Fried Hominy
Warm the boiled hominy; add a piece of butter, a little salt half a pint cream, two eggs, and flour enough to stiffen the mixture. Fry like mashed potatoes.--Mrs. E.
A leftovers dish, and it behaves best when treated as one: cold, set hominy holds its shape in the pan far better than hot. The recipe assumes you already have a pot of boiled hominy from breakfast.
- What "hominy" means hereIn Virginia books of this period "hominy" usually means hulled corn cooked soft — either whole "big hominy" or the coarse ground "small hominy" we now call grits. Either works; canned whole hominy should be drained and roughly mashed first, grits should be cooked stiff enough to set when cool.
- Half a pintOne cup of cream. That is a generous amount against a modest bowl of hominy, which is why flour is needed to bring the mixture back to a workable stiffness. If you are starting from firm cold grits, half that cream is usually enough.
- "Flour enough to stiffen"Add it a spoonful at a time until the mixture holds a shape on the spoon and does not slump — roughly 2 to 4 tablespoons per two cups of hominy. Too much flour makes the cakes bready rather than creamy.
- A piece of butterUnmeasured, as usual. One to two tablespoons is the sense of it, stirred into the warm hominy so it melts through.
- Chill before fryingSomething the original does not mention. Spread the mixture in a pan, cool it until firm, then cut or shape into cakes. Warm batter spreads and sticks.
- "Fry like mashed potatoes"Shallow-fry in butter, bacon fat or a neutral oil over medium heat, about 3 to 4 minutes a side, until a hard brown crust forms. Turn once only; the cakes are fragile until the crust sets.
- Yield and servingWorking from two cups of cooked hominy, expect roughly eight to ten cakes, a side for four; the original gives no quantity, so this is a guess. A dish of this kind would suit breakfast or supper alongside ham, bacon or fried chicken.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housewives, is full of recipes like this one: short, signed with an initial, and written for a cook who already knows the basics. Hominy — corn hulled by soaking in a lye or lime solution, a technique colonists took up from Native practice — was a common starch in Virginia kitchens, boiled in quantity for breakfast and often not finished at a sitting. Frying the remainder into cakes is a familiar second life for it, sitting in the same tradition as fried mush, scrapple, and the fried grits cakes still served in the region. The comparison to mashed potatoes suggests the technique was assumed to be common knowledge; "Mrs. E." saw no reason to spell out anything beyond the proportions.