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Fried Mush
Make as above and pour into tins with straight sides, as bread pans. When cold cut into half-inch slices and fry in deep fat, or saute ("pan-fry") in a spider in fat a quarter of an inch deep. Be sure the fat is sweet and that it is hot when the mush is put in, that there may be no grease soaking. Fry to a rich even brown. Ella Morris Kretschmar.
A continuation recipe: the "as above" is plain boiled cornmeal mush, chilled solid in a loaf pan and sliced. Two things decide whether it comes out well — how thoroughly the mush is set, and how hot the fat is when the slices go in.
- Chill it properlyThe mush must be cold all the way through before slicing, which in practice means several hours or overnight in the refrigerator. Slices cut from mush that is merely cool will slump and break apart in the pan.
- "A spider"A spider was originally a cast-iron frying pan on short legs for hearth cooking; by the time this book was printed the word simply meant a heavy skillet. Cast iron is still the right choice, since it holds heat when cold slices hit it.
- "Sweet" fatSweet here means fresh and untainted, not sugared. Rancid lard or drippings will flavor the whole dish, and mush is bland enough to hide nothing.
- Fat temperatureThe instruction to have the fat hot is the hinge of the recipe. Modern deep-frying practice for such slices runs around 350-375F, though the recipe itself names no temperature; for the quarter-inch shallow pan-fry, the fat should shimmer and sizzle at once when a slice touches it. Mush put into warm fat absorbs it and turns heavy and greasy rather than crusting.
- Don't crowd or fussLay the slices in with space between them and leave them alone until the underside has set into a firm crust, as the recipe's "rich even brown" requires. Moving them early tears the soft interior loose from the surface.
- Half-inch slicesThinner slices dry out before browning; much thicker ones stay cold in the middle. Half an inch, as written, is the right compromise.
- Yield and servingThe recipe specifies no quantity, only "tins with straight sides, as bread pans," so the yield depends on how much mush was made; a loaf-sized tin sliced at half an inch will give well over a dozen slices. It was eaten at breakfast with butter and maple syrup, molasses, or sorghum, and also served in place of potatoes alongside sausage or fried ham.
Fried mush is the standard American thrift dish built on cornmeal porridge — cook it, set it, slice it, fry it, and yesterday's cereal becomes today's breakfast. The technique is common to cornmeal-eating regions everywhere: Italian polenta is treated the same way, and in the Pennsylvania German counties a related mush made with pork scraps and broth is sold as scrapple. Its placement among the cooked cereals reflects how central hot cooked grains were to the early-twentieth-century breakfast table, before boxed flaked cereals took the meal over. The recipe carries a personal attribution to Ella Morris Kretschmar.