National Indian Pudding Day is a holiday observed on November 13th annually, although not everyone is familiar with it. That’s because Indian pudding is a dish not well-known outside of New England. What is Indian pudding?

This dish is made with cornmeal, milk, eggs, and spices, and sweetened with molasses. It’s a dessert that has been traditionally enjoyed by some Americans since the 17th century and one that some people are going to want to take the time to discover.

The History of Indian Pudding

While a person is celebrating National Indian Pudding Day and getting ready to make this dessert, they may be tempted to think that it’s a Native American dessert. Unfortunately, they would be wrong. That’s because this isn’t a Native American dessert, despite its name.

As many culinary scientists have pointed out before us, Native Americans didn’t have molasses or milk to cook with, so they couldn’t have made Indian pudding. No, this pudding was the invention of settlers to the New World.

They just used newly discovered cornmeal to make an Old World treat. The British had been making a dessert named hasty pudding since the 16th century, if not earlier. This pudding is made of wheat flour that’s cooked in boiling milk until it’s made into a thick batter.

In a 17th-century cookbook, there were three types of hasty pudding one could make. The first recipe was made with butter, flour, currants, and raisins. The second type was made like a boiled pudding, and the final one was made using grated bread, sugar, and eggs.

When settlers from Britain came to the New World, they simply swapped out the wheat in hasty pudding with cornmeal and used molasses for sugar. This created the iconic dessert that’s well-known in New England but isn’t all that popular throughout the rest of the U.S.

Amazing Facts About Indian Pudding

Since we understand that most people aren’t familiar with Indian pudding, we decided to go ahead and find out all we could about this dish so that we can share what we’ve learned with everyone reading about this holiday. With that said, let’s learn a few things about Indian pudding below.

• This dish got its name because its main ingredient, cornmeal, used to be called Indian meal.
• During the 19th and early 20th centuries, Indian pudding was popular but fell out of favor during the 1920s.
• The rise of packaged puddings was one of the reasons why Indian pudding isn’t well known today.

Observing National Indian Pudding Day

Those of you who are looking to celebrate National Indian Pudding Day are probably going to want to serve this dessert for yourself, your friends, and your family. Although you probably won’t have much luck finding this dessert in the supermarket, you can easily make it yourself.

All you need is a good recipe and a few minor ingredients. Ingredients include milk, butter, yellow cornmeal, flour, salt, molasses, eggs, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and maybe some raisins. When you’re done whipping up the dessert, take a picture of your Indian pudding and post a picture of it on the internet using the hashtag #NationalIndianPuddingDay.