Hasty pudding

Hasty pudding is a pudding or porridge of grains cooked in milk or water. In the United States, it invariably refers to a version made of ground corn. Hasty pudding is notably mentioned in a verse of the early American song Yankee Doodle.

British hasty pudding

Since the 16th century at least, hasty pudding has been either a British dish of wheat flour cooked in boiling milk or water until it reaches the consistency of a thick batter or an oatmeal porridge.. Hasty pudding was used as a term for the latter by Hannah Glasse in The Art of Cookery (1747).

Hasty pudding in North America

Extant North America recipes include wheat, oat, and corn-based puddings.

Eliza Leslie's recipes

Eliza Leslie, an influential American cookbook author of the early 19th century, includes a recipe for flour hasty pudding in her 1840 Directions for Cookery, In Its Various Branches, and calls the corn type "Indian mush" (she calls an oatmeal version burgoo). She stresses 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 pudding stick of the nursery rhyme beating.)

Corn or Indian mush

A North American version, known as corn mush or Indian mush, is in its simplest form corn meal cooked slowly in water until it thickens. Like north Italian polenta, it may be eaten hot, or left to cool and solidify, when slices of the cold pudding may then be fried. 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, such as maple syrup, molasses, or salted meat.

Indian pudding

Indian pudding is a more elaborate form of corn hasty pudding. It consists of milk, corn, and molasses, (or, alternatively, maple syrup and honey, and sometimes sugar), spices (nearly always including cinnamon and ground ginger), butter, and usually raisins and nuts, baked in a slow oven for several hours. It is a traditional New England dessert.

In Yankee Doodle

Hasty pudding is referred to in a verse of the early American song Yankee Doodle:

Fath'r and I went down to camp
Along with Captain Goodin',
And there we saw the men and boys
As thick as hasty puddin'

Similar foods

Polenta is the Italian version of hasty pudding, with corn substituted for the wheat originally used by the Romans. Mămăligă is the Romanian version, also made with corn.

Translation of "Hasty pudding"

German: Hasty Pudding.