Indian Pudding

Not to be confused with “Indian Pudding”. That bland corn dish popular with early New Englanders. (Current ones too, probably.)

For a civilization that’s 6,000 years old, India seems overly influenced by a measly 200 years of British rule. 

The English forced them to build a top-notch railway system,…

…adopt a legal system that’s surprisingly fair…

…and excel at cricket (beating the English at their own game in 1983).  

But there’s one thing Indians dug in their heels about and that’s pudding. 

Brittania may rule the waves but when it comes to making pudding, she stumbles – her hair gets in her eyes, her glasses steam up and her crown slides over one ear.  I see you leaping to England’s defence. “What about Hasty Pudding?”  

Sounds good but it’s just mush. Blood Pudding? Yick! It’s not even as good as it sounds. 

“Surely,” you say, “surely, you must concede Rice Pudding to be a bonafide, lip-smacker.” True enough. But where do you think they got it? Rice doesn’t grow in England. 

In India, Rice Pudding is called Kheer. Twenty-four hundred years ago, Emperor Chandragupta was wolfing it down from bowls of fine silver while the Druids were poking about for nuts and berries at Stonehenge. 

The original Kheer was so delicious, it was reserved for Hindu gods – and thereby hangs a tale.

You may have heard different versions of this legend but once upon a time, India’s greatest chess master (who also happened to be the emperor) had a standing challenge that anyone who could beat him in a game of chess could name his reward. An old sage accepted the challenge and won the game. 

The reward he asked for was simple: one grain of sand on the first square of a chess board. Two on the second, four on the third and so on doubling each square. 

With a contemptuous snort, the emperor accepted but to the surprise of everyone (except you math majors out there) before he even reached the final row, the king owed the sage enough grains to cover the entire subcontinent knee deep in rice. 

Then the sage revealed himself to be the Hindu god, Lord Krishna, who told the king he didn’t have to pay it all at once. He merely had to give one bowl of Kheer to any pilgrim who visited his temple. That custom continues to this day.

And as of this writing, if you google “How many Kheer recipes are there?” you’ll get five million, three hundred and fifty thousand results. Here, in my opinion, are the best four.

I can state, unequivocably, that Rice Pudding in India is as good as it gets.  To be fair, Rice Pudding made properly anywhere is as good as it gets. It’s  just rice boiled in milk with sugar and anything else you like shoved in. (Let’s face it, we pudding lovers are a simple people.)