This was AWESOME! I really appreciate you sharing the first attempt. It is important to know that these don't always work out the way you expect. Showing how you troubleshoot is really helpful
YES INDEED, showing the less than desired result, then doing more investigation, some deciphering..., conducting the experiment a second time with the corrections... voila a nice dish. Thanks for the video!...
What we have to remember with old recipe books is that people left out details they thought would be obvious - because they were for the housewifes and cooks at the time. I guess this is what happened here aswell.
The long cook time reminded me of traditional Boston baked beans, where the colonists would bring their pots to the baker to put in the oven Saturday night so they would be able to eat on Sunday when work was forbidden due to the sabbath
That's actually a really old practise, at least as far back as the medieval age and people brought it over from Europe. Ovens used to be rare and things like Dutch ovens are from the modern age, but after the baker was finished baking people would put their pottage and pies in the bakers oven in the morning and bring them back for dinner at the end of the day. I've heard some bakers did it for free since it didn't cost him anything, he'd use the same amount of fuel and the food was cooked with residual hear from the oven and the people using it were likely all customers anyways. Boston baked beans are also a more modern version of pottage, which was just about anything made in a pot, but many of them were bean based with bacon or salt pork being common additives.
@@arthas640Dutch ovens aren’t “modern,” unless you’re specifically referring to the ceramic coated ones. Cast iron “bake ovens” with a lid (same as a Dutch oven) have been around since at least 1795 and were commonly used.
@@KateEileen "modern" is pretty vague since different people have different definitions but generally the "modern era/period" is when exploration of the new world started, so 1492, or sometimes the start of the reformation in the early 1500s. People usually refer to the 1500s, 1600s, and most of the 1700s as the "early modern era" to help differentiate it from the massive changes after the industrial revolution.
Thanks for including the troubleshooting process! In previous episodes, Jon has said things like "we did a test run, and it didn't work out, so here's what we're changing". But it's nice to hear his thoughts on why it didn't work and how he would change or improve the recipe.
I was wondering why it would need to be cooked for hours, polenta cooks up much quicker than that. Porridge is kept warm overnight and rice pudding is cooked so long till the starch begins to break down. Maybe this is similar.
I am Italian. We make polenta in a pot with a stirrer at the bottom so it doesn't harden or burn at the bottom. Some of us have antique ones, they now have electronic ones
Sometime our failures yield more knowledge than our successes. So I think this was much more informative and entertaining. Most content creators wouldn’t show bad results I am glad you did. Keep history alive love the content.
I love Indian pudding, learned how to make it in home economics back in the 70s. We used almost the exact same ingredients but we would also throw dried fruits into our puddings like figs, raisins, cherries, etc.
@@Nyx773 only some. The colonists wouldn't have blanched their cherries nor would they have cut them in half. They would have pitted them and let them dry in the sun. Not nearly as much of vitamin loss in comparison to the way most people do it today.
What you describe sounds a little bit like the German "Servietten Kloss" . That is an old- fashioned dish made with wheat or spelt instead of maize. The cloth is greased, flowered and filled with your pudding mixture. Fold over the corners, make a knot and secure the knot with string. Stick a long wooden spoon through the knot and place the wooden spoon ends over a pot. The cloth should be suspended and hanging in the middle of the pot. Fill the pot with enough water to create steam, but not so much that it can reach the cloth even while boiling. The Servietten Kloss is not cooked in the boiling water, but in the steam. You have to refill the water to replace the evaporated steam from time to time.
Please never stop making videos. In between the cooking, making, creating, building and discussing, I get such joy whenever I see a new video has been posted.
It's the ingredients, I think. Today, flour, dried coconut, and even the fat used are different. My grandmother baked with lard rendered on her own farm. Butter was not used in baking as much as we do today. If I could ask my grandmother about it today I imagine she would talk about the lack of refrigeration. Lard and ghee (rendered butter) are shelf-stable longer than unrendered fats.
chopped dates would be interesting. Makes a nice texture along with currants to keep your pallet guessing. Just my opinion. Great job John by not cutting out the flaws. That's how we learn.
