Hasty pudding

Hasty pudding

"Little Americans. Do Your Bit. Eat Oatmeal- Corn meal mush- Hominy - other corn cereals- and rice with milk. Save the Wheat for our Soldiers. Leave Nothing On Your Plate.", (U.S. Food Administration. Educational Division. Advertising Section, ca. 1918)
Type	Pudding or porridge
Place of origin	United Kingdom
Main ingredients	Grains, milk or water

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

Since the 16th century at least, hasty pudding has been 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" is also mentioned in Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of 1755 as a combination of either milk and flour or oatmeal and water.

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

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 spurtle, or the pudding stick of the nursery rhyme beating.)

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 grits or 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.