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Baking-Powder Breads: Roland
Mold it into oblong cakes an inch thick at the ends and a little thicker in the center. Slap them down on the pan and press them a little. These cakes they say must show the marks of the fingers. The pan must be hot and sprinkled with the bran sifted from the meal. Bake in a hot oven for about 20 minutes. (Mary Roland.) Southern Hoe Cake No. 1.
Make the same mixture as for pone.
Spread it on the greased hoe, or a griddle, making a round cake + of an inch thick. Bake it on the top of the range, turning and baking it brown on both sides. (Mary Roland.) Southern Hoe Cake No. 2. a a a Use for these cakes if possible coarse water-ground white meal.
Add to a quart of meal a teaspoonful of salt; pour over it enough boiling water to make soft dough. Add also a little milk to make it brown better. Let it stand an hour or longer then work it together with the hand. Form it into little cakes an inch thick and bake on a greased griddle till brown on both sides. Serve very hot. They are split and spread with butter when eaten. (Mary Roland.) Genuine Johnny Cake.
Eight heaping tablespoonfuls fine sifted corn meal, 1 teaspoonful BAKING-POWDER BREADS sugar. Stir in enough sweet milk to make a thin batter. Bake in smoking hot iron gem pan, in very hot oven, until "golden brown." (Mary Lewis.) Aunt Anne's Hoe Cake.
Take a large cupful of corn meal, sift it in a bowl, a pinch of salt. Mix it with a little boiling water. Let it get cold. Make some small round cakes, pinch them on top. Put in a pan to bake in the oven. (Celestine Eustis.) Corn Pone. with warm water. Make it as thick as can be stirred with a spoon. Bake in a milk pan or deep dish, letting it rise first. (Mrs. Grace Townsend.) Gold Medal Corn Bread.
One pint yellow meal, pint flour, 1 teaspoonful salt, 2 teaspoonfuls baking-powder, all sifted together; 1 tablespoonful sugar, 3 tablespoonfuls melted butter, 3 eggs, 1 pint sweet milk. Beat long and hard and bake in a large round loaf. The oven must not be too hot.
Economical Corn Bread.
Corn pone is highly recommended as a breakfast dish. Take a heaping coffee-cupful of boiled hominy, heat it and thin in a tablespoonful of butter, 3 eggs and nearly 1 pint of sweet milk. As much corn meal may be added as will serve to thicken this till it is like the batter RECIPES FOR CORN BREAD for "Johnny Cakes." Bake in a quick oven and serve. (Celestine Eustis.) Take 1 quart of sweet milk, corn meal enough to thicken, 3 eggs, half a cup of butter, 2 tablespoonfuls of brown sugar, 1 teaspoonful of soda and 2 of cream of tartar. Bake in a moderate oven. (Mrs. Jane Warren.) White House Corn Bread.
Two cups of sifted meal, half a cup of flour, 2 cups of sour milk, 2 wellbeaten eggs,½ cup of molasses or sugar, a teaspoonful of salt, 2 tablespoonfuls of melted butter. Mix the meal and flour smoothly and gradually with the milk, then the butter, molasses and salt, then the beaten eggs, and lastly dissolve a level teaspoonful of baking soda in a little milk and beat thoroughly together.
Bake nearly an hour in well-buttered tins, not very shallow. (Hugo Zieman and Mrs. F. L. Gillette.) Favorite Corn Bread.
Scald 1 quart of Indian meal with one quart of boiling water; when cooked, add one pint of Graham flour, 1 pint of wheat flour, half cupful of yeast, half cupful of molasses, 1 teaspoonful of salt, 1 tablespoonful of shortening.
Dissolve and fill the cup half full Boston Corn Bread. 1½ cupfuls Graham flour, 1 cupful Indian meal, tablespoonful soda, 1 saltspoonful salt, cupful molasses, 1⅔ cupfuls milk. (Fannie Merritt Farmer.) Southern Batter Bread or Egg Bread.
Beat two eggs light; stir half a cupful of cold boiled rice into a pint of milk and add to the eggs, rice and milk a tablespoonful of melted butter. Sift a teaspoonful of salt into two cups of Indian meal; stir all together and bake in shallow pans. Eat hot. (Marion Harland.) Corn Meal Loaf. 1 pint milk, 1 level teaspoonful salt, 1 pint white flour, 1 pint water, 1 compressed yeast cake, Corn meal. (Sarah Tyson Rorer.)