I grew up eating Indian pudding and it's the molasses flavor that makes it really good. I'm sure the other sweeteners are fine for some, but fresh from the oven or pot with a pat of butter on top and milk poured around the base, it's the original comfort food.
@@TheGravityShifter certainly cozy looking. I'd hate to actually live back then though. Definitely not good times. But much like LARPing, there's nothing wrong with just looking at the good aspects of the Era. Just important to remember that it only appeals to us because it's different and because learning is fun.
@@harmonic5107 Yeah true. We've come a long way technologically speaking but at least we could live in those times today without much worry compared to back then. Not only that but I think it's just the fact it's history and we are just fascinated of things of back in the day brought to our time.
this recipe reminds me of current day slow cooker grits / cornmeal mush... comes out so creamy and delicious and i cook mine for around 8hrs on low or 5 on high.
I have a mixed Slavic ancestry, including Ukrainian. Cornmeal is part of what we eat. It's very good. In the cold winter months, cornmeal is great. Also, Native North American foods, and recipes are great. Thanks for such awesome quality content, from over the years. I hope you have a Merry Christmas. Cheers!
I also have mixed Slavic ancestry. My Croatian side loves cornmeal made into polenta. It's amazing fried up in butter or animal fat and covered with cheese 🤤
This kind of “Indian pudding” is usually thought of as a New England dish. It’s commonly made with molasses instead of maple syrup, and cooked in an oven. But, as Jon demonstrates, you can make it even if you don’t have an oven.
I enjoyed watching the process of figuring out this recipe. Jon you took us on a nice journey here. Thanks for another great program. Happy Holidays to all of you at Townsends!
0:06 Just saw A Sunderland pudding my surname is Sunderland, is there any information on the name I suppose it's named after the city. But if it was originally created by someone called Sunderland that would be fascinating
In Brazil, we have something similar (as in, we use the same ingredients), but we cook it in a pan till it thickens. It's called MINGAU DE FUBÁ. Sometimes we put cheese in it so it can have something a little savory in the middle. It's my comfort food for when it's cold & I'm unwell.
I have cornmeal porridge a lot, so this got my attention! I use 1/4 cup coarse cornmeal to 1 cup of water (standard recipe), but usually increase water to 1 1/4 cup to allow easier boil on stove top. Add cinnamon to water, and brown sugar (molasses if preferred) to sweeten. Some use salt, and butter at end for a more savory taste (minus the cinnamon)
I got really interested in indian pudding after watching the cooking marathon stream last friday. Molassed is really hard to find here but I do have maple syrup at home so I might try a combination of this recipe and the one from the christmas feast video
Sorghum can be used. It has a much stronger flavor than molasses, but i happen to like it! And i'm betting you can find molasses no problem in Amazon. I buy quite a bit of foodstuffs that are hard or impossible to source locally, online. If it's jarred or canned, no problem with it going bad.
It's always fun when the failed attempt is included. It shows the stab in the dark nature of some of these recipes, and of history itself. There are always gaps, and we fill them in as best we can. Excellent stuff!
Thanks Jon for taking it well past the first iteration, and discussing the taste and texture after the 6 hour boil. I'm sure that some sweet fruits would improve the flavor significantly, but I will still wonder just why this was served as a dessert, and to whom. I mean, I don't care how long it boiled, corn meal mush, is corn meal mush! 🤨
Probably because they used sugar a lot less, at least among common folks, than we do today. Nowadays you'd struggle to find anything in a grocery store without some kind of sugar in it (whether cane sugar, corm syrup, or some artificial sweetener), but back in the day, sugar (as in cane sugar) was much more expensive. And the alternatives took a lot more effort or start-up cost (beehives and frames for honey, taps for syrups), so average folks used it more sparingly, often getting sweetness from fruits. So they'd find this sweetened corn porridge much more dessert-y than us.
