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Hominy Gems
1/4 cup hominy 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup boiling water 1 cup scalded milk 1 cup corn meal 3 tablespoons sugar 3 tablespoons butter 2 eggs 3 teaspoons baking powder Add hominy mixed with salt to boiling water and let stand until hominy absorbs water. Add scalded milk to corn meal, then add sugar and butter. Combine mixtures, cool slightly, add yolks of eggs beaten until thick, and whites of eggs beaten until stiff. Sift in baking powder and beat thoroughly. Bake in hot buttered gem pans.
A cornmeal muffin enriched with hominy and lightened with beaten egg whites, baked in cast-iron gem pans. The original gives no oven temperature or time, so both are supplied below.
- What "hominy" means hereA quarter cup of dry granules that swell in boiling water is hominy grits, not the whole canned kernels sold as hominy today. Use quick or regular grits, not instant, and not coarse stone-ground unless you soak them longer.
- Gem pansGem pans are heavy cast-iron muffin pans with shallow oval or round cups, roughly 2 to 2 1/2 inches across. A standard 12-cup muffin tin works; if you have cast iron, butter it and heat it in the oven until the butter sizzles before filling, which is what "hot buttered gem pans" is asking for.
- OvenBake at 425F for 18 to 22 minutes, until well risen and browned. A gem batter this wet needs the initial blast of heat to set the crust before the egg white loses its lift.
- Order of operations mattersThe hominy and the scalded milk both go in hot, so the mixture needs the 'cool slightly' the recipe calls for before the yolks are added, or the yolks may begin to set in the batter.
- Baking powder lastSifting the baking powder over the finished batter and beating it in is period practice; it works, but move quickly and get the pans in the oven at once, since modern double-acting powder begins reacting on contact with the wet batter.
- Beaten whitesFold the stiff whites in with a light hand rather than beating them, despite the instruction to 'beat thoroughly'. Overworking them costs you most of the rise.
- YieldAbout 12 gems. They are best within an hour of baking; cornmeal and hominy both dry out fast.
Gems were a common American quick bread of the later nineteenth century, associated with the cast-iron gem pan, which was made and sold in many patterns through the second half of the century -- a heavy plate of small cups that was preheated so the batter met hot metal and formed a crisp shell. Cookbooks of the period ran dozens of variations: graham gems, rye gems, rice gems, and hominy gems like this one, which stretch cornmeal with a cooked grain to soften its texture. Hominy itself is corn treated with alkali to loosen the hull, a technique taken from Indigenous cooking of the Americas and long naturalized in Southern and New England kitchens alike; by 1900 the dried, cracked form was a cheap pantry staple sold by the pound. The three teaspoons of baking powder mark the recipe as belonging to the era after chemical leavening had displaced yeast and hand-beaten eggs alone for everyday breakfast breads.