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Virginia Corn Bread
Take 1 pint of hot corn-meal mush; 1 tablespoonful of melted butter or lard; 2 eggs beaten separately; 1 cupful of raw oysters (drained). Add sweet milk enough to make it like cake batter, put in buttered pudding-dish, and bake from one-half to three-quarters of an hour. Serve in the dish.
This is a spoonbread rather than a stiff cornbread: the batter is loose, it bakes in a dish, and it is served with a spoon straight from that dish. Note that no oven temperature and no salt are given.
- Start with the mushA pint is 2 cups of cooked cornmeal mush — roughly 1/2 cup cornmeal cooked with 2 cups water or milk until thick. It should still be hot when the butter goes in, so the fat melts through it, but let it cool to warm before the eggs are added or they will scramble.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives none. A modern oven of about 350-375F suits a dish of this type, and at that heat the half-hour to three-quarters given here is about right, the shorter time for a shallower dish. It is done when the centre is just set and no longer soupy.
- Eggs beaten separatelyThis means yolks and whites in separate bowls: yolks stirred into the warm mush, whites whipped to soft peaks and folded in last. That folding is what lifts the batter, so do it gently and get the dish into the oven immediately.
- "Like cake batter"Expect to need about 1 to 1 1/2 cups of milk, depending how thick the mush set. The batter should pour thickly and slowly from the spoon, not mound.
- The oystersOne cupful drained is about a dozen standard shucked oysters. Drain them well — their liquor will thin the batter unpredictably — and reserve it for a sauce or soup rather than adding it here. They cook through in the batter; do not pre-cook them or they will be tough by the time the bread is set.
- SaltNone is specified. Mush was commonly salted as it was cooked, so salt the mush as you make it, about 3/4 teaspoon for this quantity, or the finished dish will taste flat against the oysters.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh milk, as distinguished in period books from sour or buttermilk. Whole milk is the right choice.
- Yield and servingServes about four to six as a side dish, or four as a light supper. A spoonbread of this kind is apt to sink as it cools, which may be part of why the instruction is to serve it in the dish -- bring it to the table straight from the oven.
Spoonbread of this kind sits at the join between bread and pudding, and the Virginia name attached to it in nineteenth-century compilations points to the Tidewater habit of enriching a cornmeal batter with eggs and dairy until it needed a spoon. The oysters suit the place and season: the Chesapeake supplied oysters cheaply and in great volume through the 1800s, and cooks along the bay used them widely, in fritters, stuffings and cornbreads. State names in compilations of this sort often indicate a style rather than a documented provenance, so "Virginia" here is best read as a promise of something soft, egg-lifted, cornmeal-based, and served from the baking dish.