I've tried some of your recipes and I am very surprised at how often they're actually pretty good. I'm obviously not doing them authentically most the time, but I've tried the things I could. Johnny Cakes were fun, I actually found the mixed grain breads useful, and I've made the stale bread and cheese soup, but wow that macaroni and cheese recipe was really something else! The puddings in particular are really approachable. I wonder if I could make this with some purple corn I have on hand.
@@psalm91rdwlkfpgrl Lol I thought the same thing when I bought it... It's much grittier than the yellow or white corn I've bought even when cooked, and it has more of a sickly blue color when cooked than the robust purple blue one it has when in meal form. Honestly not recommended, I can see why it's not popular!
I love your "lost leg" story! Laughing so hard. I hosted a bachelor party at my despicable dive of a house as a 20-ish boy person... and one guest passed out in the front lawn and lost his teeth (dentures) . I found them a week or so later with the lawn mower!!! CRUNCH.
I really enjoy seeing your learning process. I remember you saying years ago in a video that you weren't much of a cook, but you have turned into one! You have helped me grow into a better cook, too. I share your channel with anyone who likes cooking. I also share your catalog with anyone interested in history. Many people have told me that I make them hungry when I share recipes from your channel. You are a blessing to your fans, friends, and family. I hope to be enjoying your channel for many years to come. Thank you, and bless you.
not sure how the metrics will go for this video but i personally like the concept of going through the process of deciphering the old recipes and figuring out how to make them work. i feel like we haven't seen one in this indepth into the process in a while.
My tribe has a traditional food that is blackberry (or other berry/fruit) cornmeal dumplings - I think they'd be pretty similar to this though I've never actually made them. I should give it a shot!
It is always fascinating to me, that Americans call it "corn" or "maize". In German it is just called "Mais". "Korn" on the other hand is used in four different ways. It either means plain grain of any variety, or it means "kernel", as in a single kernel of any grain (maize/corn included), or it refers to a "Kornfeld" a field full of grain bearing plants. The last use is a little removed, as "Korn" can just refer to a wheat or rye schnapps/liquor.
We (as creators and audience) learn a lot from mistakes. So it is very helpful (and honest) to show the first try and how it was changed to become at least edible. Thank you so much.
1:30 Funny story. The word "corn" is still used in the UK to refer to any grain, but not a lot of people know this. I watched a free documentary on RU-vid on ancient Rome where the British host mentioned that the Caesar would occasionally give out free corn. One person commented that he didn't trust that documentary since corn (referring to maize) came from the new world. This then started a debate about how maize was possibly known in ancient Rome since travelers came from near and far to trade in Rome, etc, etc. It was quite funny.
cool stuff! i think that when we read many of these old recipes, they gave variations based on their own assumptions of how people may be cooking, based on how they would sometimes do things when they cooked. the wonderful Amelia Simmons, is assumed to have been a cook in the kitchens of wealthy landowners. You can tell when you read her work that she makes very astute observations and suggestions, obviously through a lot of trial and error and with plenty of time to observe. Growing Carrots out of holes in the side of a barrel filled with soil!? that's some permacultural stuff. In the case of some recipes though i feel like she is giving a direct example of how she does it sometimes, like this pudding. it makes no sense to boil this for 12 hours, but she could just be putting this example out there as something that can accompany another item that boils for 12 hours, so the water isn't wasted and they boil together. practical hired cook knowledge.
The mixture reminds me of banaha (traditional dish of Indigenous folx of the SE). Banaha is usually cooked in tied up corn husks (like tamales), sometimes with fruit in the mix, and/or made with hickory nut milk for the liquid. I'd bet that the name comes not only from being made of "Indian corn," but from being an adaptation of an Indigenous dish! I really appreciate y'all including the first attempt & walking through the troubleshooting stage. Working out what an author assumed you knew without having to say it, printer's errors, and translation misunderstandings is both fun and frustrating.
