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To Boil Hominy (Soak in hot water)
Soak in hot water the overnight. Next morning wash out in two waters and boil thoroughly. A little milk added to the water whitens and seasons. It.--Mrs. W.
A one-line breakfast note from a book that assumed every cook already knew what hominy was and how long it took. What it leaves out is mostly the clock.
- Which hominy is meantHere "hominy" almost certainly means whole hulled corn — big hominy, the dried kernels treated with lye or wood ash to slip the hull — since that is what needs an overnight soak and a long boil. Virginians did also use the word loosely for the coarsely ground "small hominy," so the term alone does not settle it. Dried whole hominy or posole is the same product and is still sold in bags.
- The soak is the hingeHot water overnight is not idle softening: unsoaked dried hominy takes considerably longer to come tender. Cover the kernels by three inches; they roughly double in bulk.
- "Wash out in two waters"Drain the soaking liquid and rinse twice before cooking. This carries off residual alkali from the hulling, which otherwise leaves a soapy, faintly slick taste.
- "Boil thoroughly" means hoursExpect two to four hours at a bare simmer, depending on the age of the corn. Done means the kernels have burst open and are soft all the way through, with no chalky centre. A hard rolling boil only breaks them up on the outside while the middles stay firm.
- Salt and milkSalt to taste; cooks traditionally held off until the last half hour on the belief that early salting slows softening, though the point is disputed. The milk is best stirred in near the end, since a long simmer in milk will scorch and stick on the bottom of the pot.
- Canned hominyCanned hominy is already fully cooked. Drain, rinse, and warm it through with a little milk and butter — five minutes, not four hours.
- YieldOne pound of dried hominy gives roughly six generous breakfast servings. Leftovers keep several days refrigerated and are good fried in bacon fat.
Hominy came to Virginia kitchens from the Algonquian households that preceded them; the word itself is generally traced to a Powhatan term as reconstructed from early English colonists' transcriptions, and is conventionally linked to the parched-corn preparation they wrote down as "rockahominie." The technique behind it u2014 steeping dried corn in an alkaline solution of wood ash or lye to loosen the hulls, what is now called nixtamalization u2014 is indigenous to the Americas, though whether the eastern North American practice descends from Mesoamerica or arose independently is not documented. By the time Housekeeping in Old Virginia was compiled u2014 it was issued by John P. Morton of Louisville in 1878, with printings dated 1879 and after u2014 boiled hominy was so ordinary a breakfast dish that Mrs. W. could dispose of it in three sentences and assume no one would need the cooking time. The book's habit of crediting contributors by initial or surname reflects its origin as a collection of household receipts gathered from Virginia women rather than a single author's manual.