Mush
1 cup corn meal 1 cup cold water 1 teaspoon salt 1 pint boiling water Mix together the corn meal and salt and add the cold water gradually, stirring until smooth. Pour this mixture into the boiling water and cook in a double boiler from three to five hours. Serve hot with cream and sugar. 300 FRIED MUSHTAO Pour hot corn meal into a square dish that has been rinsed in cold water. When the mush is cold cut it into slices one half inch water.
When the mush is cold cut it into slices one half inch thick; dust with flour and fry a delicate brown. Serve with syrup. 1/2 cup rice
Cornmeal mush is a two-ingredient porridge whose whole character comes from long, gentle cooking. The method here is sound; only the scale of the timing needs comment.
- The hinge: slake before you pourWetting the meal with cold water first is what keeps the mush from seizing into lumps the instant it meets the boiling water. Stir it to a smooth slurry, then pour it into the boiling water in a steady stream while stirring.
- Three to five hours in a double boilerNot a misprint for the period, but not necessary either. Over direct low heat with regular stirring, a fine cornmeal thickens in roughly 20 to 30 minutes and coarse stone-ground meal in 45 to 60; the double boiler would have guarded against scorching on a range whose heat was hard to lower. If you use one, an hour and a half will generally give a smooth, fully hydrated texture.
- ProportionsOne cup meal to one cup cold water plus one pint (2 cups) boiling water is 3 parts liquid to 1 part meal. Coarse or very fresh stone-ground meal drinks more; keep a cup of boiling water at hand to loosen it.
- Corn mealThe recipe does not specify the meal; period cookery generally used yellow or white field-corn meal, typically more coarsely milled than most supermarket cornmeal today. Stone-ground meal gives the closer flavour; degerminated supermarket meal cooks faster and tastes flatter.
- SaltA full teaspoon for one cup of meal is on the high side by current taste. Half a teaspoon is enough if you are serving it sweet with cream and sugar.
- Frying the leftoversFor the fried version, pour the hot mush into the square dish rinsed in cold water, which helps stop it sticking. Chill it firm -- several hours or overnight -- before slicing half an inch thick; a warm loaf will crumble in the pan. The recipe then dusts the slices with flour before frying.
- YieldRoughly 3 cups cooked, enough for three or four at breakfast, or a dish's worth of slices for frying.
Mush is the plain American name for boiled cornmeal porridge, a dish Europeans in North America took up from Native foodways and which appears across regional kitchens under other labels: hasty pudding in New England, polenta in Italian households, couche-couche in Louisiana. Its double life is the point of the pair of recipes here, one hot with cream and sugar, the other chilled, sliced, floured and fried, served with syrup -- a common way of extending a batch of mush.