Yes, though the indigenous maize would have been nixtamalized, giving it the taste of hominy. When new foods are adopted, people can easily miss the centuries of wisdom that surround the use of the food. Without nixtamalization, the colonizers suffered from pellegra if they relied on maize as a large portion of their diet. This vitamin deficiency disease was exported to Africa, sans wisdom. It would be like eating taro roots without thorough cooking because you didn't know better. Unprocessed corn is not a healthy food either.
@@GeckoHiker No, not for this dish, particularly as I’m relating it to banaha, which is not always made with masa, often just plain corn meal. The nixtamalized version of “corn pudding” is called “grits” and still very popular. Unprocessed corn is *perfectly healthy* and we managed just fine-Euro-American hybrid sweet corn is marginally unhealthy in high proportions, but it also is NOT one of the thousands of types of corn we developed ourselves. Not all corn was nixtamalized in Indigenous cuisine. Nixtamalization was not necessarily even the most common way to prepare corn, just *a* method. Indigenous diets in Turtle Island would not generally have suffered niacin deficiency, even with a maize-based diet-our food ways are structured around seasonality and variety, which do more than anything else to combat nutrient deficiency. Making hominy (for us) has more to do with changing the texture and taste of maize (as well as the dynamics of cooking it) than increasing nutritional value (though that is a nice bonus and was understood). My ancestors never needed to nixtamalize corn per se, they did it because they liked it. (Essentially every pre-columbian crop we cultivated *before maize came north* and never stopped growing after is a “rich source of niacin.” Pellagra was never a thing before colonization.)
@masonkicinski3277 Pellegra may not have been a regular thing before colonization because of the gift of nixtal. When maize became a subsistence crop anywhere, pellegra followed if nixtamalization wasn't also practiced. If your culture doesn't use maize as an unprocessed subsistence crop, then you might be spared. My people processed maize 99% of the time. We didn't have "sweet corn." The ears from the harvest, when more foods were abundant, might have been roasted in ashes. We might have popped old, unprocessed kernels in the ashes of a fire to amuse the children. I still soak my maize, my acorns, and all my dried beans...according to ancient wisdom. I know better than to eat a cassava root without processing because it's not in my cultural knowledge base and we have the internet today. Poor children in the American South didn't benefit from a millenia of gathered wisdom and suffered from pellagra as recently as the 20th century. As an indigenous American, I would never consume any hybridized "corn". My pantry contains only nixtamalized maize and masa harina. The same way wheatberries are eventually used to make a variety of breads, I use nixtal to make flatbreads, tortillas, hominy grits, and dumplings. No fry breads or high fructose corn syrup drinks in my house! We are healthy.
I grew up on cape cod and Indian pudding was very common around the holidays. It still is to some extent. You can even get it in cans in the supermarket here!
One of my favourite episodes in a while , I love a good cooking episode with Jon ! Appreciate your effort digging through the books to make a complete and proper recipe come to light ! All the best !
Pudding doesn’t automatically imply sweet and eating it cold; Yorkshire pudding being the main one that comes to mind. I think serving this warm with butter and more syrup would be heavenly for breakfast or even dessert.
I really appreciate that Jon acknowledges the failure, figures out what went wrong, and then tries again in the same video. He could have very easily filmed a second video from scratch with a perfect outcome, and we'd be none the wiser.
I like that you left the failed attempt in the video and showed what you did to fix the problem. The historical recipes definitely need to be interpreted. I enjoy the process and experimentation to get the right taste and texture.
I have made Indian pudding before I baked it in a bean pot in the oven. You really want to use molasses instead. If you want the easy way out there is the Bar Harbor Foods Company in Maine that makes canned Indian pudding under the label Atlantic Indian pudding.
Jon, good video, I like the way you show your trials and tribulations through the recipe. As children our father would encourage us to plant different things in the garden so one year we grew Indian corn when it was time to harvest we promptly took it in to our mother and ask her to cook it for us, it was the toughest stuff we ever ate 😂
Great video. I like that you showed us the initial failure so we can follow your thought process in finding the errors and deciphering how the recipe was meant to be interpreted.
