A deep brown baked cornmeal pudding in a plain white baking dish, a serving spooned into a small bowl beside it with raisins showing and a pour of cream. — Baked cornmeal and molasses pudding with raisins, served with cream.

Baked Indian Pudding (1918)

Name: Baked Indian Pudding
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 3 h 15 min
Total time: 4 h
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 26 fl oz whole milk; 2 oz yellow cornmeal; 1.5 oz fresh beef suet, finely grated; 5.5 fl oz molasses; ⅓ tsp ground cinnamon; ⅓ tsp ground nutmeg; 2 oz raisins; ½ tsp salt; 1 tsp butter for the dish; 6 fl oz light cream

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Baked Indian pudding from a 1918 lunch-room book of wheatless recipes: cornmeal and molasses with suet and raisins, baked slowly for hours, with no egg.

By The Forgotten MenuPublished Oct 22, 2026

Recipe makes: 6 servings of about 4 oz
Prep: 15 min
Cook: 3 hr 15 min
Total: 4 hr

The cornmeal cooks in the milk for an hour on the stove, the pudding bakes slowly for two hours or more, and it should rest for half an hour before serving.

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Baked cornmeal and molasses pudding with raisins, served with cream.

The story behind the recipe

Baked Indian pudding is cornmeal cooked slowly in milk, sweetened with molasses, spiced, and baked for hours until it turns soft and deep brown. “Indian” comes from Indian meal, the old American name for cornmeal. This version, from Bertha E. Nettleton’s One Hundred-Portion War Time Recipes (1918), adds ground beef suet and raisins, has no egg, and is served with cream.

Thirteen quarts of milk

For a hundred portions of four ounces each, the book’s pudding takes two pounds of cornmeal, thirteen quarts of milk, nearly three quarts of molasses and a pound and a half of ground beef suet. It is the first baked pudding in the chapter, after three that are set with gelatine. The next is a Baked Indian Apple Tapioca Pudding, with cornmeal, tapioca and sliced apples. Neither uses wheat flour or egg.

Suet was one of the fats home cooks were told they could use. Foods That Will Win the War and How to Cook Them, also published in 1918, says “butter and butter substitutes are best kept for table use and for flavoring,” and lists “lard and beef and mutton suet” among the shortening fats. Its own Indian pudding, for six at home, has no fat at all. Nettleton’s lunch room and the 1918 rules it cooked under are the subject of How Did You Feed a Hundred People Without Wheat in 1918?.

Making it today

Use fresh beef suet from a butcher, grated fine while cold. Packaged shredded suet is often coated in wheat flour (one leading brand, Atora, is), which this wheatless pudding was meant to avoid, so if fresh suet is hard to find, use butter. A sixteenth of the book’s recipe fills a 1½-quart dish and serves six.

The book’s “slow oven” for “two hours or more” is our 300°F (150°C) for two to two and a half hours. A period slow oven ran cooler, but modern recipes for the pudding bake it at 300°F (150°C), and the long time matters more. Use ordinary molasses, not blackstrap. The book serves it “with Cream”; the amount is ours.

Nettleton’s book prints no menus, but its wheatless soups pair well with it; try the Corn Chowder (1918) first.

Cook cornmeal and milk in double boiler one hour. Add other ingredients, put in baking dishes and bake in slow oven two hours or more. ...

Bertha E. NettletonOne Hundred-Portion War Time Recipes (Philadelphia and London: J. B. Lippincott, 1918), p. 34

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Ingredients

For 6 servings of about 4 oz. Quantities are shown as written.

Quantities as written here, for 6 servings of about 4 oz.

Pudding

Whole milk26 fl oz
Yellow cornmeal2 oz
Fresh beef suet, finely grated1.5 oz
Molasses5 1/2 fl oz
Ground cinnamon1/3 tsp
Ground nutmeg1/3 tsp
Raisins2 oz
Salt1/2 tsp
Butter for the dish1 tsp

To serve

Light cream6 fl oz

Ingredients as written here

26 fl oz whole milk
2 oz yellow cornmeal
1.5 oz fresh beef suet, finely grated
5.5 fl oz molasses
⅓ tsp ground cinnamon
⅓ tsp ground nutmeg
2 oz raisins
½ tsp salt
1 tsp butter for the dish
6 fl oz light cream

Equipment

Double boiler, or a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water
Whisk
1½-quart baking dish

Instructions

Heat the milk in the top of a double boiler over simmering water until steaming. Whisk in the cornmeal in a thin stream.
Cook over the simmering water for 1 hour, stirring every 10 minutes, until the mixture is thick and smooth and the cornmeal no longer tastes gritty.
Heat the oven to 300°F (150°C). Grease the baking dish with the butter for the dish.
Stir the suet, molasses, cinnamon, nutmeg, raisins and salt into the cornmeal until the suet has melted in and the color is even. Pour into the dish.
Bake for 2 to 2½ hours, until the pudding is deep brown, set at the edges and still slightly soft in the center. It firms as it cools.
Leave it to rest for 30 minutes, then spoon it into bowls warm and pour a little cream over each serving.

Nutrition

310calories per serving

Recipe makes: 6 servings of about 4 oz
Servings: 6

Estimated per serving from USDA FoodData Central values for the listed ingredients, leaving out the cream to serve.

Recipe notes

When adjusting quantities

This is one sixteenth of the book’s recipe for a hundred 4-ounce portions. Keep the dish deep enough that the pudding stands at least 2 inches; a wider dish bakes faster.

Notes

Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the servings.

If the top browns too fast, lay a sheet of foil loosely over the dish for the last half hour.

Contains milk. The pudding has no wheat, but check that the suet is fresh and not packaged with flour. Refrigerate leftovers within 2 hours and use within 3 to 4 days; it reheats well in a low oven.

Scaling changes the ingredients only; pan sizes and cooking times need their own judgment. To adapt this recipe further, try the recipe tool at TuneMyRecipe (opens in a new tab), our sister site.