A Tapscott Treat - Persimmon Pudding

 

When I was a child, the best of all foods were those of autumn—sweet corn, pumpkin pies, and Persimmon Pudding, made from persimmons picked up below a tree back of Grandpa’s farm just south of Marshall, Illinois. This persimmon tree, our own special persimmon tree, grew alongside a dirt lane leading to the farm belonging to Aunt Fairy and Uncle Billy (who kept pennies in his pockets for us kids and who had an antique phonograph that played cylindrical records), a farm immediately behind White Star Farm. Note that I said that the persimmons were picked up. They were never just picked. Persimmons are very sour and puckery unless they are dead ripe, and the only way to make certain that they are dead ripe is to wait until they fall from a tree. When picked up from the ground, the small, brown, shriveled fruits are nearly as sweet as dried dates, which they resemble. They do not look (or taste) at all like the large, glossy orange things that are sometimes sold as “persimmons” in supermarkets. These are, at best, distant relatives of real Illinois persimmons. I hear rumors that Indiana and other nearby states also have persimmons like those of my childhood, but I never quite believed it. In fact, I question whether real persimmons existed outside of Clark County, Illinois, where our own private persimmon tree grows. I still believe that the only way to get authentic, honest-to-goodness, bona fide persimmons is to gather them yourselves from a Clark County persimmon tree.

Persimmon Pudding is difficult to prepare because the tiny persimmons have to be rubbed through a strainer to remove the seeds before they can be used. And it takes a lot of persimmons and a lot of rubbing to make even a bit of pudding. But each fall, my mother and nearly everyone else in Clark County made brown, cake-like Persimmon Pudding. (Presumably, the other people had their own special persimmon trees.) Persimmon Pudding marked the arrival of autumn, just as snow marks the arrival of winter and daffodils, the arrival of spring. Without Persimmon Pudding, one could not be really certain that autumn had appeared. Falling leaves, pumpkins with frost, and corn shocks were not quite enough to get in the spirit of things. For the people of Clark County and for the Tapscotts and Imles (the other side of the family), Persimmon Pudding heralded the departure of summer, the arrival of autumn, the anticipation of winter, the progress of time. It was not a dessert; it was a sacrament.

I have never forgotten Persimmon Pudding. It was not just that it tasted good, though it did, particularly with farm-fresh whipped cream. It is that I miss that harbinger of autumn. Without Persimmon Pudding, autumn never seems quite like autumn, particularly in Albuquerque, where I now live and where there are few frosted pumpkins and little shocked corn. After Mom died, my brothers and sisters found her handwritten recipe for Persimmon Pudding. They framed it and gave it to me. It now holds a place of reverence on top of a bookcase in our living room, alongside a picture of my brothers and me in sailor suits when we were kids.

Here is the recipe, exactly as Mom wrote it (even with one misspelled word), in case you are ever lucky enough to find real, honest-to-goodness, bona fide, Clark County, Illinois persimmons.