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White Corn Meal Cake
1 cup scalded milk 1/2 cup white corn meal 1 teaspoon salt Add salt to corn meal, and pour on gradually milk. Turn into a buttered shallow pan to the depth of one-fourth inch. Bake in a moderate oven until crisp. Split and spread with butter.
A three-ingredient corn crisp rather than a cake in the modern sense: a thin batter of scalded milk and meal, baked hard and eaten hot with butter.
- Spread it thinThe quarter-inch depth is the whole point. Poured thicker, the centre stays soft and steams rather than crisping, and the sheet will not hold together when broken.
- White corn mealUse fine or medium-ground white cornmeal, not coarse grits or polenta. Stone-ground white meal gives the closest texture.
- Scalded milkHeat the milk to just below a boil, until it steams and shows bubbles at the rim. Pouring it hot and gradually over the salted meal swells the starch so the batter thickens slightly and bakes evenly.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350 to 375F. Bake until the surface is dry, sandy-looking and pale gold at the edges, and the sheet lifts cleanly from the pan; at a quarter inch this is likely to take a good half hour, but the recipe gives no time and asks only that it be crisp.
- Butter the pan properlyThere is no fat in the batter itself, so a well-buttered shallow metal pan is the only thing keeping the sheet from welding to it. Parchment works if the pan is old or uneven.
- "Split and spread"The recipe says to split it, though at a quarter inch there is little to split; in practice it will break into pieces. Butter it while hot so it soaks in.
- YieldOne cup of milk fills roughly a 9-inch square pan; enough for two or three at breakfast. It goes leathery within an hour or two, so bake it to be eaten at once.