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Southern Corn Pone
1 teacupful of cooked hominy--the smaller-sized kind. While it is hot stir in 1 table-spoonful of melted butter and 2 eggs beaten very light; stir in 1/2 pint of sweet milk very gradually, then yellow corn meal enough to make a batter as thick as boiled custard. Add 1 1/2 teaspoonfuls of baking-powder, and less than teaspoonful of salt. Bake in a hot oven three-quarters of an hour in a pudding-dish.
Despite the name, this is a soft spoon bread rather than the dense hand-shaped pone of the older Southern tradition. The batter is poured, baked and served with a spoon.
- A teacupfulAn old teacup is usually reckoned at about 3/4 cup, though the measure was never standard. Use about 3/4 cup of cooked hominy, packed lightly.
- The smaller-sized hominyThis means small hominy or hominy grits, not the large whole nixtamalized kernels sold in cans. Cook grits until thick and use them hot, so the butter melts in and the mixture stays loose.
- Half a pint of sweet milkOne cup of whole milk. "Sweet" only distinguishes it from soured or buttermilk, which would need soda rather than baking powder.
- Batter consistency"As thick as boiled custard" means pourable and coating, not scoopable. Add the cornmeal in small additions; a stiff batter bakes dry and heavy. Fine yellow meal gives the smoothest crumb.
- A hot ovenConventionally read as somewhere around 400-425F, though the book gives no temperature. Use a deep dish rather than a shallow one; the center should be just set and puffed with no liquid batter beneath the crust.
- Baking powderStir it in last and get the dish into the oven promptly.
- Pudding-dishA deep, straight-sided ovenproof dish. A buttered cast-iron skillet also works and gives a better bottom crust.
- YieldServes about four to six as a side. It is meant to be eaten hot from the dish with butter; it collapses and firms as it cools.