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Corn Dodgers
To one quart corn meal add a little salt and a small table-spoon lard; scald with boiling water and beat hard for a few minutes; drop a large spoonful in a well-greased pan. The batter should be thick enough to just flatten on the bottom, leaving them quite high in the center. Bake in a hot oven.
A scalded cornmeal batter with no leavening, no egg and no milk — the texture depends entirely on how hot the water is and how hard you beat it.
- Scald properlyThe water must be at a full rolling boil when it hits the meal, and you add it gradually while stirring. Gelatinizing the starch is what holds these together without egg or flour; lukewarm water gives a batter that slumps and crumbles.
- QuantitiesOne quart of cornmeal is about 4 cups, roughly 1 lb 4 oz. Expect somewhere near 2 to 2 1/2 cups of boiling water, added by eye until the batter mounds on the spoon. A "small table-spoon" of lard is a scant tablespoon.
- Corn mealMost likely stone-ground white or yellow meal rather than modern degerminated supermarket cornmeal. Grind and absorbency vary, so add the boiling water by eye rather than to a fixed measure. Self-rising cornmeal mix is not a substitute here — the recipe as written contains no leavening.
- "A hot oven"Read that as 425–450°F. Heat the greased pan in the oven first so the batter sets on contact and forms a crust underneath.
- Beat hardA few minutes of vigorous beating while the batter is still hot is not optional; it works the starch and lightens the interior slightly. It is easiest with a wooden spoon and a sturdy bowl, or a stand mixer with the paddle.
- Shape and timeDrop mounds about 2 inches across, well apart, and leave them domed as directed. No time is given in the recipe; expect roughly 20 to 35 minutes depending on size and oven, and judge by colour — they are done when the bottoms and edges are deep brown and hard to the tap.
- Yield and servingA quart of meal makes roughly 18 to 24 dodgers depending on the size of the spoonful. They are best eaten hot with butter, or broken into buttermilk, greens or pot liquor; they toughen as they cool.
Corn dodgers belong to the plain unleavened corn breads of the American interior — the same family as hoecake, ashcake and corn pone — made from meal, salt, water and a little fat. The name's origin is obscure; it is often linked to the idea of a small dropped lump of dough, but that is tradition rather than established etymology. "Corn dodger" was in American use by the mid-nineteenth century, particularly in the Ohio Valley and the South. Scalding the meal was a common way of making a cohesive dough out of corn, which has no gluten, and the practice long predates the chemical leavens that had become widespread in American baking by the later nineteenth century.