Indian Pudding Day (and how the US became the corniest country)
What’s in a name? Indian pudding earned its moniker due to the native peoples that saved European colonists by introducing them to their King Grain, one of the Three Sisters-Corn.
The story of Indian pudding begins thousands of years ago, in what is now Mexico. There, maize was first cultivated and and its use migrated to North America, where it became a staple crop and was further domesticated. By the time Europeans came into the picture corn had caused an agricultural revolution centuries before. When the Indigenous groups in the northeast took pity on the starving colonists, they had already spent hundreds of years refining their growing techniques, learning how to replenish the soil and optimize their yields. They shared these skills with their new neighbors.
When corn entered the colonial diet, it was most commonly in the form of cornmeal, which they named “injun meal,” since they learned about it from the people they called “indians.”
Today, the US is the largest producer and consumer of corn, and the crop is grown on over 90 million acres and in almost every state, according to the USDA. Each individual in the US averaged a consumption of over 35 pounds of corn products in 2019. That does not include the byproducts of corn, which are used for ethanol, feeding livestock and in cosmetics.
The first Europeans to settle in New England did not share our modern preoccupation with the silky haired, multi-use starch, thinking of it instead as a food for livestock. The need for a hardy grain out weighed their distaste, and housewives soon found a place of distinction for “injun meal” in their kitchens and cookbooks.
“Indian meal” quickly became assimilated into Puritan cookery, and the recipes enjoyed a greater popularity than the native population their settlements displaced. Except as a nod during Thanksgiving to the Wampanoag Who Saved White America, history largely ignores the neighbors who lent their expertise to keeping colonists alive.
Indian pudding itself was an adaptation of a popular British dish, hasty pudding. Lack of wheat had housewives substituting cornmeal to the classic recipe, and the result was something that made poet Joel Barlow opine:
...Thy constellation rul'd my natal morn,
And all my bones were made of Indian corn.
Delicious grain! whatever form it take,
To roast or boil, to smother or to bake,
In every dish 'tis welcome still to me,
But most, my Hasty-Pudding, most in thee.
Indian pudding remained a staple on New England tables for centuries, and can still be found on some menus in eateries that cater to folks with a longing for those forgotten traditions. I found a recipe and decided to try a taste of the past.
The recipe I found was from Mary Wright Huber, and she claimed it was a variation of a recipe published in 1896. You can try it yourself here.
I was pleasantly surprised at the results. Though labor intensive, it was a hit with everyone who tried it, bringing to mind a gingerbread-y baked custard. As all recipes I found mentioned, it was a visually unappealing dish, but put in a bowl and slathered with whipped cream or ice cream it was easy to cover the ugly bits and enjoy.
There are plenty of ugly bits in our past, and often historians have tried to cover them with ambiguity or simply silence. Modern writers, historians, and anthropologists are working to reclaim the past, no matter how far buried or long forgotten. These re-discovered histories reveal a more complex narrative, and may cause us to reflect on biases in our own stories.
Our food helps to shape our identity, and I plan on adding this storied pudding to my Thanksgiving table. II hope more people have the opportunity to enjoy this dish from a by-gone time, and pause to consider its origins. I would recommend pairing it with a Native-centered historical re-telling of Thanksgiving, such as This Land is Their Land by David J. Silverman.
