To make a proper Midwestern persimmon pudding, you need to find an American persimmon tree. That’s most of the fun.
Made with farmed Asian persimmons, which you can find in some grocery stores in the winter, the pudding should still be decent—soft and treacly, with a texture somewhere between gingerbread and pumpkin pie filling.
But for me, the point is to find a wild tree hung with squishy, golf-ball-sized wild fruits, glowing orange in the fall sun, and to pulp them yourself, tasting the jammy, creamsicle-flavored purée straight out of the bowl before folding it into the batter and baking the old-fashioned dessert.
A Midwestern persimmon pudding is a statement about time and place, and no supermarket shipment of California-grown Fuyu or Hachiya persimmons has the soul—or, for that matter, the soft texture or the essential sugar-plum and holiday-spice flavors—of a bucket of half-smushed wild American persimmons picked on the side of the road somewhere. —Jed Portman
Jed Portman edits Midwesterner.
Kevin Necessary is a freelance illustrator and editorial cartoonist. He is currently the editorial cartoonist for The Cincinnati Enquirer. His cartoons are syndicated by GoComics, and his cartoons have been published in a variety of publications such as The Week and Politico. A Cincinnati native, Kevin will fight to the death defending Cincinnati chili. He lives with his wife, Julie, and three cats, Huckleberry, Grayson, and Bonnie.