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Boiled Corn Bread
One and one-fourth pints each of sweet milk and buttermilk or sour cream, halt a pint molasses, one tea-spoon soda, three teaspoons cream tartar, one even table-spoon salt, one and a fourth pints each of corn meal and flour; sift the soda and cream tartar in the flour; mix all the ingredients thoroughly together and put in a buttered tin pail; cover closely, place in a kettle two-thirds full of boiling water; cover, and boil steadily for three hours, replenishing when needful with boiling water. To be eaten hot with butter. -Mrs. I. N. Burritt in "In the Kitchen."
This is a steamed pudding-bread, closer to Boston brown bread than to a baked cornbread, and it succeeds or fails on the seal of the mold and a steady, unbroken boil.
- The measurements in cupsA pint is 2 cups, so this calls for 2 1/2 cups sweet milk, 2 1/2 cups buttermilk or sour cream, 1 cup molasses, and 2 1/2 cups each cornmeal and flour. That is a large batch, roughly 2 1/2 quarts of batter.
- Vessel and headspaceThe "buttered tin pail" needs to be at least 4 quarts, or divide the batter between two greased 2-quart coffee tins or pudding molds. Fill no more than two-thirds; the batter rises considerably and has nowhere to go once the lid is on.
- Sealing it"Cover closely" is the hinge. Butter a round of parchment against the surface, then foil over the rim tied with string, or a tight-fitting lid weighted down. Any water that works its way in leaves a gray, sodden band through the loaf.
- The water bathSet the pail on a trivet, jar ring or folded towel so it does not sit on the bare bottom of the kettle. The recipe has the kettle two-thirds full of boiling water. Top up only with boiling water; cold water drops the temperature and stalls the rise.
- Soda and cream of tartarOne teaspoon soda with three teaspoons cream of tartar is a homemade baking powder, sifted into the flour so it does not react in the wet mix. Modern double-acting baking powder is not a straight swap here, since the soda is also there to neutralize the buttermilk and molasses.
- Sweet milk and sour"Sweet milk" means plain fresh whole milk, as opposed to soured. Cultured buttermilk from a carton works for the sour half; modern commercial sour cream is likely to be thicker than the pourable batter here wants, and can be let down with milk.
- CornmealUse a medium or fine stone-ground yellow meal. Degerminated supermarket meal gives a blander, drier crumb, and coarse grits-grade meal will stay gritty even after three hours of steam.
- Doneness and timingThree hours at a steady boil is not exaggerated for a mold this size; a skewer into the center should come out clean and the loaf should pull slightly from the sides. Let it stand five minutes before turning out, or the hot crumb tears.
- Yield and servingA full batch gives two good loaves, twelve to sixteen servings. It is meant hot with butter, and reheats well by steaming slices for a few minutes; day-old slices also fry nicely in butter.
Boiled or steamed breads belong to a tradition older than the reliable kitchen range: a covered pail in a kettle of water gives a gentle, even, unscorchable heat, which suited both cornmeal batters and cooks working over an open fire or an unpredictable stove. The molasses-and-cornmeal combination is the New England brown bread line, carried west with settlers into Ohio, where Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping was compiled in the late 1870s from contributions by named housewives. The attribution here, to Mrs. I. N. Burritt by way of another cookbook called In the Kitchen, is typical of the book's method: recipes were gathered from neighbors, church circles and print alike and credited as received. Cream of tartar paired with soda is often taken as a marker of home-mixed leavening, though packaged baking powder was already on sale and widely available when this was printed.