Mush Waffles
With one pint of milk, make corn mush. When cool, add a tablespoonful of butter, a little salt, and thicken with flour to a stiff batter. Bake quickly in irons.--Mrs. C. L. T.
A thrift recipe built on leftover-style cornmeal mush, with almost no measurements given beyond the pint of milk. The batter is worked by feel, so expect to adjust.
- Making the mushWhisk about 1/2 cup cornmeal into the pint of milk and cook over low heat, stirring, until it is a thick porridge that pulls from the pan, roughly 10-15 minutes. Let it cool to barely warm before adding butter and salt, or the fat will simply pool.
- "Thicken with flour" is not a measurementPlan on roughly 1 to 1 1/2 cups of flour, added a few spoonfuls at a time. A "stiff batter" here means spoonable and slow to fall, not pourable; too thin and the mush will stick and tear in the iron.
- No leavening, no eggsAs written these are dense, chewy waffles rather than light ones. If you want lift, 1 teaspoon baking powder and 1 egg is a common modern addition, but it is an addition and not in the original.
- "Bake quickly in irons"The irons were cast iron, greased and set over coals or a stove eye, turned partway through. A modern electric waffle iron on a high setting is the nearest substitute; grease it well, since this batter has little fat and no sugar and will grip.
- Cooking timeGive them longer than a standard waffle, 5-6 minutes, and do not lift the lid early. Cornmeal batters need the extra time to set and crisp; pulled too soon they are gummy at the center.
- Yield and servingA pint of milk makes about six standard waffles. They were served hot with butter and syrup or molasses at breakfast or supper, and they go equally well under gravy or with ham.
Cornmeal mush was the everyday starch of Virginia kitchens, eaten hot with milk at supper and fried in slices the next morning. Turning it into waffle batter is the same economy that produced mush bread, batter cakes and spoonbread: wheat flour was the expensive ingredient, so it was used only to bind. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named housekeepers, is full of these attributed one-line recipes, which assume the reader already knows what corn mush looks like and how hot her irons run.