Persimmon Pudding with Hard Sauce

“One of the most palatable fruits of this land,” proclaimed John Smith in Virginia at the beginning of the seventeenth century, referring, no doubt, not to disagreeably astringent, unripe summer persimmons but to the succulent ripe ones that fall off the trees in late fall. Today, Indiana may grow more Japanese persimmons than any state in the nation, but only in the South do you still find the more flavo