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Hominy Crumpets
Scald and cool 1 pint of milk, add ½ of a cake of compressed yeast dissolved in 2 tablespoonfuls of warm water, 1 tablespoonful of sugar, 1 scant cupful of boiled hominy, 4 cupfuls of flour, 2 tablespoonfuls of melted butter and 1 teaspoonful of salt. Beat well and let raise over night. In the morning add 1/4 of a teaspoonful of soda dissolved in I spoonful of boiling water. Let stand for half an hour and bake in muffin rings on a hot, greased griddle.
An overnight sponge batter cooked on a griddle rather than in an oven — closer to an English muffin than to the thin, holey crumpet sold under that name today. Two things need translating: the yeast and the hominy.
- Compressed yeastA cake of compressed (fresh) yeast in this period was commonly about 0.6 oz, though sizes varied. Half a cake is therefore roughly half a packet of modern active dry yeast, about 1 teaspoon. Dissolve it in the warm water as written; it needs no proofing time beyond a few minutes.
- Boiled hominyThis means whole or coarsely broken hominy already cooked soft and cooled — not dry grits. A scant cup of cooked hominy grits, on the stiff side, does the same job. Mash it before adding or the batter will carry lumps through to the griddle.
- Scalding the milkScalding was done to knock back enzymes and bacteria in unpasteurised milk. With modern milk it is optional, though heating to about 180F and cooling to lukewarm still slightly improves the crumb. Do not add yeast to milk above 110F.
- The overnight riseKitchens of the period were considerably colder overnight than a centrally heated one. Set the sponge somewhere around 60-65F, or give it an hour at room temperature and then refrigerate, or you may find a collapsed, sour batter in the morning.
- The sodaThe quarter teaspoon of soda added in the morning is chiefly there to neutralise the acid built up overnight rather than to do the leavening, though reacting with that acid will release some gas. Dissolve it fully and fold it in gently — beating hard at this stage knocks out the gas the sponge has made.
- Muffin rings and griddle heatRings of about 3 to 3½ inches, greased inside. A griddle at roughly 350-375F is right: hot enough to set the batter but low enough that the interior cooks through. Figure 6-8 minutes on the first side, then lift the ring, turn, and give 4-5 minutes more.
- Batter consistencyWith 4 cups of flour to a pint of milk this is a thick, spoonable batter rather than a pourable one. Spoon it into the rings and level the top; it should fill them no more than halfway before the final half-hour rest.
- YieldAbout 12 to 14 crumpets at 3½ inches. They are best split and toasted rather than eaten straight off the griddle.
Hominy — maize soaked in an alkaline solution to loosen the hulls, a process taken from Indigenous American cooking and carried into colonial and later Southern kitchens — turns up in nineteenth-century American breads. A cup of cooked hominy displaces flour and adds moisture, giving a softer crumb. The name "crumpet" here is used loosely, as American cookbooks of the period often did, for any small yeast-raised cake baked in rings on a griddle; the batter is far stiffer than the pourable English crumpet batter and the result is nearer a muffin. The two-stage leavening — an overnight yeast sponge corrected in the morning with a pinch of soda — is a good indication of how variable overnight fermentation was in an unheated kitchen.