We have fried clams, clam cakes, boiled dinners, & lobsters prepared every way.
If you're hungry, it's all delicious. It's ugly. Indian pudding is our least-appealing dish.
It's a viscous dark liquid that's runny when hot & gelatinous when cold. It's tasty, comforting, & very New England.
Indian pudding traces back to early English colonization in New England, which began on Cape Cod in 1620 & spread to Boston & the surrounding area.
English colonizers brought hurried pudding, a porridge composed with flour, milk, & sugar. Flour was scarce, but cornmeal was plentiful.
Nauset & Wampanoag tribes of coastal Massachusetts introduced grain to the colonists; they dubbed cornmeal "Indian food."
Molasses was easier to find than quick pudding's sugar. Molasses is a byproduct of rum distillation, therefore New England had plenty of the sweet syrup.