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Crisp Corn Meal Cake
1 cup milk 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup white corn meal Mix the ingredients and heat slowly until the boiling point is reached. It is not necessary to stir. Spread on a shallow buttered pan to a depth of about one-fourth of an inch. Bake in a moderate oven until crisp.
A thin cornmeal wafer baked until dry and crisp, closer to a cracker than a cake. Two details in the original carry the whole result: the mush must be spread genuinely thin, and it must dry out rather than brown.
- Oven temperatureA "moderate oven" in books of this era is usually reckoned at about 350 to 375F. At that heat expect roughly 25 to 40 minutes; the sheet is done when the surface is dry, pale gold, and lifts from the pan without bending.
- Spread it thinThe original says about a quarter inch; thinner bakes crisper. Much thicker and the centre is likely to stay soft and leathery rather than crisping.
- White corn mealFine white cornmeal was the standard in the South; yellow meal, more usual elsewhere, works but gives a slightly coarser wafer. Avoid self-rising mixes, which contain leavening and salt.
- "Not necessary to stir"True only if you heat gently in a heavy pan and watch it. Milk and meal will scorch on a thin pan over high heat, and scorched cornmeal is bitter throughout. Low heat until it thickens and bubbles.
- Buttered panButter the pan generously, or use parchment. The mixture sets into a single sheet and a bare pan makes it nearly impossible to lift out whole.
- Breaking and servingScore the sheet into squares or strips while still warm, then break along the lines once cool. Serve with butter, soup, or cheese as you would a cracker.
- YieldOne cup of milk and half a cup of meal fills roughly a quarter-sheet pan and gives two to three servings' worth of wafers.
- StorageCrisp only while dry. Cool completely and keep airtight; a few minutes back in a 300F oven revives any that soften.
Cornmeal mush spread thin and dried in the oven is one of the oldest American uses of maize, and it is often said to descend from Native techniques for cooking ground corn on a hot stone or plank, though the line is traditional supposition rather than documented. Thin, crisp corn breads of this type appear in nineteenth-century books under many names, and this one has no egg, fat, or leavening at all. That is exactly why it belongs in a meatless cookery collection: books of this kind, written for wartime economy and for vegetarian households, prized recipes that made a satisfying bread from milk, salt, and meal alone. It also points to the period's interest in dry, crisp cereal foods, the same enthusiasm that produced commercial crackers and flaked breakfast cereals in the decades around 1900.