hasty-pudding

Dictionary of American Words And Phrases by John Russell Bartlett.

Indian meal stirred in boiling water into a thick batter or pudding, and eaten with milk, butter, and sugar or molasses. Joel Barlow wrote a poem on the subject, in which he thus accounts for its name:


Thy name is Hasty-Pudding! thus our sires

Were wont to greet thee fuming from their fires

And while they argued in thy just defence

With logic clear, they thus explain'd the sense:--

"In haste the boiling cauldron o'er the blaze,

Receives and cooks the ready-powder'd maize;

In haste 'tis serv'd, and then in equal haste,

With cooling milk, we make the sweet repast."

Such is thy name, significant and clear,

A name, a sound to every Yankee dear.

Canto I.

Hasty-pudding is a favorite dish in every part of the United States. In Pennsylvania and some other States it is called mush; in New York, suppawn. Hasty-pudding in England is made of milk and flour.

Sure hasty-pudding is thy chiefest dish,

With bullock's liver or some stinking fish.--Dorset Poems.

Dictionary of American Words And Phrases by John Russell Bartlett.

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