon, pinch of salt and one pint cold milk. Pour into battered pudding dish and bake an hour and a half. ”

“ Nearly every housewife makes milk puddings, but only one in a hundred can make them properly. When cooked, the grains should be quite soft and encased with a rich thick cream. Failure to produce this result simply indicates that the pudding has been cooked too quickly, or that the proportion of grain to milk is too large.
Allow 2 level tablespoons, not a grain more, of cereal (rice, sago, semolina, tapioca) and 1 level tablespoon sugar to every pint of milk. Put in a pie-dish with a vanilla pod or some strips of lemon rind, and stand for an hour in a warm place, on the hob for example. ”

“ The composition contains rice, butter, sugar, almonds, raisins and spices, and to fill all of the eight pots costs about $70. The moment the pudding is cooked a bell is rung, and the pilgrims are allowed to help themselves in a grab-game which was never surpassed. Greedy creatures scald themselves in the pudding so badly that they sometimes carry the marks for life. It is counted a miracle caused by the intercession of the saints that no lives have ever been lost in these scrambles, although nearly every day some pilgrim is so badly burned that he has to be taken to a hospital. ”

“ He ought, every day, to have a pudding for his dinner—either rice, arrow-root, sago, tapioca, suet-pudding, batter-pudding, or Yorkshire-pudding, mixed with crumbs of bread and gravy—free from grease. A well boiled suet-pudding, with plenty of suet in it, is one of the best puddings he can have; it is, in point of fact, meat and farinaceous food combined, and is equal to, and will oftentimes prevent the giving of, cod-liver oil; before cod-liver oil came into vogue, suet boiled in milk was the remedy for a delicate child. ”

“ All meat puddings should be served in the basins in which they are boiled, a napkin being neatly folded round. The carver should remove a round piece from the lid of the pudding, and pour in enough of the broth from the sauce boat to fill it up; this will ensure each person getting the same kind of gravy. This pudding may be made of sheep’s head after it has been boiled. To make the crust for a richer pudding, use equal quantities of suet and flour. Mix a pinch of salt with the flour and suet, make into a paste with cold water in the proportion of 1⁄2 pint to 1 lb. ”

“ A bag made of two thicknesses of cheese-cloth, stitched together, will do. Always leave room in mold or bag for pudding to rise, using a smaller or larger mold according to quantity of pudding. If not boiled steadily, and emptied as soon as done, puddings will fall and stick.
ALMOND PUDDING Beat the yolks of four eggs very light with one-half cup of sugar; then add one-half cup of grated walnuts or almonds, one-half cup of grated white bread crumbs, then the stiffly-beaten whites of four eggs. Put in pudding form and steam from one and one-half to two hours. Serve with wine or fruit sauce. ”

“ Take three cups breadcrumbs, one cup flour, one cup chopped suet or dripping, one teaspoonful baking powder; rub these well together, and a cup of sugar. A cupful of currants washed and picked, the same of raisins, sultanas or pudding raisins, stoned and chopped, candied peel—if you like it—and, if you have them to spare, mix with a couple or three eggs, if not, use plain milk, or even water. Tie in a cloth and boil two hours. Never put the pudding into the water until it boils. It is a mistake that dripping cannot be used in a boiled pudding. ”

“ The three varieties would be represented by a custard pudding, a plain rice pudding, and a cornflour or semolina pudding made with eggs. A well-made milk pudding is a palatable and usually acceptable dish, and being so easily made it is difficult to understand why they are nearly always in too dry or too liquid a condition, when the mean is so easily obtained. If a custard pudding be allowed to boil it becomes watery; if cooked too quickly, without actually boiling, it is full of holes. ”

“ Garnish the pudding with sifted white sugar, and with candied or preserved orange or lemon peel.
In boiling a pudding, cold water should never be added. Keep a kettle of hot water to replenish the water in the pot as it boils away. As soon as the pudding is done, remove it from the boiling water. A decrease in heat whilst cooking, makes boiled pudding sodden, and makes baked pudding fall. The best sauce for a boiled pudding is cold sauce made of the frothed whites of eggs, butter, sugar, nutmeg, and a little French brandy, while for a baked pudding, a rich, boiled wine sauce is best. ”

