Hasty pudding is a pudding (cooked in a mold) or porridge of grains cooked in milk or water. In America, it often refers to a version made of ground corn. Hasty pudding is mentioned in a verse of the early American song Yankee Doodle and Little House on the Prairie.
Hasty Pudding, originally cooked in England with wheat flour, was made from cornmeal after the first pioneer settlers arrived in the New World. It was a favorite pudding in colonial times.
Seventeenth-century English colonists brought hasty pudding to North America and transformed it completely to their liking. Lacking wheat, they substituted cornmeal, a grain they learned to cultivate from the indigenous Indian people, which led to the new name Indian pudding, derived from their name for cornmeal, Indian meal (colonial Indian pudding).
Today we think of puddings as desserts, but in the 1700s puddings were more than just the last course of a meal. Most colonial households served pudding topped with milk and butter for breakfast and with gravy for dinner. Sometimes pudding was the whole meal to save time and money.
Modern American Hasty Pudding Recipe
6-8 servings
INGREDIENTS:
4 cups milk
1 cup yellow cornmeal
Butter to grease can
1/2 cup maple syrup
TOOLS:
2-quart double boiler or electric pressure cooker
Measuring cups
Wire whisk
Wooden spoon
4-gallon cooking pot
2-pound coffee can with plastic lid or pudding cups
Oven mitts
Wire rack
Deep bowl
COOKING DIRECTIONS:
1) Fill the bottom pan of double boiler or electric pressure cooker halfway up with water and bring to a boil.
2) Put the milk in the top part of the double boiler. Bring to a boil directly over medium heat.
3) Add the cornmeal into the boiling milk while mixing with the wire whisk to keep lumps from forming. Remove from heat.
4) Put top part of the double boiler over bottom part. Lower the heat. Add maple syrup to the cornmeal mixture and cook over simmering water, stirring often with the wooden spoon, for about 15 minutes. The cornmeal will look smooth and creamy.
5) Rub the inside of the coffee can or pudding mold with butter. When cornmeal is done cooking, pour it into the buttered mold (can).
6) Grease the inside of the can's plastic lid. If you don't have a lid, grease a piece of aluminum foil and fit it tightly over the can opening. Tie it with string.
7) Place can in large cooking pot filled with enough boiling water to come halfway up the side of the mold. Cover the pot. Cook over high heat until steam comes from the lid.
8) Lower the temperature. Cook for 2 1/2 hours. Add more water if level lowers around can.
9) When done, remove mold carefully with oven mitts. Cool on rack while covered.
10) Uncover can and hold it upside down over a deep bowl. Tap the bottom of the can to remove pudding. Serve hot with butter and milk.
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How Did the Colonists Make Hasty Pudding? Try this Colonial Hasty Pudding Recipe (Hasty Pudding Recipe on the Little House on the Prairie)
Eliza Leslie, a prominent American cookbook author of the early 19th century, contains a recipe for flour hasty pudding in her 1840 Directions for Cookery, In Its Various Branches, and named the corn type "Indian mush." She termed an oatmeal version burgoo.
She emphasized the need for slow cooking rather than haste, and also recommends the use of a special mush-stick for stirring to prevent lumps. (This mush-stick is perhaps related to the spurtle, or the pudding stick of the nursery rhyme beating.)
INGREDIENTS:
The first settlers made Hasty Pudding (hasty pudding recipe colonial) with just water and cornmeal. Then as times became more prosperous, milk, molasses or maple syrup, and sometimes eggs were added to the pudding.
This hasty pudding was once a popular American food because of its low cost, long shelf life, and versatility, and was eaten with both sweet and savory accompaniments.
In early days the colonist lacks wheat, so they substituted cornmeal, a grain they learned to grow from the Native American, which led to the new name Indian pudding.
COOKING DIRECTIONS AND EQUIPMENT USED:
Instead of a wire whisk, the colonials used hand-made beaters like birch twig whisks. After the pudding was mixed, it was baked in a buttered pan or wrapped in a loose, floured sack and boiled for several hours. As the pudding steamed, the cornmeal swelled and filled the sack.
REFERENCE:
Loretta Frances Ichord and Jan Davey Ellis. 1998. Hasty Pudding, Johnnycakes, and Other Good Stuff: Cooking in Colonial America. School and Library Binding – 1869. Millbrook Press. ASIN: B01FGOW2Y6