Home › Cereals › Creamed Hominy
Creamed Hominy
1 pint hominy 1/4 cup cream 1/4 cup milk 1 tablespoon butter 1/2 teaspoon salt Heat the hominy; add the milk, cream, butter and lastly the salt. Cook together five minutes, and serve. If desired, milk only may be used, in which case add an additional tablespoon of butter.
A short reheating formula rather than a from-scratch dish: it assumes you already have cooked hominy on hand, as most kitchens of the period did. The whole thing turns on gentle heat and stirring.
- What "hominy" means hereWhole hulled corn kernels treated with alkali (nixtamalized), already boiled soft; in period usage the same word could also cover coarser hominy grits, so the texture intended is not certain. A pint is 2 cups; a drained 15-oz can of white or golden hominy gives a little under that and is the nearest modern stand-in.
- If you use grits insteadCooked grits are far thirstier and will drink the dairy immediately. Expect to add liquid well beyond the 1/2 cup total, and to thin the result again as it stands.
- The creamPeriod "cream" for cooking was generally nearer today's light cream or half-and-half than to heavy whipping cream, though its butterfat varied a good deal. Heavy cream works and gives a richer result; the dish will simply be thicker.
- Low heat, and stirHominy and dairy scorch readily on a thin modern pan bottom. Keep it just below a simmer for the five minutes and stir often; a hard boil will break the cream and leave a scalded taste that no amount of butter covers.
- Salt lastThe recipe adds the salt at the end. If you are using canned hominy, it and the dairy may carry salt of their own, so taste before committing the full half teaspoon.
- The all-milk versionThe extra tablespoon of butter compensates for the missing butterfat. Whole milk is what is meant; skim milk will thin out and give a watery result even with the added butter.
- YieldServes three to four as a side dish, or two as a more substantial course. Serve immediately — it stiffens noticeably as it cools.
Hominy reached the American table directly from Indigenous practice: corn simmered with wood ash or slaked lime until the hulls slip, a process that also releases the grain's niacin and improves its protein. The word itself comes from a Virginia Algonquian term, and by the nineteenth century hominy was a fixture of the American breakfast table, sold dried by the barrel and later canned. A dish like this one is the argument in miniature: a cheap grain, a little dairy, and five minutes on the stove standing in for a chop.