A run of Southern and New England cornmeal breads gathered from several turn-of-the-century authorities, ranging from plain water-and-meal hoe cakes to rich egg-and-butter loaves. A few of the entries are ingredient lists only, and several quantities have lost their fractions, so read the group as a set of related methods rather than exact formulas.
- The hinge: scald the mealMost of these start by pouring boiling water over the meal: Southern Hoe Cake No. 2, Aunt Anne's Hoe Cake and the Favorite Corn Bread all do, though the Corn Pone as printed calls for warm water and the Genuine Johnny Cake is a sweet-milk batter. Scalding gelatinizes the starch so the dough holds together without wheat flour or egg, and the hour's rest called for in Hoe Cake No. 2 lets the coarse particles hydrate. Skip it and the cakes crumble on the griddle.
- Indian meal, water-ground mealIndian meal is simply cornmeal. Water-ground white meal is stone-milled and still carries some germ and bran; it is coarser and more perishable than modern degerminated supermarket meal, and worth seeking out for the pone and hoe cakes. Keep it in the freezer.
- Oven temperaturesIn books of this period a hot or quick oven is usually reckoned at about 425-450F and a moderate oven about 350F. "The oven must not be too hot" for the Gold Medal loaf suggests something around 350F; the Genuine Johnny Cake's "very hot oven" points to the top of the range, with the gem pan preheated in it.
- The hoe and the gem panThe name is traditionally explained by baking on a flat iron blade over coals; the recipe itself says only "the greased hoe, or a griddle," and a heavy cast-iron griddle or skillet is the practical equivalent. A gem pan is a heavy cast-iron muffin or popover pan, preheated and greased until it smokes so the batter sets on contact.
- Old small measuresA saltspoonful is a quarter teaspoon. A coffee-cupful is usually reckoned at about a modern cup or a little more; a teacupful is smaller, around three-quarters of a cup.
- Soda, sour milk and cream of tartarWhere soda appears with sour milk or molasses, the acid does the raising, so cultured buttermilk is the right substitute for sour milk. Mrs. Warren's teaspoon of soda with two of cream of tartar is homemade baking powder in a ratio often met with in the period; reckon on roughly three to four teaspoons of modern baking powder in its place.
- Missing quantitiesSeveral amounts in this group have dropped out or lost their fractions -- the thickness of Hoe Cake No. 1, the flour in the Gold Medal bread, the soda and molasses in the Boston Corn Bread, and the milk figure printed as 13 cupfuls, which cannot be right for that quantity of meal. Corn Pone and Corn Meal Loaf survive without their opening lines or method. Do not guess at these; work from the fuller recipes instead.
- Yeast breads in a baking-powder chapterThe Favorite Corn Bread with its half cupful of yeast, and Mrs. Rorer's Corn Meal Loaf with its compressed yeast cake, are risen breads and need a full rise before baking. One cake of compressed yeast is about two teaspoons of active dry.
- Yield and servingA quart of meal makes perhaps a dozen small hoe cakes. The Gold Medal bread is to be baked "in a large round loaf" and the White House bread in buttered tins "not very shallow"; no pan sizes or yields are given. The hoe cakes are meant very hot, split and spread with butter.
Corn bread in these books splits cleanly along regional lines, and the split is visible right here on one page. The Southern entries -- pone, hoe cake, batter bread -- are meal, salt, water and heat, descended from Native American ash cakes; pone comes from an Algonquian word generally given as apan, meaning something baked, and hoe cake takes its name from the field-hand practice, often said to be literal, of baking on the blade of a hoe. The Northern entries sweeten and enrich: molasses, wheat or Graham flour, eggs and milk, in the manner of New England johnnycake and Boston brown bread. The contributors are the working authorities of the 1880s-1900s. Marion Harland and Sarah Tyson Rorer were among the most widely read domestic writers of their generation, Fannie Merritt Farmer ran the Boston Cooking School, Hugo Zieman and Mrs. F. L. Gillette produced The White House Cook Book, and Celestine Eustis collected Creole and Southern household cookery. Compilations like this one borrowed freely from all of them, which is why the same dish appears three times over with three different hands on it.