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POLENTA PUDDING (to be eaten with meat)
Boil a pint and a half of milk, and drop into it very gradually, stirring briskly all the time, half a pound of polenta or maize-flour. Boil, and stir until the mixture is quite thick and smooth, then put in a little pepper and salt, and an ounce of fresh butter. Pour the mixture into a buttered mould, and bake in a good oven. Turn the pudding out before serving. Time to bake, one hour and a half. Probable cost, 8d. Sufficient for six persons.
A stiff milk polenta set in a mould and baked, meant as a starch accompaniment to meat rather than a dessert. The whole success of it lies in getting the meal in without lumps.
- The pint is imperialCassell's pint is 20 fl oz, so a pint and a half is 30 fl oz, about 850 ml or 3 1/2 US cups. Half a pound of maize meal is 225 g, roughly 1 1/2 cups.
- What polenta meant hereCoarse or medium-ground yellow cornmeal. Not instant polenta, which will seize almost immediately in hot milk, and not fine cornflour/cornstarch, which is a different product entirely.
- The hinge: add the meal in a threadVery gradually and stirring briskly is the whole instruction. Pour the meal in a thin steady stream with the milk at a bare simmer rather than a rolling boil, and keep the spoon moving; dumped in at once it lumps and no amount of later beating recovers it.
- "A good oven"In Victorian usage this generally means a fairly brisk oven; a modern equivalent is somewhere in the region of 350-400F (180-200C), but the equivalence is approximate. The mixture is already fully cooked on the stove, so the oven is only setting and lightly browning it.
- Ninety minutes is for a deep mouldNinety minutes suits a deep mould -- a tall pudding mould of the kind then used would plausibly need the full time. In a shallower dish or loaf tin it will likely be set and coloured sooner, perhaps 45 minutes to an hour; it is done when the sides pull from the mould and a skewer comes out clean.
- Turning outButter the mould generously and let the baked pudding stand 10 minutes before inverting, or it will crack. Cooled completely, leftovers slice firmly and fry well in butter.
- SeasoningA little pepper and salt is modest for 225 g of maize and 850 ml of milk. Taste the porridge before it goes into the mould, since unseasoned polenta is very flat; grated Parmesan or a scrape of nutmeg is period-appropriate if you want more.
- YieldSix as a side dish, as stated. The 8d is a Victorian price and is of no use beyond showing this was cheap food.
Maize came to Europe from the Americas in the sixteenth century and took hold most firmly in the north of Italy, where polenta or for meral porridges generally " became the daily starch of the Veneto, Lombardy and Friuli.