“ From that time forth the plum-pudding feast became a recognised function. Not a week passed without one. Generally--for my gorge rose at the idea of my cook's extortion--in the summer-house in my garden, where I could have an excuse for providing the delicacy at my own expense. And I am bound to say that this increased intimacy bore other fruits than that contained in the pudding. For the matter of that it has continued to bear fruit, since I can truthfully date the beginning of my friendship for the people of India from the days when we ate plum-pudding together under the starshine. ”

“ PUDDING, a term, now of rather wide application, for a dish consisting of boiled flour enclosing or containing meat, vegetables or fruit, or of batter, rice, sago or other farinaceous foods boiled or baked with milk and eggs. Properly a pudding should be one boiled in a cloth or bag. There are countless varieties, of which the most familiar are the Christmas plum-pudding, the Yorkshire pudding and the suet pudding. ”

“ Sultana raisins are well adapted to these puddings, as they contain no pips, and from their delicate size sooner become tender in the baking than the larger kinds.
THE POOR AUTHOR’S PUDDING. Flavour a quart of new milk by boiling in it for a few minutes half a stick of well-bruised cinnamon, or the thin rind of a small lemon; add a few grains of salt, and three ounces of sugar, and turn the whole into a deep basin: when it is quite cold, stir to it three well-beaten eggs, and strain the mixture into a pie-dish. ”

“ Two of these dishes, always served up one after the other, made the usual Dinner of a Substantial Gentleman or wealthy Citizen." But the French traveller becomes enthusiastic over the English pudding. "The pudding is a dish very difficult to be described. Flour, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, suet, marrow, raisins, &c., are the most common ingredients of a pudding. They bake them in an oven, they boil them with meat, they make them fifty different ways. Blessed be he that invented Pudding. Ah, what an excellent thing is an English Pudding!" ”

“ A buttered paper should always be put over the basin before the cloth is tied on, for all custard puddings.
COMMON CUSTARD PUDDING. Whisk three eggs well, put them into a pint basin, and add to them sufficient milk to fill it: then strain, flavour, and sweeten it with fine sugar; boil the pudding very softly for an exact half hour, let it stand a few minutes, dish, and serve it with sugar sifted over, and sweet sauce in a tureen, or send stewed gooseberries, currants, or cherries to table with it. ”

“ I wish, Elizabeth, you would tell me some new puddings. Archie says ours are so dull."
Elizabeth immediately threw herself into the subject of puddings.
"I know one new pudding, but it takes two days to make and it's very expensive. We only have it for special people. You know 'Aunt Mag,' of course? and 'Uncle Tom'? That's only 'Aunt Mag' with treacle. Semolina, sago, big rice—we call those milk things, we don't dignify them by the name of pudding. What else is there? Tarts, oh! and bread puddings, and there's that greasy kind you eat with syrup, suet dumplings. ”

“ It is better to stew these dried fruits for a pudding of this kind, for all the boiling the pudding proper requires is 15-20 minutes, or long enough to set the custard. A pudding made of similar materials, in a flat pan and baked in a slow oven, is equally good, and affords another agreeable variation. In seasons when eggs are scarce, a large tablespoonful of [416] cornflour may be put to 1⁄4 pint milk, or rather less, according to the quantity of bread used; and if this be whipped up with one egg, it will be sufficient to stiffen a pint pudding, so that it will stand firmly on the dish. ”

“ At the end of that time beat one egg very light, and stir it in, pouring slowly, so that it may be mixed all through the hot pudding and puff it up. Then cook for one minute, turn it into a china pudding-dish, or into individual molds, and cool. Serve with cream.
Corn-starch pudding should have a tender consistency and a sweet and wholesome taste. The difficulty with many is that they are not thoroughly cooked, and are too stiff and hard when cool. When you find this to be the case, lessen the amount of corn-starch used. The proportion in this recipe may always be relied upon. ”