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Graham Mush
Sift meal slowly into boiling salted water, stirring briskly until it is as thick as can be stirred with one hand; serve with milk or cream and sugar, or butter and syrup. It is much improved by removing from the kettle to a pan as soon as thoroughly mixed,. and steaming for three or four hours. It may also be eaten cold, or sliced and fried like corn mush.
A porridge of coarse whole-wheat meal, cooked stiff and either eaten hot or chilled, sliced and fried. The original gives no quantities, so the proportions below are the ones that get you to the described texture.
- What graham meal isGraham flour is whole wheat ground coarse, bran and germ included, named for the dietary reformer Sylvester Graham. Modern graham flour or a coarse stone-ground whole-wheat flour both work; regular whole-wheat flour gives a smoother, less nubbly mush.
- ProportionsThe original gives no quantities. Roughly 1 cup meal to 3-4 cups water with 1 teaspoon salt is a reasonable starting point, adding meal until it thickens. The instruction "as thick as can be stirred with one hand" means the spoon meets real resistance but the mass still moves; it stiffens further as it cooks and again as it cools.
- Avoiding lumpsThis is the hinge of the recipe. Sift or trickle the meal into hard-boiling water in a thin stream while whisking; dumping it in at once sets lumps that will not break up afterward. Slurrying the meal with a cup of cold water first is an easier route to the same result.
- The steaming stepThree or four hours in a covered pan set over simmering water is what the original calls for; long, gentle cooking softens the coarse bran. A covered dish in a low oven or a spell in a pressure cooker will get you part of the way, though neither is the same thing, and times will need watching. If you skip the steaming entirely, cook and stir the mush noticeably longer on the stove.
- KettleHere "kettle" means a heavy pot, not a tea kettle. Use the thickest-bottomed saucepan you have; graham mush scorches readily and burnt bran is unsalvageable.
- For fryingPack the hot mush into a loaf pan, press plastic wrap onto the surface, and chill overnight until firm. Slice half an inch thick and fry in butter or bacon fat over medium heat, several minutes a side, until a crust forms. Slices that stick have usually been turned too early.
- YieldOne cup of meal makes roughly four breakfast servings hot, or one small loaf for frying.
Graham mush belongs to the long American tradition of boiled meal porridges — cornmeal mush, hasty pudding, oatmeal — but the graham part is specific to the nineteenth-century health reform movement. Sylvester Graham, a Presbyterian minister who preached temperance and coarse unbolted bread in the 1830s, gave his name to the flour, and by the time Buckeye Cookery first appeared in 1876 graham flour was arguably becoming an economical everyday ingredient in Midwestern kitchens as much as a reformer's cause. Mush was a filling starch that could be cooked in quantity, eaten hot with milk and sugar in the morning, and the leftovers fried in fat the next day, which is roughly the same economy that governs cornmeal mush, polenta and scrapple.