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Hominy Cakes
Take two breakfast-cupfuls of boiled hominy, beat it smooth, work in two cupfuls of milk, a teaspoonful of salt, two cupfuls of flour, and, lastly, three eggs well beaten. Mix till all is thoroughly incorporated. Form the mixture into cakes, and fry in the same way as fritters.
A plain griddle-and-skillet batter that depends entirely on the hominy being properly soft before it goes in. Two decisions are left unstated in the original: how thick the mixture should be, and how hot the fat.
- Breakfast-cupfulA breakfast cup in British usage of this period runs about 8 to 10 fl oz, larger than a teacup. Treating all the cupfuls as standard 8 oz US cups keeps the proportions consistent, which is what matters here.
- HominyThis means whole hulled corn kernels treated with alkali, boiled until tender — not quick grits and not polenta. Canned hominy, drained and rinsed, works; it needs mashing or a few pulses in a processor to reach the smooth state the recipe asks for.
- Beat it smooth firstThe hinge of the recipe. Cold or lumpy hominy will not disperse once the flour is in, and the cakes fry with hard nuggets through them. Mash it while still warm, then add the milk to loosen before any flour goes near it.
- No raising agentThere is no soda or baking powder — the eggs alone do the lifting, so the cakes stay dense and custardy inside rather than puffing. If the batter has stood more than a few minutes, beat it again before frying.
- ConsistencyAim for a thick drop batter that holds a soft mound on the spoon. Hominy varies in how much liquid it carries, so hold back part of the flour and add it to suit.
- Fry in the same way as frittersShallow or deep fat at 360-375F. Below that the cakes soak; above it the outside colours before the egg-rich centre sets. Two to three minutes a side, drained on paper.
- YieldThe recipe gives no count; something on the order of two dozen three-inch cakes, depending how large they are dropped. Serve hot, with butter and syrup or alongside meat.
Hominy — corn soaked in wood-ash lye or slaked lime to loosen the hulls — is an Indigenous American technique that colonists took up, and the word itself comes from an Algonquian term recorded in early Virginia. By the late nineteenth century boiled hominy was a standard American breakfast dish, and cakes like these were presumably one way of using up what was left in the pot, the same domestic logic that produces bubble and squeak or fried polenta. Its appearance in a British dictionary of cookery would reflect the steady traffic of American dishes into English household books at the end of the century.