Dudie’s Corn Pudding

How we make it.

2 1/2 cups milk
4 eggs
4 tablespoons butter, melted **originally margarine but I cannot**
2 cans whole kernel corn, drained
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
Pepper

Beat eggs and add milk and melted butter. In another bowl add corn, sugar, flour, salt and pepper. Stir. Combine the two mixtures and bake in a 2 1/2 quart casserole at 350 degrees for 1 hour.

Stir every 10 minutes the first 30 minutes. It is done when a knife can go in and come out clean. Serves 8.

Why we make it.

My mom grew up the youngest of eight cousins. Children of the five sisters, raised within blocks of each other. All except the oldest are girls, long since scattered across the Southeast. Every few years the seven girls fly home to spend a weekend remembering. There will usually be a dinner at my mom's, the new HQ, in her mother's hospitable style. Many hands will make light work as they cook, clean up and coven around her nicely set table, in their mothers' cooperative style. On this table will be a couple of useless ceramic rabbits and a steaming casserole dish of corn pudding. This is their birthright. Gentle words around a warm, luscious bowl of my great aunt Dudie's custard soaked kernels. It's how they know they’re home. A quick Google will tell you that corn pudding is Appalachian in origin, which tracks and fascinates. I honestly had never thought about where corn pudding comes from until I wondered if you would have heard of it. I’m sure the original version was gross. Anything known as “hoppy glop” must’ve been. But I’m tickled by the idea of mid-century Dudie whippin' up the previous generation's Appalachian fare from the canned goods of her time. I’m even more tickled that I can do it, too. That’s why I made it.