Family Recipe Friday - Persimmon Pudding

Family Recipe Friday is a daily blogging prompt at Geneabloggers.com used by many genealogy bloggers to help them post content on their sites. Family Recipe Friday is an opportunity to share your family recipes with fellow bloggers and foodies alike. Whether it’s an old-fashioned recipe passed down through generations, a recipe uncovered through your family history research, or a discovered recipe that embraces your ancestral heritage share them on Family Recipe Friday. This series was suggested by Lynn Palermo of The Armchair Genealogist.


My Grandma, Vivian Mae Barnes Huneycutt, made a great persimmon pudding. She passed the recipe down to her daughter, Aunt Ruth. I found Grandma and Aunt Ruth's Persimmon Pudding recipe!

From Wikipedia:
The word persimmon is derived from putchamin, pasiminan, or pessamin, from an Algonquin language of the easter United States, meaning "a dry fruit". Persimmons are generally light yellow-orange to dark red in color, and depending on the species. They are high in glucose, with a balanced proten profile, and possess various medicinal and chemical uses. There are generally two types of persimmon fruit; astringent and non-astringent. Astringent persimmons contain very high levels of soluble tannins and are unpalatable if eaten before ripening. The astringency of tannins is removed by ripening by exposure to light over several days, or artificially with chemicals. The fruit, with a high tannin content, is astringent and bitter if immature. The tannin levels are reduced as the fruit matures. Non-astringent persimmons are not actually free of tannins as the term suggests, but rather are far less astringent before ripening, and lose more of their tannic quality sooner. Non-astringent persimmons may be consumed when still very firm to very very soft. The American persimmon is native to eastern North America. It is colloquially known as a "pawdad". It has a taste reminiscent of both plums and dates. Persimmons are eaten fresh or dried, raw or cooked. When eaten fresh the peel is usually cut/peeled off and the fruit is often cut into quarters or eaten whole like an apple. The persimmon also figures prominently in American culinary tradition. It can be used in cookies, cakes, puddings, salads and as a topping for breakfast cereal. Persimmon Pudding is a dessert using fresh persimmons. Persimmons may be stored at room temperature (20°C) where they will continue to ripen.

Though persimmon trees belong to the same genus as ebony trees, persimmon tree wood has a limited use in the manufacture of objects requiring hard wood. Persimmon wood is used for paneling in traditional Korean and Japanese furniture. In North America, the lightly colored, fine-grained wood of D. virginiana is used to manufacture billiard cues and shuttles (used in the textile industry). Persimmon wood was also heavily used in making the highest-quality heads of the golf clubs known as "woods", until the golf industry moved primarily to metal woods in the last years of the 20th century. Persimmon woods are still made, but in far lower numbers than in past decades. Over the last few decades persimmon wood has become popular among bow craftsmen, especially in the making of traditional longbow. Like some other plants of the genus Diospyros, older persimmon heartwood is black or dark brown in color, in stark contrast to the sapwood and younger heartwood, which is pale in color.

Persimmon Pudding
2 cups Persimmon Pulp
3 beaten Eggs
1 ½ cups Milk
2 cups Flour
½ tsp Soda
½ tsp Cinnamon
½ tsp Nutmeg
1 tsp Salt
1 ½ cups Sugar
3 Tbsp melted Butter

Blend pulp and beaten eggs. Alternately add milk with the dry ingredients that have been mixed together. Stir in butter. Pour mixture into greased pan at about 2” deep. Bake 1 ¼ hours at 325 or until firm.
Source: My Grandma, Vivian Mae Barnes Huneycutt