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To Boil Hominy (Take two quarts of hominy wash)
Take two quarts of hominy, wash through several waters until the water is clear; put it on to boil in a pot half full of water, with a plate turned down in the bottom of the pot to prevent its burning. Boil for six hours-do not stir it; when done, take off the vessel and set it aside in a cool place. When it is ready to fry, put a little lard in the pan, let is get hot, and mash in the hominy; then add a little salt. Put it in the pan and press down; let it fry till brown, turning it upside down on the dish.--Mrs. P. W.
This is two recipes in one: a long unattended boil of whole hominy, then a fried cake made from the leftovers the next morning. The hinge is the plate in the bottom of the pot, which keeps the grains off direct heat during six hours of simmering.
- What hominy means hereWhole dried corn kernels that have been hulled with lye or wood ash, sold today as posole or hominy corn. It is not grits, and not the fine-ground hominy meal sometimes sold under the same word; substituting either will collapse in far less than six hours.
- Soak firstDried hominy from a modern bag benefits from an overnight soak in cold water, though the original does not mention one. Drained and simmered, it may be tender in rather less than the six hours specified; test a kernel and stop when it is soft and beginning to butterfly open.
- The plate in the potAn inverted heavy plate or saucer acts as a heat diffuser in a thin cast-iron or tin pot over a live fire. A heavy-bottomed pot on a low burner does the same job, but the plate is harmless and still works.
- Do not stirStirring breaks the softening kernels and drives starch to the bottom, where it scorches. Keep the water at a bare simmer, topped up so the corn is always covered, and leave it alone.
- QuantityTwo quarts of dry hominy is roughly 3 lb and swells to something like three times its volume. That is a household batch, enough for a large table with leftovers for the frying; a quart or less is plenty for a modern one.
- Canned shortcutDrained canned hominy is already cooked and can go straight to the frying pan, though it is wetter and blander. Rinse it well and let it drain thoroughly or the cake will steam instead of crusting.
- The fried cakeLard in a hot cast-iron skillet, the hominy mashed roughly and pressed into an even layer, salt added at this stage rather than during the boil. Give it eight to ten minutes over medium heat without moving it so a solid brown crust forms, then invert it onto the plate as directed.
Hominy came to the Virginia kitchen from the Algonquian peoples of the Chesapeake, and the English word itself is generally traced to a Powhatan term recorded by the early colonists in forms like uskatahomen and rockahominie. The process behind it, soaking dried corn in lye or wood-ash water to loosen the hulls, is the same nixtamalization practiced across the Americas, and it makes the corn both easier to cook and more nutritious. By the time Housekeeping in Old Virginia was compiled in 1878, boiled hominy was, by most accounts, a familiar presence at the Southern breakfast table, and the second half of this recipe shows the thrift that governed those households: yesterday's pot, mashed, salted and fried in lard, turned out browned side up as a dish in its own right.