Mush Bread
Make a thin mush of corn meal and milk (or hot water, if milk is scaree). Cook till perfectly done, stirring all the time to keep it smooth. Then add a good lump of butter; and, after it cools a little, two eggs, one at a time. Beat in a very small pinch of soda and a little salt.
Butter a yellow dish and bake slowly till brown.--Mrs. C. L. T.
This is spoonbread in its plainest form: a cooked cornmeal mush enriched with butter and eggs, then baked until set. The recipe gives no quantities beyond the eggs, so the proportions below are the ones the method implies.
- Working proportionsThe recipe gives no measurements except the eggs, so any figures are a modern reconstruction. A thin mush from about 1 cup cornmeal to 3 cups milk, cooked down, will take 2 eggs and a good lump of butter (2-3 tablespoons); that suggests something like a 1 1/2-quart dish, serving four to six as a side.
- Cook the mush properly"Till perfectly done" is the hinge. Undercooked meal stays gritty and will not soften in the oven; stir constantly over low heat until the grittiness is gone, which with stone-ground meal can take well over ten minutes.
- Temper the eggsThe instruction to let it cool a little and add the eggs one at a time is there to stop them scrambling. The mush should be warm to the hand, not steaming, before the first egg goes in.
- CornmealThe recipe says only "corn meal." Stone-ground meal, white or yellow, is the likelier period product; modern degerminated meal behaves differently in the pan, so hold back some of the milk and judge by consistency.
- "A very small pinch of soda"With sweet milk the soda does almost nothing for lift; it mainly softens the meal and helps browning. Keep it to well under 1/4 teaspoon or the bread takes on a soapy edge.
- A yellow dishProbably yellowware, the yellow-bodied earthenware common in period kitchens, though the phrase may simply mean a yellow-glazed dish. Any heavy ceramic or cast-iron baking dish will do; butter it generously.
- Bake slowlyThe recipe gives no temperature or time. In a modern oven, a slow bake of roughly 300-325F for around 45 minutes to an hour, until set in the centre and browned on top, suits the instruction; higher heat sets the edges before the middle.
- ServingThis is soft enough to be scooped rather than sliced, and is best taken to the table straight from the dish while hot.
Spoonbread of this kind sits at the point where cornmeal porridge turns into bread, and the technique - cook the meal to a mush first, then bind it with egg and bake - is what separates it from the batter breads and pones alongside it. Marion Cabell Tyree's Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879) collected contributions from individual housewives, some credited by name and others, like this one, only by initials - here Mrs. C. L. T.; the book assumes a cook who already knows what a thin mush looks like. The aside about using hot water "if milk is scarce" reflects a household working with whatever the kitchen had on the day.