Reader Judi Clifton gave me an early Christmas present: a bunch of old recipes, including many published by Hawaiian Electric Co. and a newsletter once published by The Gas Co. called The Blue Flame. I had such a great time paging through these old recipes, which also included newspaper clippings of recipes from now-gone restaurants.

It always amuses me to see how automatically we added monosodium glutamate to everything in the old days; and the No. 1 brand (the only brand?) was Ajinomoto, to the point where ingredient lists just called for "aji." Everybody put it in everything for its "umami" effect.

One thing I enjoyed about Judi's recipe collection was that it included clippings from elsewhere, as well. One such was the following recipe, which brought back rich memories.

Years ago, I worked for a newspaper in Washington state that was in the process of building and expanding. We began to hire people from all over the country, and one couple we hired came from New England. The first time we had dinner together, they offered to bring dessert and arrived at my home with this pudding that became one of my favorite things on the planet — a not-too-sweet, molasses-flavored not-quite-bread, not-quite-cake.

It's called Indian pudding and it's a very, very old recipe. (They say the Indians taught it to the Puritans, and perhaps they did, in some primitive form.)

I love anything that involves corn or cornmeal, and the idea of a dessert with cornmeal texture sent me over the moon.

I've been making Indian pudding ever since, an easy hearty dessert that can be served at any temperature and is particularly enhanced by a scoop of ice cream. Here's the version Judi sent to me:

INDIAN PUDDING