Just sacrificing a commenting for the youtube algorithm. Never had Indian pudding. Kinda glad I never had to survive on cornmeal. But I enjoy the content and the history lesson.
Well, I have a teorry about the 12 hours of cooking. Then the mills could not crush the corn into a fine meal. So probably the corn was still chuncky. Ergo needed a long cooking time.
Jon ~ My understanding is that in 18th century New England, corn pudding was often (if not usually) served as a starter course vs. dessert since it’s so filling - thus ensuring a roast could feed more people. In fact, one of the biographies of Abigail Adams indicated that throughout her life she was so frugal, she unfailingly served a corn pudding first at every supper - even when the Adams’ financial circumstances had improved to the point she could’ve dispensed with the practice. The incentive to eat the pudding was supposedly that the person who ate the most of it was thereafter rewarded with the largest portion of meat - a clever way to thwart overconsumption of the most costly food on the table. 🍖🍗
Very good demonstration of resurrecting old recipes. The silly thing is, this is basic cornmeal mush cooked unnecessarily. Maybe Amelia Simmons thought it surely would have to be boiled like wheat flour puddings, that there was no way it could just be done on the hob in 15 minutes.
sounds similar of Polenta which is common in Italian Speaking countries Southern Switzerland in the Ticino and Italy of course, but it is cooked in water maybe milk too
This was predictable, raw corn flour doesn't mix with water, unless you keep on stirring it just falls on the bottom of the pot and makes a crust I think boiling it previously till it becomes a kind of mass and then putting it into a cloth with seasoning could work Also, maybe if you used some nixtamalizated one instead, it could do the trick. I haven't used it myself but was told that is more sticky.
I cook a similar one that my Italian Nana made for me with Polenta & she used eggs, Butter, & Sugar. I noticed that recipe #1 & #2 call for Eggs & Butter also. Maybe # 3 is just for the people that wouldn’t have them? So it’s gonna be difficult to get it to taste super good? 🤷🏼♀️
I can kind of see why people would've wanted a recipe like this back then. If they had plans later in the day, like to work on a big building project or laundry or something, it'd be more convenient to get dinner taken care of in morning. Or maybe start it before bed and have breakfast ready in the morning? Sort of the same reasons people use crockpots today?
Haven't seen one of your vids show up on my suggestions for a while, and glad it did . It's intriguing to see what others prepared and ate in different geography and times and how it was prepared.
In the late 1800s, there wasn't really any way to keep an oven at a consistent speed for any time, let alone 6-12 hours. Boiling was the best option to keep a relatively consistent temperature for hours.
If you seal the pot, doesn't that make it a pressure cooker? I wonder how many kitchens had pipe bombs like this. Like the first KFC recipes at 29 psi.
*ONE addition:* the reason why this was boiled and not cooked in fire is because the temperature of boiling is just 100 Celsius, which is much lower than most other methods. This is important for the dish to be as intended.
This looks tasty, but it doesn't bear much resemblance to the Indian pudding I have grown up with here in Massachusetts. Ours is much less solid, and we do like to eat it hot, topped with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.
I have the theory that if the recipe really implies fruits to be put in, the long cooking time will almost create little pockets of jam or jelly in there, where the fruits dissolve slowly over time. Sounds delicious!
wasnt there something you had to do with maize to make the starches fully digestible? i remember there was something with lye.... maybe the long cook time has a similar effect and i would say its possible that modern maize does not require as much preparation as the maize from the period so with modern maize the difference isnt that noticable
Haven't had corn pudding in years. I may have to try it, especially since it has maple syrup instead of molasses (which has a bitter aftertaste to me.) Maybe add some cranberries?
My first thought was something more like a rice pudding. The way the second one worked reminds me of cooking in a thermos or thermal pot. With that kind of cooking it's all about putting the heat in there and just keeping it in and letting it work its magic.
